11 steps to run an effective email marketing campaign
- Digital Marketing Email Marketing
Noor Basha- 13 minutes read
According to Statista, over 93% of adults over 25 years old still use email as a main communication tool in the United States. With such a significant number, it’s no wonder that email marketing is still an effective means of engaging prospects and customers and generating better leads. However, there is a science behind running email marketing campaigns effectively.
A carefully thought-out campaign will have everything from setting goals to finding recipients determined in advance to increase open rates, ensure deliverability and avoid the dreaded spam folder, resulting in losing all credibility in the eyes of automated spam filters everywhere.
So, without further ado, here are the 12 steps to help you run an effective email marketing campaign:
Table of Contents
1. Build Accurate Targeted Email List
Arguably, the most important step in your effective email marketing strategy and implementation is to make sure you send it to the right people. It seems like you can dust off the old contact list and hit send, right? Or perhaps it’d be easier to purchase a list and call it a day? In fact, these are not effective ways to send your perfectly planned out marketing emails.
This is why email finding software is the key to your email marketing. An email finder is an automated tool to help you find key decision-makers ‘ email addresses at any organization you plan to target.
Use a powerful email finder and validation tool that will help you not only find the appropriate email addresses based on the organization’s domain name that you are targeting, but you’ll also be able to validate the email address that you have in your existing contact list so that you’ll be up-to-date on all of your recipients’ email addresses, keeping you out of spam folders and getting your email to their targets with no problem.
Plus, with the ability to upload entire lists of email addresses to validate in bulk, you’ll have your list cleansed and ready in no time.
2. Set Goals for effective Email Marketing
Before sending out your first email, make sure you have goals in mind for what you want to achieve from your campaign. Do you want recipients to visit your website? Or do you want them to purchase straight from the email or maybe follow you on social media? Perhaps you want to make sure your existing customers stay engaged or re-engage old customers?
Setting your goals for your campaign will get you started on the right foot since your content, design, call-to-action, and more can all follow suit, ensuring your goals are going to be met and your message won’t stray.
3. Test Email Effectiveness
Testing your emails can help ensure their effectiveness a great deal. Create a couple of versions of the same email and conduct some A/B testing to see which ones are more likely to be opened and draw viewers to the CTA.
You’ll be able to build from each of your tested emails and create better effective email marketing campaigns in the future.
4. Understand Your Audience
Understand who your target audience is before going further with your email campaign. This will help with your content and design of your campaign and help you target them better. Using your own analytics or those included with your social media or offered by Google Analytics will help you understand your audience.
Information you should gather to understand your audience includes demographics, where they are located, particular interests, and anything else that might help you speak to your specific audiences.
5. Get Permission
It’s not efficient and can be detrimental to your email marketing campaigns to send them to people that did not sign up for them willingly. You’ll want to very clearly let them know you would like their email address so that you can send them useful information and that they can opt-out at any time.
Offer them a benefit in exchange for their email address, such as free eBooks or downloads, product updates, informative email series, etc.
6. Write Clear and Concise CTA
Make your call to action (CTA) obvious, but brief, and include it more than once in your email, if possible. A visually appealing and noticeable button that states, “Sign up now!” or “Find out more!” are good examples. Of course, you can be more creative with your CTA, but you’ll want to make sure it uses action words, so they know exactly what you want them to do.
Having a CTA that puts the user in control helps drive conversions. Instead of having a button with “Would you like to sign up?”, change it to “Send me the info!”, putting them in charge of the action.
7. Include Eye-catching Imagery
Visually pleasing and/or eye-catching imagery can get people to notice your emails. If it’s appropriate, including a GIF will grab attention easily. Make the imagery relevant to the content and compliment it rather than just making it random, but catchy.
Imagery can create an emotional response in users that text rarely does. Plus, you can have ways of subtly pointing to your call to action through imagery with arrows, or people looking or pointing in a certain direction. There is a lot you can do with imagery if you do it right.
8. Create Awesome Content
Of course, what is the point of an effective CTA and perfect imagery without awesome content, right? Create content that your recipients will actually want to read. Make it interesting, informative, brief, and worthy of their time.
Use the email content to supplement your call to action by giving further information. Perhaps the CTA itself will talk them into clicking, but if it doesn’t, decide what you’d want to say to them to talk them into it. That should be your awesome content.
9. Build Sense of Urgency
Within your email marketing, create a sense of urgency that will get them to want to sign up or purchase as soon as possible. According to Campaign Monitor, it is actually rooted in psychology that people are more likely to decide immediately if faced with a sense of urgency.
In order to create that urgency, set deadlines to sign up or let them know there is a limited supply of products or spaces available, for example.
10. Start with Clever Subject Line
Some of the advice for the subject line is similar to the call to action. Keep it clear and concise, and create a sense of urgency. However, you can also make your subject lines personal by adding their name if you have the right tools.
Another option is to make your subject lines intriguing with trendy or timely messaging or “how to…” subject lines. Of course, incentives such as free trials or discounts in your subject line will also help convert.
11. Time Emails Properly
You’ll want to make sure you know when you want your prospects to receive your email and any subsequent emails if you intend to create an entire drip campaign. Sending them too often can lead to a lower open rate, as can sending at the wrong time of day or week.
Do some research to find out what others have done or ask your customers what they would prefer, so you know your timing will be sufficient.
Implementing an email marketing campaign can prove to be very fruitful for your organization, increasing conversions, and revenue. Ensuring you have created effective emails with calls to action that will provide results is just the beginning. Making sure your message gets to the right people is a whole other issue. Using a cost-effective and powerful email finder tool will take care of that step for you.