An email campaign is an email, or a series of emails sent to the subscribers, customers, and audience of companies. These emails are created to get at least one goal ticked off by the marketer for the company. The email created for marketing campaigns are pre-planned and sent to the people that matter the most to the company, i.e., clients, customers, stakeholders, and potential customers.
A successful email marketing campaign can be created considering the following factors:
- The goal of the email marketing campaign.
- The recipient list for the campaign.
- The content of the email.
- The time and schedule of sending the email.
- The results of the campaign are in the form of metrics, responses, and improvements.
Why should email marketing campaigns be utilized?
Somewhere far away, a few people may still be sending out fliers and looking for prospects while standing on a barrel. But with digitalization, there are hardly any traditional marketing forms in practice. However, email marketing remains a crowd favorite for generating customer interactions and sales.
Undoubtedly, social media and email campaigns work best for digital marketing. Both approaches produce similar results while generating leads or increasing sales. But with email marketing, the recipients willingly opt for the content. So, the prospects you have at hand are more promising than the ones you get through other marketing channels.
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Overviewing 6 fundamental practices for email marketing
Before searching for methods to optimize your email marketing campaign, you need to know those essential practices that will lay the groundwork for campaign tuning. The best practices which you can use for email marketing are:
1. Use an email marketing service
When you have an active newsletter in your company, you will be sending out newsletters more frequently than ever, that too to hundreds of recipients at once. Although advanced software can be helpful, manually carrying out the task of sending is quite a challenge. It is, therefore, better to use an email marketing service such as MailChimp to send newsletters and learn more about newsletter design.
Most email marketing services are easy to use and integrate within your email marketing campaign. For example, you can administer your email lists, schedule bulk sending of the emails, create forms, and manage responses using the software. Furthermore, advanced analytics can help you track the software’s performance and the success of your email campaign.
2. Send content that your audience will indeed read
The content you send to your audience using emails cannot just be about topics they find interesting. It also should be the content that they find relevant and relatable. People see different things relevant to them at other times, so the content you put out should target their needs at the most opportune time. Out of the hundred people on your mailing lists, there will surely be people with different behavioral patterns. So, it has become essential to deliver tailor-made content to each customer.
3. Create a personalized message
Some email service providers allow you to enable a feature where you can automatically enter the recipient’s name. There are more chances of your prospect opening and reading the email when it addresses their names instead of something like “Dear valued customer.” Create a personalized message addressing your customer directly to reduce the number of times your email lands in their trash.
4. Place emphasis on conversion
The emphasis in email marketing is to get the reader to open and read the email. Therefore, metrics such as subject lines, tuning message content, and tracking email opening rates, are all critical for the campaign to work. However, the result, i.e., conversion, is equally important. Therefore, keeping the message short and including a prominent CTA works well for email marketing.
5. Make your email virtually interesting
You should be able to capture your reader’s attention the second they open the email. Food delivery businesses like Zomato do a great job of making emails catchy. Make sure to optimize your email with background images, eye-catching graphics, and other types of rich content, to make your landing page as enjoyable as your website.
6. Be GDPR compliant
If your mailing list services extend to serve people in the EU, your email marketing should be GDPR compliant. The General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR) requires that the sites servicing the EU be sure and follow the mandated data privacy protocols. Therefore, you should have a comprehensive privacy policy and proof that the user has consented to receive emails from your company.
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6 actionable tips to optimize your email marketing campaigns
Pinterest may be aesthetically pleasing, and Twitter may be popular, but emails work the best for businesses when enhancing sales and customer experience. The fact that your emails make it to people’s inboxes is proof that they are interested in your business and its offerings. However, your email marketing strategies should be constantly optimized so that you never miss out on potential sales.
1. Evaluate your subject lines
Your subject line should grab the reader’s attention. Most email recipients open an email depending only on the subject line. Therefore, a subject line will be optimized enough if it intrigues the reader to open the email and go deep into its content.
Your subject line should be concise, relevant, and convincing enough for the reader to click through. Your reader should quickly find the answer to their queries via the content. Another tip you can use is personalizing the subject line by using the reader’s first name wherever possible. You can opt to send two versions of the same email with different subject lines and see which email performs better.
2. Target user segments to improve engagement
Segmentation is the process where you send modified emails attuned to the need of specific groups. The information you collect from your target audience is enough to let you know the content that will be the most relevant and compelling to them. For example, if you have an opt-in newsletter, you can ask your audience for more details about them.
It is also notable that the user segmented shouldn’t be done relying simply on the preferences your user tells you. You can depend on additional data like demographics and purchase history to segment your audience successfully. Additionally, sending targeted emails based on your customer’s behavior has proven effective.
3. Email send time and frequency
Sending an email daily can be overwhelming and sending an email on a Monday morning can be easily overlooked. However, how often do you send emails, and at what time of the day impacts the campaign performance? Therefore, it is necessary to find out their preferred timings and frequency. You can add a little section asking them about their preferences at the footer.
While figuring out the suitable time and frequency for sending emails, you can also rely on stats that state the obvious and make necessary changes. It is logical to assume that emails sent during the weekend won’t perform as well as those sent on weekdays, mostly because people aren’t actively available for work on Saturdays and Sundays. On the other hand, emails sent on a Tuesday or Wednesday will be noticed and worked on by the reader. So, formulate your email marketing campaign around such proven facts.
4. Use A/B testing to create subject lines and calls to action
Data concerning the number of users that checked your emails and those who made it to your landing page is vital when understanding the performance of emails. You can split your recipient into two halves. Test method A on the first group and method B on the other. Use the results to verify your audience’s preferences and behaviors and optimize your email marketing campaigns accordingly.
5. Avoid your emails from being identified as spam emails
Email services provide features to protect their users from spam. Users can employ spam filters to remove suspicious emails. If your newsletters are being wrongly indicated as spam, then there is a good chance that a significant percentage of your audience isn’t receiving your emails.
To do this, you can avoid using salesy language in your emails. Additionally, you can target your reader’s FOMO and get your email address whitelisted. Then, if the user feels that the content is relevant, they will most likely not want to miss it.
6. Optimize emails for all devices
It would be silly to assume that your customers are still accessing their emails via desktop in this highly advanced world that can be operated through a mobile. Mobile devices are and will continue to be helpful because people want to stay connected on the go. You can optimize your emails for mobile screens, not compromising on their display and quality.
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A roundup of optimization techniques for email marketing campaigns
Email marketing will always be effective as it targets people, turns them into subscribers, and successfully makes them the brand’s customers. You can use multiple other ways to optimize your email marketing campaigns. The dynamic nature of these campaigns will encourage you to create the best content for your subscribers and make your next campaign successful.
Web developer and SEO specialist with 20+ years of experience in open-source web development, digital marketing, and search engine optimization. He is also the moderator of this blog "RS Web Solutions (RSWEBSOLS)".
