Just starting out and looking to create your first real email marketing campaign?
With so many choices available, so much advice out there, and so many things that could go wrong, how do you take the steps to ensure you kick some goals?
It can be confusing. But by getting to grips with a few email marketing campaign fundamentals, you’ll have a far better chance of success.
Here are the seven basic steps you should take to get your first email campaign on the right track…
Step 1: Clearly identify your target audience
All good marketing starts with understanding the preferences, needs, and desires of your target audience.
The more specific you can be with this, the more targeted your email marketing campaigns can be and the better they will talk the “language” of the recipients. This will be better for conversion rates.
Create a profile of the ideal “customer” for your particular service, product, download or other offer and build your campaign around this persona. That will help keep your emails relevant and targeted.
With people receiving so much email these days, it’s easy for yours to end up in the junk folder or worse – creating bad sentiment. By homing in on your target audience, you’ll avoid this.
Step 2: Get clear on the purpose of your email marketing campaign
Email marketing will fit somewhere into your overall sales funnel.
Which stage in this funnel is your campaign designed for? Perhaps your prospects have just opted in to download a free report or eBook from your website; or you’re reconnecting with a dormant section of your customer database; or perhaps you’re reaching out to existing clients to let them know about a promotion.
You probably have a large database of prospects and existing customers. Make sure it’s suitably segmented and “clean” before you start sending email marketing campaigns out to them.
And, if you haven’t yet developed a lead magnet for an opt-in to regularly attract new prospects, sort that out first.
Make sure you’re 100 percent clear on the purpose of your campaign and where it fits in to the overall marketing strategy before you even think about kicking it off.
Step 3: Find the right platform
It’s no good if you work hard on your campaign only for it to fail through technological flaws in the system you’re using.
Find a partner platform that’s established and proven to have excellent email delivery rates; it should also offer the tools to help you test, monitor, track, and tweak your campaigns from a user-friendly interface.
Step 4: Hire a great copywriter
There’s a lot to get right with your first email marketing campaign but you’re not going to get far without high-quality copywriting.
Once you’re clear on the purpose of the campaign and found a reliable platform, there are some basic copywriting requirements for your emails: they need to be received, opened, read, and acted upon.
That requires a strong subject line, personalised copy to individuals within your target audience, clear and persuasive writing skills, a call to action, and good formatting.
Not good at writing yourself or don’t have these skills in-house? Hire a freelance copywriter or an agency professional to look after this. It’s worth spending some money on – the returns will be worth it.
Step 5: Test your emails
This short step is not to be missed as it’s where you can catch annoying little errors that will drag your email campaign down.
Not every recipient will “consume” your emails in the same way. Check how your emails appear on different devices, in different email clients, and on different devices; check that the link(s) point(s) to the right places; and do a final check that you have scheduled your campaign emails to go out on the right days and at the right times.
A test run like this can pick up on formatting errors, typos, timing errors, or other mistakes that look unflattering and unprofessional.
Step 6: Get going with your campaign
It doesn’t need to be perfect; but it does need to be done!
Here’s where, if you’ve done your homework and found the right people, you’re ready to hit SEND. Note that this is step six! There’s a lot to do BEFORE you get going.
As well as getting clear on the target audience and the purpose of your campaign, you need a clear understanding of the fundamentals of your strategy: how many emails are going out, to whom, when exactly, and what’s the follow-up procedure?
If all this has been mapped out, don’t delay…hit SEND. There’s nothing to fear but inactivity!
Step 7: Monitor and tweak
Most top email marketing platforms should provide you with an array of tools to help you track how your audience is interacting with your emails.
From open rates to click-through rates, this needs to be closely monitored and tweaked until you achieve a conversion rate that you’re happy with.
Give your email marketing campaign the best chance of success
Even though social media and instant messaging technologies seem to have taken a hold over our lives, email marketing has proven time and time again to have one of the best returns on investment across all marketing channels.
It may seem surprising that you can still stand out with email marketing, despite people’s inboxes being almost permanently full. But well-written, highly targeted emails sent at the right time to the right people with the right offer will get you an unbeatable conversion rate.
It really is a winning formula.
And we can help you with a major part of that formula. With an industry-leading delivery rate of 99.8%, we’re considered the most reliable around; and you get all the monitoring tools to check engagement levels and adjust campaigns as necessary.
To find out more about how your business can get started with a highly effective email marketing campaign, contact our team on 02 9929 7001.
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Swift Digital is Australia’s leader in marketing automation software and event management working with organisations like the NSW Government, ATO, and companies like Westpac Bank and Qantas.
Find out why we’re the Australian government department’s number one choice for their professional communications and events.
To find out how your business can get the best out of Swift Digital’s platform, contact our team today.
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