Email marketing is one of the popular digital marketing tactics used by various companies from different industries. Among these methods, email marketing has the highest return of investment of 3800% which means that for every $1 spent on an email campaign, the average return of investment is $38.
People might not be as active on other digital marketing channels, but they will be using their emails, and if the content grabs their attention, they are bound to read it and recommend it to their friends. Therefore, never underestimate the power of this method. In this article, we will tell you how to create a successful email marketing campaign.
You Need To Define Your Goals
Having a clear goal is one of the main pillars of any campaign, without a goal you won’t be able to target the customer. Therefore, you need to define the objective. Some examples of objectives for this method could be welcoming new subscribers, boosting existing subscribers by offering them something valuable, or increasing engagements. Having defined your goal, you’d be able to make the best out of your campaign. Additionally, you will need to segment your customers based on set criteria. Criteria that are important to consider are demographics, which groups people based on their gender, and age, as well as the interests and income level of your customers.
Understand Your Audience
After you have defined your goals, you need to understand who your audience is before you start collecting their emails. You must understand your customers so you can successfully grab their attention to check your product, or even make a sale. For instance, if the subject line is made especially for a specific type of customer, that will make them feel that you understand them. Besides, marketing campaigns cost money, but when you know how to target your audience that means that you are earning a profit that covers the cost.
Build an Email Database
The building block of an email marketing campaign is a database that consists of emails of people who are interested in your brand. Therefore, you need to convert your website visitors into leads. To achieve that you need to craft a compelling call to action, a call to action is a phrase to use to encourage or persuade people into taking a certain action like “buy now” or “sign up”. However, people react favorably to sentences that are creative and aren’t robotic.
For instance, use humor and sarcasm when you are crafting your CTA, like “sign me up” or “No thank you, I don’t want to lose weight.” This will remind customers that there is a human behind this and not a machine.
Use an Email Builder
After having an email database of people who are interested in or have visited your website or blog, you start sending them emails with all the important things you want to market. Therefore, you will need to use an email builder. Some tools make both designing and sending an email easier, by providing various design templates, as well as automating the sending process. For instance, email marketing services like Aweber, have features that allow you to create your campaign strategy, as well as developing automated follow-up campaigns that target specific customers. For example, if a customer just visited your website and left, you can target them by sending special offers for new users. Or if a customer has already purchased something from your website but did not use the service again, you can prepare an email to target them with special coupons.
Moreover, email builders allow you to segment your customers which is an important feature especially if you are running an eCommerce website. For instance, this feature allows you to segment your customers to VIPs or shoppers that you’d like to bring back.
Different Types of Emails
There are different types of emails you can send, and the goal of your emails shouldn’t be always to sell. If you bombard your customers with emails asking them to buy a product, they’ll eventually get bored. However, you can always be diverse in the content of your emails. For instance, 90% of people prefer to receive news about the brand through email rather than social media. Thomas from puphood.co.uk found that his audience response rate to discount offers was 40% higher through his email channel than social media, whilst his socials had a far greater subscriber amount.
Newsletters help you build relationships with your customers, and it increases the visibility of your brand and your products. Customers appreciate special offers that are curated for them, the feeling of exclusivity makes the offer more appealing. Another technique is making the offer temporary which is a persuasion technique that relies on scarcity, the appeal stems from the fact that only several people can have it.
Captivating Content
Emails with strong and attention-grabbing content tend to perform better. Your content should have outstanding text and visuals. We recommend making the email feel as if the customer is having a conversation with their friend. Another recommendation is that you have to personalize the email by making it look like it was designed especially for that specific person. Additionally, pay more attention to the design of the email, successful email design is one that layers out information in a hierarchy. By placing the most important information on the top so it’s the first thing that people see, especially if they are quickly scanning your email.
Email Frequency and Timing
Be careful of falling in the trap of sending too many emails to your customers to the point of boring them, and making them unsubscribe. You must time your emails well, by making sure it’s neither excessive nor scarce. If you conduct an analysis and then you notice a trend of people unsubscribing or not using your services anymore, that always means that you are probably sending a lot of emails that drove them away.
Email marketing is the oldest form of digital marketing and the most effective out of all of them, the majority of people depend on emails for their daily communications, rather than any form of online interactions. Therefore, you have a bigger chance of actually making a sale when using email marketing rather than other platforms. Make sure to follow the aforementioned tips, to ensure you have a successful email marketing campaign.