10 Steps to an Effective Email Marketing Campaign

Emails have given businesses the ability to market their products and services in a cost-effective and efficient manner. Email marketing campaigns are direct, personal, and interactive.

While managing an email marketing campaign is a fairly easy process, you need to have a strategy in place so that you can get the maximum benefit for your time and effort. You can acquire and retain customers by means of a well-planned email marketing campaign.

Here are 10 tips to improve your email marketing campaign:

1. Define the Objectives

Know what you expectations are from an email marketing campaign. New customers and updating existing customers are the primary objectives for most. Consider factors such as your qualitative and quantitative goals, your target audience, type of content, frequency and other such points.

2. Don’t Be Spammy

In these days of phishing attacks and incessant spam, people find it best to block messages that they feel are irrelevant. Take steps to ensure that your communication does not end up in the spam folder. Get visitors to your site to join your newsletter, send emails with well-thought subject lines, and, importantly, address your customer by name.

3. Define Your Purpose

You can sell your products, deliver qualified leads to your customers, inform about events, offer product updates, earn revenue through ads, offer domain-specific content to enhance your reputation as an expert and occupy the customer’s mind space. Have a clear message for each campaign.

4. Be Engaging

Keep your content relevant; customize it to the extent possible. Use an email marketing campaign as a part of your broader CRM strategy. Emails are a part of your multi-channel strategy. It is another means of reaching out to your customers. Use it in conjunction with other offline and online communication channels. Pick and choose customers that you wish to involve with your campaigns. Do not blitz every customer with news that is not relevant to them.

5. Know Customer Preferences

Know your customer preferences in terms of how they prefer to be contacted. If emails are fine with them and they have opted-in for emails, ensure that they have the freedom of choice to set their preferences regarding frequency and type of communication. Use your emails as a means to gather customer information. You can even make your newsletters interactive.

6. Use the Right Email Platform

There are many different email marketing software solutions available but not all of them have the same functionality. Many of the low-end products don’t offer basic features such as opt-out facilities, frequency control or delivery rates.

7. Audience Segmentation

A one-size-fits-all approach to your email content rarely works. Segmenting your list into target groups allows you to send specific messages that will appeal to that segment. Consider past campaign results, demographic data, and purchase patterns for segmentation ideas.

8. Analyze Regularly

Make sure that you analyze the results of each campaign. Measurements can include how much traffic came to your site via emails, cost analysis, and the standard open rates, responses and opt-outs.

9. Conduct the Campaign Responsibly

Reach out to our customer base and offer them information on issues relevant to them. These could include information on email privacy, online security, and your efforts to ensure that your customers are not spammed. You can also offer freebies such as downloadable e-books and whitepapers on subjects related to your business.

10. Plan Overall Customer Experience

Your emails are a great opportunity for you to strike the right chords with your existing and prospective customers from the very beginning. Research shows that consumers develop lasting impressions from their initial interactions with a company. Also have a plan on what follow-up emails should be sent based on responses.

Executed correctly, an email marketing campaign is a great way to create outreach, even if you already have a presence in your domain.