You have a really successful e-commerce store: amazing! Or, you are running a service based business and have a large email list that you could use to increase customers, great! But do you have the perfect email marketing campaign?
Now imagine using the data and resources you already have to boost your revenue and improve the lifetime value of customers?
It is possible and it’s easily done by using email marketing! We won’t be going into depth on how to set these email marketing strategies up. However, we are going to give you a guide of how you can plan for the perfect email marketing campaign using tools such as Mailchimp or Hunter.
Let’s get into it and figure out how to create email marketing campaigns that bring in revenue regularly and effectively!
What is an email marketing campaign?
Email marketing campaigns are a method of utilising mass email sending services such as MailChimp or Hunter, in order to directly sell to your warm audience. This can be done by sending offers, new releases or articles directly to your email list in order to encourage them to come back, browse your page more and either purchase something or use a service. It is also a fantastic way to boost SEO statistics through large traffic influx from people visiting your page from your email campaigns.
Now don’t mistake this with spam, we are not encouraging improper use of this strategy as many companies sadly do. We highly discourage the purchase of email lists or anything alike.
Ensure all the emails on your email lists are legitimate and have given permission for their email to be collected. Failure to do so can cause legal trouble under privacy laws all around the world.
Anyway, let’s get into it further and answer the question: how do you create the perfect email marketing campaign!
Why should I use email marketing?
Email marketing is consistently bringing fantastic conversion rates and return of investments due to the low cost of this marketing strategy. It is a great way to easily get a returning customer list from people who have already converted with your business.
For example; person A buys a product from your website. A week later, you send them a 10% off coupon to buy a different product from your website. They have received a product and are happy with it, so they trust you, and are interested in the new product. After seeing your email, they immediately go to your website to purchase the product with the voucher.
Even though this is a simplification, this is a very common sales process through email marketing. It is one of the best ways to organically reconnect with your audience and people who already have trust in your business.
Now, how on earth can you maximise your email marketing results? How do you get insane returns using this method?
Keep it simple
We see over and over again marketing departments creating 1500 word emails, full of content and offers for this and that.
This simply doesn’t work. You need to keep it simple and straight to the point. People don’t appreciate having their time wasted and will not read a whole 500 word introduction just to get a 10% off a new release.
Instead, keep it simple and straight forward. Start your email with a personalised message to speak directly to your audience. The perfect email marketing campaigns use strong hooks and headlines in order to spark interest and curiosity, and follow it with a short and sharp message that leads to your call to action. No fluff, just get straight to the point!
Provide value
No one likes reading pointless articles or receiving messages that just mean nothing to them.
That’s why value in your emails is so important. Whether you are offering discounts or you are introducing an article that might be of interest to the people receiving them; you need to ensure you are giving your email list something to get out of your campaign.
A common technique we see in the digital marketing space is sending free content such as articles or PDF documents in order to provide knowledge to the consumers. This is a win-win situation; your audience gets value out of your email and you get a confirmation if they are interested in a specific topic based on if they open that document or not!
Don’t make selling the main point
This goes hand to hand with the above, but it also applies for marketing in general.
People don’t like the feeling that they are being sold to. Instead, they want to feel like you are trying to solve their issue, cure their curiosity or further their knowledge.
If you start your email with “Buy Now! New product in store!”, the chances of anyone opening the email are very, very slim. Instead, start by introducing the issue your product aims to sell. That way, you are feeding into the reader’s curiosity and they want to find out more. Only then would they be willing to find out what solution you offer and decide whether they are going to take action on your email!
Don’t spam
As mentioned at the beginning: don’t spam. Do not send emails daily, and avoid low quality, spammy feeling content.
We recommend sending no more than 4 emails a week unless there is a specific reason to do so. People will quickly pick up and get annoyed with the frequency of your emails and very quickly get worn out with it and your emails will simply end up in spam. There is no perfect email marketing campaign that spam emails every single day.
Think of your emails as a text message and your audience respond by taking the action in your email (visiting website, reading article, etc.). If you feel like you are constantly texting them non stop and feel like you are irritating them, chances are you are.
Not only that, but sending less emails can carry more value. It allows you to compress more into the email, and allowing you to create a much more appealing email.
Avoid clickbait
Attactive headlines are important, but there is a fine line between good and bad click bait.
If you promise something in the subject of your email, for example, “free product!”, you need to deliver on this promise. Failure to do so will leave your emails in the spam and your audience incredibly sour about your company.
Don’t make it too personal
We see marketers creating campaigns and almost attempting to make it sound like they have handwritten an email straight to you. This isn’t fooling anyone and is in fact a massive turn off for most consumers.
They might click a headline that says “*name*, we have some news…” because they are worried what it might be. But 80% of the time, as soon as they realise this is not a personal email but rather email marketing, they will likely flag spam, delete email and unsubscribe from your list.
You want to ideally strike a balance between generic and personal. Yes, we do think you should personally call out the recipient by name or even interest. But you shouldn’t make them feel like you are trying to speak to them as a friend, or colleague or anything like that. Keep it personal, but professional.
Conclusion
Email marketing campaigns can be extremely powerful and easy to implement but results can vary if they are not done right. Keep your emails valuable, and give your audience a reason to open and take action and you are good to go! While it isn’t easy to create the perfect email marketing campaign, we hope this guide helped you plan our your tactics into this strategy.
However, email marketing shouldn’t be your only avenue of digital marketing. We also created an article on 7 social media strategies for small businesses that we think work perfectly alongside email campaigns!
What do you think? Have you tried email marketing? Did we miss any important points to remember? Let us know in the comments below!