It is 2021, and we have been more dependent on electronic communication than ever before. According to Forbes and various surveys and studies done around the world, the average person checks their email about 15 times per day, with at least 66% of respondents saying that checking their email is one of the first things they do every morning along with checking their voicemail. It has also been said that there are at least three times more email accounts than social media profiles, making it a lot easier to reach a person via email than even their phone numbers.

These facts all contribute to the continuous rise of email marketing. To this day, it is still one of the most effective channels in marketing even with the trends in video and social media, and the rise of artificial intelligence and chatbots. Over the years, email has also proven to have the highest ROI among all channels being utilised for marketing campaigns, making it the perfect channel to build relationships with your audience.

Email marketing is everywhere and while it can be viewed as spam, by some, to receive these emails, it still proves its effectivity by generating more responses than any channel used by businesses. It helps you connect directly with your audience to promote your brand, products, and services and increase your sales and conversion rates. When done correctly, email can completely alter the relationship between brands and their consumers. Unlike video and social media marketing, email marketing allows you to personalise recommendations and promotions that will be sent to your consumers, potentially turning any short-term interest into a long term relationship.

Now as we begin to understand why email is still the most preferred marketing platform by businesses, it is time to unravel some of the tricks to creating a successful email marketing campaign for your brand.

An email marketing campaign seems easy to build, but there is more to it than just building your prospect list and writing the emails to be sent. A successful email marketing campaign’s goal is not just to get in your prospect’s inbox, but to get your recipients to take action and engage with your brand to generate more sales and revenue. Aside from being the most effective in getting consumers to take action, email marketing is also the most cost-effective way to communicate your brand to your target market.

Check out these few tips we have gathered from all over the internet to help you build a successful email marketing campaign.

1. Build your prospect list

You can have the most detailed and intricately designed email to send out, but not get any responses, conversions, or sales if you do not have the right people on your mailing list.

The most successful email marketing campaigns begin by having a list of leads that are already interested in the brand and what products and services are being offered. The highest ROI comes when you build and maintain engagement with the consumers that receive your emails.

How do we begin creating this list? There are a few easy ways to gather this information for your email marketing campaign. You can start by having a signup form on your website. These signup forms often come as pop-ups when someone visits your website. If they like what they see and the pop-up comes in, they will enter their information to know more.

While signup forms and pop-ups are effective ways of getting information to build your prospect list, you will not be successful in getting information from every person that visits your website. Studies show that at about 80% of website visitors leave websites for good without signing up for newsletters. Social media is also one effective way to get your prospects in line, and have your email list completed.

2. Have goals to achieve

Every marketing campaign needs a set of goals to achieve in order to become successful. You cannot just send out emails without planning and committing to a goal and the expected positive responses. Running successful marketing campaigns always begin with planning to achieve certain goals.

These goals could be the same as your brand’s conversion goals, or they can be something along the lines of the following:

• • Introducing your brand – welcoming your new subscribers and prospects by telling them about your business, values, products, and services.

• • Cultivating relationships – certain tools and resources will help you determine what your consumers are interested in. You can use these to create and personalise the offers, promotions, and newsletters to be sent out. Providing your consumers with something that will not just get their attention, but keep them interested and engaged by sending them something they will value.

• • Boosting brand awareness and consumer engagement – promoting new products and services to boost consumer engagement. Showing your audience something they have not seen from your brand before to increase engagement and share rates.

Setting your goals will be your stepping stone to the success of your email marketing campaign. Aligning your emails to achieve your goals will make it easier for you to convert leads and drive revenue to the business. It is never wrong to aim high and dream big but to avoid driving your brand to potentially crash and burn, when setting goals, always make sure that the ones you set are SMART – specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely.

3. Know your market

Blindly sending out emails might set your campaign back a few steps. Knowing the market you are distributing your content to, and understanding your audience is key. If you have been in marketing for a while, you will already have an idea about where you should be sending your content to. If you are just starting out, it is perfectly fine to take a few guesses at random groups to identify where your audience might come from.

Tools like Google Analytics and Facebook Insights provide reports with detailed information on demographics, location, interests, and a lot more that can give you a boost in identifying where you are supposed to be distributing your content to generate leads and sales. This is a good stepping stone for your email marketing campaign, as it will help you better understand who your consumers are and what they are interested in.

4. Schedule your content

Successful marketing campaigns all commit religiously to publishing schedules. Similar to most channels used in marketing, consistency helps build your relationship with the consumer and makes your brand stand out among the rest. The more content you distribute, the stronger your brand’s influence will be.

Email marketing studies suggest that the content to be created and sent should be timely, relevant, and valuable to your audience. Do not overwhelm your subscribers by sending them emails too often. Instead of getting them interested, this will only drive them to click that Spam button on your email and ignore your messages for good. You would want to come up with a schedule that is frequent enough to keep your recipients interested, but not too much that they feel smothered by the content you send them.

An effective way to figure out your content scheduling is by asking your subscribers for their preferences in receiving marketing content. Gather the responses and create a schedule that will be beneficial for both you and your consumers.

5. Make your emails stand out

Now that you have pretty much the first half of your email marketing campaign set up, we can start with writing the actual content of the emails we are going to send out.

Before thinking of what the main body of the content will contain, let’s start with the most crucial part – the subject line. The subject line is considered the most important part of the email because it is responsible for the decision of your recipients to read the email or send it to spam. Just like headlines in blog posts and titles on videos, your subject line needs to get your recipient’s attention so they would open and see what you have sent them. In creating your subject line, always keep in mind that the longer it is, the fewer your recipient will understand. Make sure to come up with short subject lines and have the most important parts at the beginning.

Moving on to your email marketing body, you will want to have a hook right at the beginning to get your consumers to read on. Avoid pitching your offers too early. You would want your reader to get comfortable with your email before you offer them anything. Personalise your emails and address your subscribers by name to add a touch of intimacy. There are tools and resources that will help you customise the letters you are going to send out, even if you will be automating them. Personalising and segmenting your readers are sure to boost your click-through rates by about half more than the usual.

Just as the rest of your email, your marketing body should also get your recipient’s attention to make sure they read until the end. Some items to include are the following:

Testimonials and personal stories – showing your audience that your brand has successful interactions with consumers and that the people behind the business are human will help boost emotional connections and brand awareness.

• • Trivia – nobody can resist free good-to-know information. Send your prospects a little trivia that would get them more interested and keep them scrolling.

• • Images, videos, or GIFs – with today’s generation of adults being more visual, receiving emails with infographics, images, videos, and GIFs give your readers a dash of entertainment along with the information you are sending them.

You can also check out this article by Themeisle to get more ideas on the types of emails you should be sent to make your email marketing campaign more successful.

Lastly, make sure to have a CTA (Call to Action) in every email you send out. A CTA will seal the deal and make sure that your reader will be led to the path we all want our consumers to take – the road to a sale. Whether it is to click on the link to visit your website, follow your social media accounts, purchase a product, or take part in a promotion, your CTA makes sure that your reader engages more. CTAs usually appear more than once in marketing emails, but not too frequent that it becomes more of an advertisement than a personalized message to your prospects. There is no need to make your CTA very long and detailed, as with the right components to begin with, your subscribers will surely click on the links upon reaching the end of your email.

6. Trial and error

When you have finally figured out your email marketing campaign’s specifics, you can start sending out your emails. For beginners, do not expect 100% response rates from the first few times you will be implementing your campaign. Successful email marketing relies on trial and error when it comes to your reach and responses.

Keep on sending your content to your prospects and learn to separate your consumers by segmenting them based on the data that you will gather. This is one of the best practices by brands that have achieved success in email marketing. Gather as much data as you can by testing out your email marketing campaign, and align your next steps with the results you will receive.

Need help in making a successful email marketing campaign? Get in touch with MRS V today.