Email marketing is kind of a dream, as it allows you to engage with and convert your audience beautifully. However, crafting email campaigns that truly convert requires more than just hitting “send” on a generic email blast. However, whether you are a seasoned marketer or just beginning, no matter how much you know about email campaigns, this email campaigns guide for beginners will help you create an awesome email to inspire action, get more engagement and help you to drive more sales.
Understanding Email Campaigns
An email campaign is a string of emails sent to a set of recipients with the target of attaining an evident goal be it to boost site traffic, market a new item, or support relationships with consumers. If the email campaigns are done right, one of the highest returns on investment (ROI), next only to a permanent radio commercial itself.
The most important thing to remember is to provide the right audience the right content at the right time while keeping it relevant. Email campaigns can be used for a wide range of purposes, including:
Promotional Campaigns: Adding new products, discounts and special products.
Transactional Campaigns: Anytime you want to send receipts, order confirmations, or shipping updates.
Engagement Campaigns: Allowing user interaction as in surveys, content, contests, or product recommendations.
Welcome Campaigns: To introduce and communicate with the new subscribers about your brand, explain your services to them, and ultimately setup the expectations for the future communication.
Setting Clear Objectives
Before you even log in to your email marketing platform, make sure you have defined your goal for your campaign. Why send me this email? What do you want the recipients to action?
1.Your objectives might include:
Increasing Sales: We recommend sending subscribers to a sales page or promoting a time limited offer.
Building Relationships: Providing your audience with education through newsletters or other educational content, or with exclusive insights (that count).
Growing Your List: Having a call to action telling your subscribers to forward your email or share it on social media.
Setting up a clear objective makes it easy to create your content around your goal and we can then measure its success after send.
2. Creating an Irresistible subject Line
Your subject line is the first thing someone will see when they receive your email, and it tells them whether or not to open your email. However, the statistics are even more shocking: 47 per cent of email recipients determine whether they will open an email on the basis of the subject line alone. For that reason, your subject line needs to be: compelling, concise, and most importantly, relevant to your target audience.
Here are a few tips for creating a subject line that stands out in a crowded inbox:
Be Clear and Specific: Give recipients a ‘heads up’ so they know exactly what to expect inside of the email. For example: “Exclusive 20% Off Just for You” or “3 Tips to Improve Your Email Marketing.”
Create Urgency: Give email recipients a reason to open the email. Words like “Limited Time,” “Last Chance,” or “Only X Hours Left” can prompt action.
Personalize When Possible: Your email can appear more personalized by including the recipient’s name or other details. Example: “You’re going to love seeing your special offer!”
Keep it Short and Sweet: If you want your subject line to look its best, you want it to be 40 to 60 characters long. It also makes sure that it won’t get cut off when visible on desktop and mobile devices.
How to Write Engaging Email Content
When it comes to your email, once your recipients open your email — then your content needs to grab their attention and drive them to action. Here’s how to write email content that converts:
Personalize Your Message: Draw from your recipient’s name, reference their past purchases or interaction, or orient on their preferences. Personalization helps your emails not look like mass marketing but like one-to-one conversations.
Use a Strong, Clear Call to Action (CTA): Every email should have one simple reply that you want your reader to send back. Whether it’s “Shop Now,” “Download Our Free Guide,” or “Get Started Today,” your CTA should be easy to find and compelling enough to click on.
Provide Value: In every email offer something useful or beneficial. It could either be a discount, a really helpful tip, or access to exclusive content. Recipients are more likely to engage and convert when they think they’re getting something of value.
Keep It Concise: Your article may need to be short and sweet. Long paragraphs should be broken into several shorter paragraphs; use bullet points for a more easier read, and try to avoid useless fluff.
Make It Visually Appealing: Make these images with and heading and a clean up to the design and easy navigation. Not only does a well designed email give your email more impact, but it also shows that your brand is professional.
Segmenting Your Email List
List segmentation is one of the keys to email marketing success. Who are they and what do you want to achieve with each? Instead of replying to everyone with the exact same email, segment your audience based on demographics, behaviour, purchase history… This gives the ability to be able to send more ‘on target’ / ‘more personalized’ / more ‘resonate’ content based on each group.
Some common ways to segment your email list include:
Demographics: Location, age, job title, or industry.
Purchase History: People who have previously purchased some products or interacted with a particular content.
Behavioral Data: Clicks to a specific link or open of previous emails.
Engagement Level: The only way we can send different messages to highly engaged subscribers versus those who haven’t opened your emails in a while is if we segmented the contacts based on activity.
By segmenting your email list, you know you’ll hit each person in your email list in the right position, giving them the most relevant content, which in turn leads to higher engagement, and higher conversion rates for you.
A/B Testing Your Emails
Therefore, to see how your email campaigns are working, you have to test different elements of your email. With A/B testing, otherwise known as split testing, you can test two different versions of your email to see which does better.
You can A/B test a variety of elements in your emails, such as:
Subject Lines: You’ll try different wording, urgency, or personalization to find out which gets the most opens.
CTAs: Play around with different wording, colors or placements of your call to action.
Email Design: Find out what works better and change things around.
Testing and optimizing your emails by sending your email and testing real data and continuing to refine your emails with improve the efficiency over time.
Timing Your Emails
The success of your email campaigns often comes down to timing. At the wrong time, an email might end up in a crowded inbox or worse, never opened at all.
Here are a few tips for choosing the best time to send your emails:
Know Your Audience: Search directions which align with an audience’s time zone, work schedule, and preferences. How are they likely to check their emails in the day or at night?
Use Analytics: Another way of doing that is to look at your past email performance data to see what trends on that are. What are the times that you get the most opens and clicks? It serves as data that can help you organize your future sending times.
Experiment: Send test emails at different times and monitor the results that come out. Eventually, you’ll know what works for your particular audience.
Measuring Success: Key Metrics
When you send out your email campaign, it’s time to see how it went. There are several key metrics you should monitor to determine if your campaign is achieving its goals:
Open Rate: The number of people who read your email. If your open rate is low, it can mean the subject line is not compelling nor are your emails actually reaching your target audience.
Click-Through Rate (CTR): This percentage refers to the percentage of recipients that click on a link in your email. A high CTR indicates that your content and your CTA are hitting home with your audience.
Conversion Rate: How many of the people you mailed to (that received your mail) actually completed the activity you intended them to do, which could be to make a purchase or sign up for a webinar.
Bounce Rate: The proportion of emails that retailer sent but weren’t delivered. A high bounce rate can be an indication that your email list or deliverability can be an issue.
Getting a hold of these metrics will help you determine what doesn’t and what works best in your next email campaigns.
Conclusion
Converting email campaigns aren’t a case of luck—at least they aren’t for the sending parties which made them happen. If you understand your audience, know how to talk to them, test different strategies and how to measure your results, you can create email campaigns that not only touch your audience, but move them to action.
As with any other type of marketing, email marketing is a continuous process that doesn’t just end at the email completed campaign phase. So keep at it, keep learning, keep that approach in flux and experience higher engagement and higher conversions for every campaign you send.
