How do you establish a new email marketing campaign as customer behaviour continues to work? As we continue navigating the Covid-19 pandemic, business owners can expect further engagement with customers via digital platforms. More and more companies are revamping their email marketing strategies or creating new ones from scratch. Marketing professionals will be held to a new set of standards in reaching and engaging their audience via email.
Standing out via email is a unique challenge. You need a solid blueprint to create campaigns that are unique to the challenges we’re currently facing and mindful of the obstacles to come. Here are 10 ways to establish a new email marketing campaign:
Clean your mailing list
An audit is essentially a clean up of all the contacts on your email list. Refreshing your list will help you spot any issues with existing email addresses and contact information. It’s also a good time to ensure you’re complying with subscriber preferences. When asked, limit the number of messages sent, only send requested content, or unsubscribe them completely.
Tidying up your mailing list helps lower your bounce rate, increase your open rate, and establish a positive delivery rate. Inactive subscribers are dissuaded from tagging your emails as spam which could adversely affect future campaigns.
To clean your mailing list, remove bounced email addresses and eliminate any contacts that haven’t opened your messages for a significant amount of time. Keep track of contacts who have unsubscribed from your list or opted out of certain marketing materials. Purge outdated, inactive, or invalid email addresses. Update contact information such as job title, name, and employer should it become available or change.
Write emails with context
A general goal for your emails is that they successfully convey what you’re trying to get across. They also aim to get readers to take a certain action based on the information they receive. The best way to do this is to write emails with context. This means writing with the recent experience, unique circumstances, and individual patterns and perspectives of your readers at the core of your content.
Writing with context is important because leveraging as much detail as possible about your reader makes the message clearer and easier for them to grasp. They’ll be more inclined to take the action you want because of how closely it resonates with their behaviors and goals.
Ask questions about your audience that give you detail on who they are. For example:
- What industry do they work in?
- What content do they enjoy?
- What are their life goals?
- What challenges are they facing right now?
- What world events are contributing to their current circumstance?
The more you know about the contacts on your list, the easier it is to create emails that prompt them to engage with your brand.
Educate yourself on email marketing trends, tools, and strategies
It’s in your best interest to continuously educate yourself on current email marketing trends, tools to help you run a successful campaign, and new strategies to implement. This will give you an advantage over your competitors and ensure you’re able to provide the best brand experience via email. You can use this knowledge to better connect with your audience, streamline the creation process, and ensure a healthy email infrastructure.
Educate yourself by using the internet to find appropriate resources and reputable experts to follow. Go a step further and bring on a professional to train your team in important tools and strategies. Also consider enrolling in email marketing courses that include a lesson on how to research trends effectively.
Automate your campaign whenever possible
When you automate your campaign, emails go out based on user behavior. That doesn’t mean you should set and forget these campaigns — automation makes a marketing professional’s job easier. It doesn’t replace it.
Automating is important because it saves you time, resources, and minimizes missed opportunities to nurture a lead or serve a customer. Using automation tools:
- Gives you valuable insight into who your subscribers are
- Betters your engagement with your subscribers
- Simplifies the entire email marketing process
You may not be able to automate every part of your campaign, nor should you want to. Automating whenever possible means choosing the components of your campaign that can be put on autopilot without compromising effectiveness.
Create a “socially-distanced” email campaign
Learning how how to establish a new email marketing campaign for your business puts you ahead of the competition. A “socially-distanced” campaign is another idea that encourages social distancing. It applauds our continued efforts to remain healthy and safe as we battle Covid-19. The emotional and economic deficit of the pandemic has shifted the way we conduct our everyday lives. Email marketing campaigns should cater to this “new normal.”
Creating a “socially-distanced” email campaign resonates well with subscribers. It shows your brand has empathy for the new struggles they face daily. The reality is that this is now an ongoing battle, not a short-lived illness. Your audience will appreciate the social responsibility and regard for their overall health.
Highlight your social distancing efforts throughout your campaign. Give your subscribers a behind-the-scenes look at how your brand is complying with the recommended health and safety guidelines in your state. Encourage them to connect with your brand via digital platforms, virtual events, and live streaming.
Set specific, attainable goals
Email marketing campaigns are incomplete without measurable, realistic, useful goals. To establish a new email marketing campaign, set specific goals that are indicative of the entire brand vision. These should include step-by-step instructions on how to complete them. Avoid goals like, “I want more clients.” They are too vague.
One example of a specific goal you can set is to attain a higher than .12% response rate. Determine your KPIs and set up your analytics to thoroughly watch how they perform in your email campaigns. Adjust your approach based on its effectiveness in each campaign.
Lean on analytics
You have to track subscriber interactions well to run an effective campaign. You aren’t taking full advantage of email marketing if you’re not evaluating engagement. Establishing a successful campaign requires gathering and analyzing data. Use this information to adjust your marketing techniques to better connect with your subscribers.
Choose an email analytics tool that’s easy to navigate. This tool should effectively measure performance indicators closely associated with your goals. It should also provide suggestions on how to improve the way your subscribers engage with your emails.
Include visuals and graphics
We’re long past the days of enjoying an email that reads like a novel. How you present the information in your emails is as important as the written message. The popularity of visual content is increasing. High-quality visuals and eye-catching graphics incite engagement. Successful emails are a combination of:
- Good headlines
- Short paragraphs
- Bulleted lists
- Visuals
- One main CTA
Using visuals caters to the short attention span of your subscribers.
Use pictures, videos, infographics, flyers, and any other appropriate visual media. Experiment with bold visuals as well as subtle approaches. Use a cohesive email template that’s easy to read and even easier on the eye.
Segment your email list & personalize content
To successfully establish a new marketing campaign, segment your list. It enables you to personalize the content that goes out to each contact in these smaller groups. It allows you to send more relevant content to your subscribers. Divide your list into categories like career interests, purchase history, location, job title, or known associations. Incorporate this in-depth knowledge about your subscriber into the content you send.
Make your emails stand out in your subscriber’s inbox by customizing them to the recipient. Personalize their content by using their name, giving them information based on their last interaction with your brand, and localizing what you include in your emails.
Always be testing
Not only do you want to test different types of content, you also want to test how the email arrives in a subscriber’s inbox. Your email marketing campaign will change consistently throughout its lifecycle. That means you need to regularly test every campaign and tweak strategies and techniques.
Systematic testing keeps you current on trends and a step ahead of your competitors. A/B the st subject lines, section titles, CTAs, segments of content, visuals, and layouts. As you gain specific insights from your tests, be sure to pivot when something’s not working. It’s also a good idea to send yourself a test email before sending your email out to anyone. Ensure it looks the way you want it to and it’s arriving in your inbox and not your spam folder.
Conclusion
Establishing an effective email marketing campaign depends on:
- The health of your email list
- How well you write emails with context
- Your ability to thoroughly research email marketing trends, tools, and strategies
- Automating your campaigns whenever possible
- Being empathetic to our “new normal”
- Setting attainable, specific, realistic goals for each campaign
- Diving into email analytics and leveraging the information you receive
- Setting yourself apart with visual emails
- Segmenting your email lists and personalizing content accordingly
- Constantly testing components of your emails and overall strategy
Your campaign will only be as effective as the foundation it starts on. You have to analyze the data you get from your campaigns and try a new approach when things aren’t working. Your end goal is to show how well you know your audience. By doing this, you can successfully nurture your subscribers, leads, and customers.
