In 2021 e-mail marketing remains a crucial aspect of the marketing strategy of every business. Email remains one of the most efficient ways to reach your potential customers. Don’t take our word for it – let’s look at some numbers:
- 59% of marketers share the insight that when it comes to revenue generation in B2B campaigns, the email is the channel they rely on the most;
- B2C – people who purchase email spend almost 2,5 times more money compared to online shoppers that don’t receive email promotional offers.
- B2C – the main driver for customers, according to the retail sector is e-mail campaigns. Only 20% of retailers don’t recognize this as a useful channel – the other 80% do.
Most people don’t realize that, but email marketing is a form of art for marketers. Sometimes there is a very thin line between marketing and spam when it comes to emails. In the great and engaging email campaigns, the small details make the difference between “good” and “genius”.
In this article, we are going to explore how to create an engaging email marketing campaign for your brand. There are some basic rules you must follow if you want to do great with email outreach to your customers.
Contents
The perfect email campaign – how to do it?
We are in front of the canvas for your email campaign. Let us explore together what steps you have to go through to have a masterpiece at the end of the process.
Choosing the right platform for your campaign
The first step in creating the actual campaign is choosing what platform to build it on. Countless tools can help you with this task. You have probably heard about the most famous automated platforms for email marketing like:
- Mailchimp;
- Zoho campaigns;
- Campaigner.
They include a lot of useful things that can help you set up your campaign and even campaign automation. There you can find customizable templates that will help you in creating the email you address to your clients and many useful tools to help you track the open rate of the e-mail, calculate the ROI, UTM tracking, and more. One of the great things about this type of platform is that you can automate a lot of processes you will have to otherwise do yourself, therefore will help you save time on which you can focus on your business.
When it comes to choosing the right platform for email marketing, keep in mind that every single one has its pros and cons, including the pricing model. You can do some research and find out which will be the perfect choice for your goals and budget.
Creating that perfect e-mail
The next step in the process is creating the email itself. Several aspects have a key role in capturing and retaining the attention of the people who will open it:
- The subject of the email;
- The visuals in the email;
- The content itself;
- Call to action.
It may look simple but it is not. As it is said – the simple things are the ones that are hard to master. First of all, you need an amazing subject that will guarantee you that anyone receiving the email will open it. It has to be short, to the point, and informative at the same time. If we can paraphrase the old saying – a good title is like a woman’s skirt – long enough to cover what is important, but short enough to spark curiosity. The same principle applies – you are not going to tell them everything in the title but it must be engaging and click-worthy. Tease them the added value and make them open that email. Of course, there are many different angles to creating the right subject – it really depends on what is the actual email – for example, it could be a cold contact email or a promotional email, or even a newsletter – those are three very different types of emails, therefore the approach will be totally different when creating the right subject.
After this is done we are off to the header. There should be a perfectly placed and selected visual. One of the essential things you can do is check the resolution of the image needed and make it in that size. The whole email should look good and be a joy for the eye, but the header image is the first thing that people will see after they click “Open”. Make sure it is worth it and it makes you read more.
The content of the email itself is very important too. Okay, you got the people wanting to learn more. What are you going to show them? This depends very much on the type of email you are sending out. In most cases, it can be a sales email or promotion offer. Outline the important information with bold, bullets, prices, or important conditions and quotes (if you are including references from happy customers, if you’re not – well you should definitely consider it). The reader will first “scan” the email for these important parts and if he is interested he will continue reading after that.
Call to action (CTA) is the final and most important part. The cherry on top, in this case, the cherry can be in the middle or in the bottom. You have already got the attention of the user, you have explained your offer to them and now it is conversion time. You do that by adding a proper CTA (Call-to-action) button. It can be “Get that coupon” or “Check the new collection we have”. You want to point the engaged customers into action. After all, that was the whole purpose of the email in the first place.
Evaluate the performance and results
The final step of the process is to evaluate what you have achieved with the campaign. At the end of the day, it is all about results. The first thing you can do is check how many people have opened the emails you send to them.
From there on, you can compare the achievements to the goals you have set before you started. It is very important to have clear and measurable KPIs set in the beginning. Otherwise, you are not going to know what to measure. If your main purpose was to increase sales, check how many people that opened the email purchased on the website. If you had another intention in mind – check if they are achieved. If you’re new at email marketing and are just starting, don’t worry, just be sure to always measure and set your own benchmark for your audience – businesses are very different and so are people so you should have your own benchmark judging from experience.
Measuring the success of the campaign is essential for evaluating if the whole process was good or not. You might be convinced that you have created an outstanding campaign, but the numbers are the ones that speak the truth. Trust them and learn your lessons if you have to. And remember to celebrate the victories as well!
Final words
Those are the 3 steps in creating the perfect email marketing campaign. As we said – they may look simple, but they sure are not. The good news is that out there are many perfect examples of how to create a campaign for a specific type of business. You can also generate a lot of ideas from successful campaigns that big brands and agencies have carried out. Here is a very nice website that is amazing for email marketing ideas as it collects the best of the best – be sure to subscribe to their newsletter. Just remember that you are unique and that no one knows your customers better than you. This is the secret ingredient to success.
