OYM’s Guide to Running a Successful Email Marketing Campaign
Despite the explosion of digital marketing channels, email continues to be a perennial favourite with people of all ages. Not only does the number of email users grow every year, it’s also more popular, and more trusted, than other social platform. With over 4.5 billion people opening their emails every day, no wonder it’s considered the most effective marketing channel. Not using it yet? Read on to find out ‘How does email marketing work?’
What Is Email Marketing?
It couldn’t be simpler. Promotional messages are sent in bulk to email recipients. Usually they’re announcing a promotion, following up a lead or providing company news. Most inboxes are full of email marketing campaigns.
Given the sheer volume that piles into our inbox, what’s the chance of success? That’s what we’ll be looking at in the rest of this guide, but first – let’s set some ground rules. Here are 5 principles that you need to have in place for your email marketing to succeed:
- Keep It Short. When emails get opened it’s usually on a phone. So, don’t make your readers scroll through endless paragraphs. Keep it short, snappy, and concise.
- Avoid Clickbait. The days of the spammy subject line are over. Either the recipient is interested or not; if you trick them into opening, they most likely unsubscribe.
- Stay Real. If a recipient opens your email, show your respect for them by being real, demonstrating you’re a person not an AI generated message, and using their name.
- Don’t Buy Lists. It simply doesn’t work. Recipients value the fact that they’re given the choice of whether or not to subscribe. If they agree, make it worth their time.
- Use CTAs. If a reader likes what they read, what should they do next? Tell them after the first paragraph, and then at the end of the message.
How Does Email Marketing Work?
Table of Contents
- What You Need to Get Started
- List Building Strategies
- Writing Effective Email Marketing Copy
- How To Segment Your Email List
- Email Marketing Analytics
1. What You Need to Get Started
In order to run a successful email marketing campaign, you will need the following:
- Email Mailing List. This is the list of people who are happy to receive your emails in their inbox. How do you get their names? By making an offer on your site that they need to sign up for, or simply by asking if they’d like to subscribe via a pop-up.
- Email Service Provider. How does email marketing work? First and foremost it’s because it’s automated. An ESP manages campaigns for you by responding to set triggers with personalised interactions, reminders, and thank you messages.
- A Clear Goal. It’s your goal that defines the kind of message you send, and which people on the list you send it to. Set your goal, choose your recipients, and create the emails that get your recipients to click through to a landing page or remain engaged.
2. List Building and Maintenance
First step to creating an email marketing strategy is knowing who you want on your list. Second, where will you find them? Suppose you’re a B2B brand; LinkedIn is a good place to look for your subscribers and a download prove a good way to get people to hand over their emails. If you’re a B2C, a coupon or discount code may be the better option, offered on Facebook or Instagram.
Once your list starts growing, prune it regularly. If an email is incorrect remove it, if someone doesn’t open, you may want to send a reminder, and then remove them if there’s no response. Keep in regular contact with the subscribers who demonstrate a willingness to engage. If your emails stop coming, they may lose interest in your brand and fail to bother when emails arrive.
Set a clear goal for each campaign and track the results. The key performance indicators you choose to track, will be dependent on the goal that you’ve set. You can choose to track: Click-through rates, sales, open email rates or unsubscribe rate.
3. Writing Effective Email Marketing Copy
If you want to achieve your goal, you need to have good copy. There’s nothing fuzzy about what makes good copy; it’s content that adheres to the following 4 rules:
- Know Who It’s For. Email marketing copy is always targeted, and the better it knows its target audience, the more successful it will be.
- Great Subject Line. This is what decides whether you email is opened. Make it clear, use your primary keyword, use active words, and personalise if you can.
- Concise Copy. If your email is opened, you have just a few seconds to communicate. Use short sentences, headers, bullets. Keep it simple and direct.
- Use Emotional Triggers. When time is short, triggers help to achieve your response. The include fear of missing out, proof that others are taking action, something for nothing.
There’s a clear sequence to follow once someone has signed up for your list. It starts with an introductory welcome email that offers you a way to create a profile and become part of the brand family.
Once you’ve welcomed someone, you need to keep engaged so that they feel your brand has ongoing value. Often, it’s newsletters that fulfil this function. The very best of these arrive regularly, demonstrate care and thoughtfulness, and offer a mix of product updates, short articles, and brand editorials.
If recipients feel engaged with a brand, they won’t mind receiving personalised, sales orientated promotions, announcements and offers. You’ll know when’s a good time to introduce these into the communication.
4. How To Segment Your Email List
If ‘segmentation’ feels odd to you, think of it as ‘targeting’ your list, or organising it for sales. Whatever terms you use, it’s about knowing who’s on your list and how you can sell to them effectively.
You might choose to split your list up in the following ways:
- Demographics. Age, gender, location, occupation, income.
- Relationship. New customer, returning customer, inactive customer.
- Interests. Purchase history, web browsing history, sales topic.
- Behaviours. Purchase frequency, response to previous campaigns, email opens.
- Stage of the sales funnel. Awareness, consideration, decision, purchase.
- Location. Geographical region, city, postcode.
Organising your list in this way allows you to target messaging more precisely, and schedule emails to recipients who haven’t opened for a while or appear to have missed an offer.
5. Email Marketing Analytics
Your email service provider should offer regular reporting on your analytics. These will focus on the email open rate, the click through rate and the unsubscribes. Each of these categories has a good deal to tell you about your marketing communications, and how you can improve them:
Need Help With Email Marketing?
Have we answered the question how does email marketing work? Email can be a powerful marketing tool for businesses looking to reach new customers and grow their business. However, creating and managing an effective email campaign can be a time-consuming and complicated process. If you’re looking for help with your email marketing, consider partnering with a reputable digital agency like Outsource Your Marketing.
Our team of experienced email specialists can help you create a customised campaign that meets your unique needs and goals. By entrusting us your email campaigns to us, you can focus on other aspects of your business while ensuring professional and effective email marketing.
