Starting your Email Campaign on the right foot
As more and more companies turn to email marketing, it’s probably best to return back to the main factors in email marketing that need to be considered for a successful campaign.
So many companies come into email marketing hoping for a quick fix that will boost their sales and then very quickly stop the email campaign as they put no real thought into their emails.
Whats the Objective of Your Campaign?
Probably the best thing to start off with is assessing what your overall plan is with this campaign. Are you looking to increase sales? Build your brand up? Keep users in touch with latest happenings?
Once decided, you will be able to make better decisions for your campaign. For instance, if your main goal is to increase sales, probably best to keep the latest developments in your company to a minimum and focus on the main goal.
Design and Layout
This can make the difference from someone opening your campaign, to clicking through to your website and making a purchase. The first thing a recipient will see is the design of the email as they open it and as we all know, we make quick judgements. If you send a poorly designed email that looks quite amateurish, then your recipients will see this as that.
Remember that it is quite likely that these recipients get quite a few promotional emails, some from well-respected companies with good quality emails and yours must be comparable to them for your campaign to work.
The layout of your campaign can also determine how successful your campaign is. You must make sure that if there is something you particularly want them to click on, that it is clear and obvious for them to click on. This is otherwise known as the call to action.
Call to Action
Making your call to action prominent in the email is something that shouldn’t be an afterthought in your designing process. This small part of the design process is also a major factor in your conversion rate, so put a lot of thought into how you want it to look and be placed. You can try different methods, wording, graphics to get the most out of it.
Subject Line
Obviously this design thought will all be pointless if no-one is opening the email in the first place. The subject line should be encouraging opens whilst at the same time summarising what is in the email itself. Try and remember not to make it too long as you want your message to get across to your recipients without it truncating. Try experimenting with your subject lines to see what factors change open rates.
Experimenting
There really is no definitive formula to making your campaign a success as every industry and recipient is different. Though you can get the best practices in place, this may not necessarily mean you get instantly high responses. The best thing to do is experiment with all aspects of your campaign and see which works best. One of the most common methods is A/B split testing. This way you can view for yourself which factors are working and which aren’t. By experimenting for yourself, you’ll be guaranteed a happy and prosperous future in email marketing.