Email Marketing Tips for Successful Campaigns
Email marketing is the oldest form of digital communication and is still considered to be the most effective marketing channel. An email can be potent, persuasive, and will get your B2B or B2C e-commerce store great results. Whenever a shopper wants to purchase something, they will always look for emails from their favorite stores.
But doing it well can be challenging, as only the best email marketing practices and strategies will set you on a strong path to a high revenue-generating marketing channel. A study done by DMA found that every $1 spent on email led to a Return on Investment (ROI) of 38$. This is why email marketing is the best way for marketers to improve response rates to their direct marketing campaigns and reach out to both new customers and retain existing customers by encouraging repeat website visits.
However, there are over 4 billion people around the world that use the platform, and this makes it hard to stand out in an inbox filled with emails. Before getting into email marketing tips, we should first understand the meaning of email marketing, its advantages, and how you should plan an email marketing campaign.
What is Email marketing?
Email marketing is the process of sending promotional messages to people in mass quantities. Email marketing is now used by thousands of B2B and B2C businesses around the world and has a place in every marketer’s toolbox. Despite the rise of social media platforms, email continues to be the most successful marketing channel.
The main advantages of email marketing are that it is fast, cost-effective, and helps you build meaningful relationships with your customers. Besides that, it is also good at reaching an engaged audience, delivering targeted messages, increase in revenue and sales, boosting referrals, and allowing more flexibility.
Protip: It is important not to overuse email marketing as receiving marketing emails can irritate people if it is irrelevant, too frequent, or unwanted.
How do you plan an email marketing campaign?
An email marketing campaign is a coordinated set of individual emails sent from a business to one or more customers or prospects across a specific period of time with one specific purpose. The emails sent for email campaigns include calls to action (CTAs) for purchasing your products and services or even to download your white paper, sign up for a webinar, or make a purchase.
A well-done email marketing campaign will encourage the recipients to take action and purchase your products or services. There are many types of email marketing campaigns including, welcome email series, promotional, seasonal, triggered email, post-purchase, cart abandonment campaigns, etc.
Before running an email campaign, you have to do prep work, and here are some tips to get you started:
Start by creating a marketing plan
The first thing you should do while devising a marketing plan for an email campaign is to define your target audience. You can then identify the smaller collection of people within your large audience based on their likes and needs, then segment them into groups.
This will help you send a personalized and targeted email to increase engagement, generate higher ROI, and build a relationship. That will establish your sending frequency and goals of the email campaign. Find out “What do you want to say to your audience?” And make content based on their preference.
Design your email template
The most important step while drafting an email marketing campaign is designing an email marketing template. Make sure to lay out all the elements and the design of your email campaign is straightforward. Add all the important information towards the top of the email and make it attractive so it draws attention.
Test your emails
You have to test how your email looks on mobiles devices as they look different on different gadgets. Send your emails to your friends or co-workers to eliminate minor mistakes like typos and also ask for feedback on the layout of the email. You can also find the best version of your email with A/B testing campaigns.
Apply Marketing Automation tools
Marketing automation tools can help you save time and focus on other important tasks. With automation tools, you can set targeted emails or a series of emails that will be automatically sent over in some time. You can also add personalized elements like a name with automation tools and also target only a certain group of people.
Check the performance of your campaign
Checking the marketing analytics along with metrics and KPI”s during the email campaign is very important, as it allows you to make improvements. They can also indicate how well your subject lines and campaign content is generating responses and make changes in certain parts.
Top Email marketing tips for campaigns
Personalize your emails
Personalization is a vital part of email marketing, as it allows you to target your email campaign to a specific recipient by utilizing the information you have about them. The information that can be personalized is the first name, the product or service they previously purchased, interests in certain products, content downloaded, the number of times they have logged in to your app or website, or any other data points, etc.
The biggest advantage of personalizing your email is that you can increase your open and click-through rates along with growing your ROI and revenue. Basic email personalization tactics include using the recipient’s name in the subject line, while the more advanced personalization can range from adding subscribers’ gender, their location, and suggesting products depending on their previous purchase, etc.
Personalization helps you stand out within the inbox full of competitors. Personalization is not only limited to content and subject lines, as you also personalize your images, videos, offers, product recommendations, and even personalize parts of your email depending on the user behavior.
Utilize automation tools
Email automation is a marketing strategy that allows you to reach out to your target audience and send them the right message at the right moment. The main advantage of using automation tools for email marketing campaigns is that they help you save time on doing simpler repetitive tasks and concentrate on other important tasks such as responding to customer questions.
You have to link your email marketing platform to an automation tool, and set the actions or triggers, so the tool will automatically send emails based on people’s behavior, preference, and previous sales. Marketing Automation also gives every lead a unique customer experience and increases the relevance of your automation campaigns. For example, when a prospective customer signs up for a mailing list, a trigger will be sent to the automation tool and it will then send welcome emails and provide some recommendations to increase conversation.
Sending an automated email at the right time will help customers learn more about your brand, encourage them to keep coming back, or remind them of why they bought from you in the first place. Automating emails is also known to improve your customer retention rate, and drive sales not only from potential customers as well as existing ones.
Segment your audience
Segmenting your email subscribers into smaller segments to deliver a relevant and personalized user experience. The main advantage of segmentation is that you can cater to different groups with a different email list and cater to their interests instead of creating one mass message for everyone. Whether it’s a B2B or a B2C company you have to segment your audience. The segmentation is usually done basis on location, interests, purchase, history, and much more.
Here are the top ways in which you can segment your leads:
- Geographical email segmentation – Here recipients are segmented based on their geographical location.
- B2B and specialization email segmentation – It is more difficult to segment B2B clients because their needs can very different from the B2C clients, but when done right is very effective.
- Content-based email segmentation – This is a common way of segmenting as it is based on the data you have collected on them like “What pages did they visit on your site?” “What did they download from it?” etc.
- Behavior-based email segmentation – This segmentation is based on the behavior of the recipients and the amount of time they spent on your website, how many times they visited in a week, or the number of pages they viewed.
- Influencer email segmentation – This is a new way of segmenting your audience as it is done based on who recommends the brand, customer reviews, and your brand impression on social media.
Optimize your emails
Email marketing optimization is a set of measures that should be taken by B2B and B2C companies to increase the ROI and conversation rates. Optimization can also help in increasing many long-lasting relationships with their target audience. They make improvements to ensure their messages are working.
The main motive of Optimization is to increase click-through rates, which will eventually lead to profit. Besides that, it can help you understand what your audience wants and then make certain changes to strengthen brand identity. Optimization can include actions like changing the subject lines, adding more CTA and adding better visuals, etc.
Interesting email subject line
An email subject line is the most important part of the email campaign, it is the first thing that your recipient sees when they open their inbox. The email subject line is what helps the recipient decide whether or not to open the email. This is why it is important to make your subject lines attractive, informative, catchy and brief. If the subject lines are not catchy, they will be put into spam and when you are done, test it out by sending it to the people who are close to you.
Here are some tips on setting your email subject lines.
- Make sure your email subject line is to the point.
- They should look good on mobile devices.
- Raise curiosity.
- Avoid using spammy words.
- Use emojis.
- Be descriptive.
- Avoid using Caps or multiple punctuations.
Email subject line examples
- 50% OFF Time Is Running Out!!! Hurry!!
- 48 hours more until the surprise sale ends
- Just 24 hours left until your favorite x is sold out!
- Get these Holiday deals before they’re gone!
- Take a Sneak Peek at our massive holiday discount
Adding appropriate CTA in emails
Call to Action or CTAs are a mandatory part of marketing emails we see today. What is CTA you may ask; it is a button or hyperlinked text that directs the recipients to a certain landing page of the company’s choice. CTA is what drives a consumer towards action and improves conversions. CTAs can usually be seen at the end of the email or to the right of the content.
CTA should be attractive also you can use bright colors and thoughtful placement to make it work. Another tip here is to use buttons as they are more eye-catching. Make sure your CTAs are large and legible so that the recipient can find them easily. Remember to keep it short and also create a sense of urgency so it can garner those high click-through rates.
A few examples of CTAs are:
- Register now
- Take 50% off
- Get the discount
- Reserve your spot
- Try it out free
- Shop now
Utilize creative visuals in emails
It is very important to add visuals in emails as it makes the email campaign more successful and profitable. The visuals can be images, videos, or even infographics. When it comes to images make sure to add images that are under 1MB each with a high resolution. The images and text can also be hyperlinked so it can improve the click-through rates and engagement.
This works the best when the emails are being viewed on small devices. But make sure that the URL in images and text directs the recipient to a different URL. Adding videos in emails helps in increasing your click-through rates as they are more engaging and effective. They also help boost your conversions, brand awareness, and help educate your customers.
Keep the emails out of the Spam
There are many reasons why emails can be flagged as spam. The first thing you should do is make sure you have done have any “spam trigger words” in the entire email. You can use a Spam checking tool and make necessary changes.
Every B2B marketer must know the basics of “Spam Filters” because this tool helps in detecting messages which may contain harmful viruses, spammy words and then prevent them from reaching the main inbox. Make sure you’re targeting the right audience and also have the permission of email subscribers so that they don’t put your emails in the spam folder.
Final thoughts
These were some of the most basic and necessary email marketing tips for your campaign. Always remember that you have to use certain regulations and systems to achieve a good ROI and a higher click-through rate. Hope these tips will help you make your email marketing campaign a success. Let us know what tips would work the best for you or if you have any other tips, you think we should add to the list.
