How to Run Your First Successful Email Marketing Campaign
Catherine Ogenga
Quality Management & Sustainability Consultant | Helping 10+ Food & Beverage Businesses Maintain Quality, Compliance & Sustainability while Enhancing Profitability.
Email marketing is the most intimate and cost-effective way to reach your clients and grow your business.
According to?Constant Contact, the average Return on Investment (ROI) for email marketing is?$40 for every $1?spent.?
Both big businesses and small startups currently leverage the power of email marketing campaigns to:
Running an email campaign can be fruitless if you don't optimize the whole process for your benefit.
If you’re an eCommerce business owner who’s worried about how to run a successful email marketing campaign, I got you.
In this article, you'll get to understand the concept of an email marketing campaign and why it matters to your business.
You'll also learn 10 essential strategies that will help you run a successful email campaign to increase your conversion rates.
What’s an Email Marketing Campaign, and Why Does it Matter?
An email marketing campaign is a series of promotional or educational emails you send to your email list to achieve a specific goal.?
The goal of your email campaign could be to get your prospects to:
However, the ultimate reason why an email marketing campaign matters to your business is to increase your?sales and revenues.?
It’s the most personalized and effective way you can use to walk your prospects through the?buyer’s journey?and convert them into loyal, recurrent customers.
So, let’s discuss a few basics you need to understand before you start running your first successful email marketing campaign:?
1 – Know Your Target Audience and What They Want
Knowing your target audience is the first key to a successful email campaign.
When you know your audience and their needs, you’ll craft email content that resonates with them, answers their questions, and solves their problems.?
The most effective way to know your target audience is to use email segmentation and tools to segment the audience.
Email marketing software such as Mailchimp, Aweber, and HubSpot often have additional email segmentation resources to help you group your audience based on different characteristics.
You may decide to segment your audience based on:
Audience segmentation helps you understand specific buyer needs and send out relevant, specific, and helpful content. This, in turn, increases your chances of converting prospects into buyers.
2 – Set Your SMART Email Campaign Goals
After segmenting and understanding your target audience, the next is to set the SMART goals you want to achieve with your email campaign.
What do you want to achieve at the end of this email campaign period?
Are you running the campaign to:-?
An email campaign without defined goals is as good as none.
Before you start sending out emails, know your goals, write them down, and ensure they’re SMART:
Your SMART goals will act as the guide to help you send out high-value, targeted messages with every email sent. They’ll also help you gauge whether your efforts are yielding results.
3 – Draw Out an Emailing and Follow-up Plan
Once you set and write down your SMART goals, it’s time to draw out an elaborate emailing and follow-up plan.
Use an Excel sheet to draw out a plan that includes the following details:
Your emailing plan should also outline how long the campaign will take and how to track the performance of every email or milestone.
Don’t forget to specify the follow-up period if you’ll need to do a follow-up for any previous CTA.
The more strategic and intentional you are about every email sent out, the more you’ll achieve with your email marketing campaign.
4 – Choose an Automated Email Software
Next is choosing suitable software for your automated email marketing.
If you already have an email list, you’ve probably selected emailing software for your business. If not yet, then you have to find one right now.?
Reports show that automated email campaigns have higher open rates and generate more ROI than standard emailing.
You also want something that saves you time and energy, right? Some good email automation tools to consider include:
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Expert Tip:?For the best results, choose an automated email software that’s?user-friendly, within your?budget, and has all the?features?you need.?
5 – Write Short and Compelling Subject Lines
Ok, it’s now time to write the actual email copy to send out to your email list, and it starts with the subject line.
Your email subject line is what determines whether your recipients will open your emails or just read the subject line and go like, ‘No, pass!’ (Ouch!)
It dictates whether your emails will be part of the 40% of emails opened every day. Email recipients only open emails whose subject lines are relevant and compelling enough.
To gain a high open rate and more success with your email campaign, you’ll need to learn how to write?short,?interesting, and compelling?subject lines for your emails.
Alternatively, just?let me know?if you need help crafting emails with compelling subject lines that will make your recipients click and read all the way to the CTA.
Watch the video below by HubSpot to learn 10 amazing email marketing statistics that will help improve your email click-through and conversion rates.
6 – Write Valuable, Engaging, and Interesting Emails
Now that you’ve crafted your short and compelling subject line to get your recipients clicking in one second, it’s time to create the email body.
Are you just going to over-promise in the headline and under-deliver in the email body?
Please don't do that.
In the email body, provide maximum value by sharing useful and engaging content that’s relevant to every stage of?the buyer’s journey.?
Make every paragraph interesting for your audience to read. With every paragraph, make them want to read the next until they’ve read to the end, where they will take the necessary action.
However, if you don’t have the skills to craft compelling email copy that will drive action, don’t fret. Simply?hire a skilled email copywriter?to do the heavy lifting for you.
7 –?Send Personalized, Relevant Content
Remember to send out relevant, personalized emails always. Every customer wants to feel special and recognized.?
Email recipients are more likely to open and read emails that sound personal and specific to them than those sent out to a group of people.
They want to feel like you are talking directly to them individually and not in a hall of thousands. And that is how personalized emails make them feel.
When sending emails, use email personalization tools such as?OptinMonster?and?Bronto?to make your emails sound more personal.
Always address prospects by name and avoid anonymous titles like sir, madam, or customer by all means.
Watch the video below by HubSpot to learn 10 amazing email marketing statistics that will help improve your email click-through and conversion rates.
8 – Include Visuals
The eighth most important tip for successful email marketing is to send emails with visually appealing content, such as videos and images.
Visual content makes your emails easier to understand and more engaging. They also lower the bounce rate and lead to higher conversion.
Your readers may get bored and stop reading halfway if you share only large chunks of texts with no visual appeal.
Ensure every mail you send out has at least one visual content in the body.
9 – Have a Clear Call-to-Action
Remember never to send any marketing email without a Call-To-Action (CTA).
A CTA is what you want your email recipient to do after reading the email.?Do you want them to purchase, subscribe, sign up, or register??
Every email sent out should have a clear call to action that is easy to execute, often at the end of the mail.
Depending on your overall goal, you may have one CTA throughout the campaign, or different CTAs for every email sent out. Different CTAs can coordinate to help your audience move from one stage of the buyer’s journey to another.
However, it is more effective to have only one CTA per mail and make sure that the CTA button (or link) is very easy to find.
10 – Track Your Progress
Last, but not least, remember to track the progress of your email campaigns. This will help you know whether you are achieving your goals or not.
As you continue with your campaign, track the progress by monitoring metrics such as:
Monitoring progress will enable you to know what's working and what's not. You will also get to know which type of email content performs better than others for future improvement.
Boost Your Revenue with an Effective Email Campaign
A successful email marketing campaign will benefit your business by bringing in new customers and serve as a great retention tool for existing customers. It is also the best medium to build trust between you and your customers.
As evident in?the buyers’ journey, customers are more likely to purchase from a business that has engaged them, built a relationship with them, and walked them through the journey to purchase.
And what better way can you achieve this than through an email campaign?
Utilize these strategies to make your first email campaign highly successful and achieve your most valuable business goals.