How to Create an Email Marketing Campaign: A Step-By-Step Guide

Email marketing is one of the most popular marketing channels for today’s businesses. This is due to its high return on investment as well as its wide-ranging reach. There are currently over 3.7 billion email users in the world, which is three times more than all Facebook and Twitter accounts combined. Not only this but 44% of email users have made a purchase due to a promotional email.

But not all email marketing campaigns are successful for many reasons. We have all received emails that we marked as spam and deleted just from reading the subject. There are skills and formulas to using emails effectively to attract and retain clientele. Read on for the steps you should follow to create a successful email marketing campaign.

1. Set SMART Marketing goals

The first step to creating a successful email marketing campaign is for you and your team to be clear about what you want to achieve. The end goal will affect many aspects of your campaign such as the content of your email, who you send it to, and how often you will email your targets.

Proper objectives should be aligned with the overall vision and strategy of the organization. Each company will use email campaigns differently according to the objectives.

An example of a goal for a bulk email marketing campaign is to increase the traffic to your company’s website by 20%. Other goals could be to increase sales, increase client engagement, or to share updates for upcoming releases. No matter what the goal is, make sure you are very clear on it.

2. Get Email Subscribers.

Once you have set your goals, the next step is to create an email list. The more people you have on your list the wider the reach of your campaign. The easiest method to start an email list is to create one from all the contacts you have saved.

Some companies specialize in email marketing services that could help you extract emails from your database and sync it with your email platform. To avoid annoying your contacts make sure you ask them if it’s okay for them to be added to your mailing list.

The other way to create a mailing list is to start collecting email addresses from scratch. This may be a better method than the first one because your list will be more targeted and filled with convertible leads. To get people to sign up to your list you should offer an incentive as well as make it extremely easy for them to subscribe.

One of the best incentives, also known as a lead magnet, is a useful piece of content like an eBook or template. If you already have a great blog and useful social media posts, readers will easily subscribe to your list. Another irresistible offer is to give a one-off discount for your goods or services to people that subscribe to your list.

You can also get subscribers by having a few calls to action on your website asking visitors to subscribe. Some great places to place the CTA’s are at the end of every blog post, on your website header, on your “contact us” page, and your “about us” page. You can also create a pop-up that shows up whenever uses click to exit out your site asking visitors to subscribe.

3. Choose the Type of Email Marketing Campaigns to Send

Once you have your mailing list, you need to prepare the message to be sent out. There are several types of email marketing campaigns that include newsletters, marketing offers, announcements, and event invitations. The type of campaign your use will depend on the goals you set in step 1.

Newsletters are great for maintaining a continuous relationship with your clientele and keeping them informed about your products. Marketing offers on the other hand are great for driving sales. If you have a new product or service then announcements would be the best email marketing campaigns.

You can also go for EDM Marketing. This is a strategy that uses different types of campaigns as well as other online marketing methods to reach as many clients as possible.

4. Create Your Campaign

After you choose your type of campaign you will be ready to create the actual campaign. This is the step that can make or break your entire email campaign.

People have a very short attention span so you have to make your emails as interesting as possible. Your email subject should be brief while stating exactly what your email is about. You should also include visuals in the body of the email and a highlighted call to action at the end of the email.

You should personalize them as much as possible to improve the click-through rate of your emails. You can group your subscribers into segments according to geographical location, demographics, or online behavior. Once you have your market segments you can create content and offers that would be useful to each group.

Your email campaigns are a great way to solidify your branding so make sure you maintain the same graphics and tone as your website and social media pages. Also, ensure that the emails are optimized for all devices as many people read emails on their smartphones.

The frequency of emails should be considered as you don’t want to overwhelm your users with too many emails. Do some research on your clients to establish how many emails they will be happy to receive.

5. Measure Your Results

Once you send out your first email campaign you should use either an email marketing tool or your email providers analytics tool to find out how effective your campaign has been. A good email tool will show you how many people opened the email, unsubscribed from your list, or marked your email as spam. It’ll also track how many emails bounced and were unopened.

After analyzing the performance of your campaigns, try resending the campaign to those that didn’t open your first email. Also, use EDM marketing to continue marketing your brand through other channels such as social media to continue getting leads that you can add to your list.

Make Your Next Email Marketing Campaign Successful

Email marketing is a powerful way to increase your sales but it has to be done right. Using the steps we’ve listed will help you create an effective email marketing campaign for your company. For more online marketing ideas, read the rest of our blog.