Emails work. For every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can get an average return on investment of $44. That’s a huge ROI. No wonder thousands of businesses still use emails as a primary marketing channel despite the rise of social media.
In this article, we’ll walk you through six steps to creating an email marketing campaign that gets you the same, if not more, ROI. But first, let’s start with the basics.
What is an Email Marketing Campaign?
An email marketing campaign involves sending multiple emails to potential and current customers. The goals are to boost brand awareness, nurture leads, drive engagement, and ultimately make a sale.
It’s an effective inbound, content, and account-based marketing strategy. With one of the highest ROI of all digital marketing efforts, emails let you provide your customers with a personalized and valuable experience.
Here are a few different types of emails brands send out in campaigns:
- Welcome emails
- Newsletter emails
- Promotional email campaigns
- Seasonal marketing campaigns
- Cart abandonment emails
Other than these, marketers also create announcements, testimonials-request, and post-purchase drip emails. All this together makes a successful email marketing campaign.
6 Steps to Crafting an Effective Email Marketing Campaign
Creating a compelling email marketing campaign that drives exceptional results requires balancing the right strategy and execution. Here are the six steps to creating a meaningful campaign that can help you put the best email forward:
Define the SMART Goals of your Campaign
Start by defining the big picture of your campaign – brand awareness, lead generation, customer retention, product promotion, etc. With the ‘why’ behind the email marketing outreach nailed down, set SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) goals.
Even better, document your goals and create an email marketing dashboard to centralize all the campaign-related metrics. Include these six key email metrics in your dashboard:
- Click-through rate (CTR)
- Conversion rate
- Bounce rate
- Unsubscribe rate
- List growth rate
- Spam complaints
These goals will form the framework of your campaign.
Build your Email Marketing List
The next step is to build your email list – people who’ll receive your well-crafted emails (ideally prospects and customers).
Create and place subscription or sign-up buttons all around your site. If you are using email marketing tools, make an opt-in form and embed it on your website.
Online webinars and in-person events are also great places to encourage your prospects to subscribe. Plus, as more people sign up for the event, the more email addresses you’ll collect.
Another creative way is to create gated content and lead magnets. For example, you can publish annual indexes and important updates in your industry, which requires users to provide email addresses for access.
There’s also a shortcut here. Using email finder tools, you find targeted email addresses of your ideal customers– building your initial email list instantaneously. And as the campaign grows, the email addresses will continue to increase.
Choose Email Template
Now, you want an email template. You can either design your email template from scratch or choose pre-made, customizable ones. However, ensure the templates are not overly complicated or fancy.
Be creative, but keep the designs easy to understand, which also allows you to highlight the most important bites.
Here are a few elements you should focus on:
- Email header and footers (two crucial places to reinforce your brand and provide consistent experiences)
- Branding (logo, brand color, and font)
- Images
- White spacing
- Visual hierarchy (varying font sizes, infographics, etc)
Write Perfect Email Subject Lines
Your email subject lines decide whether the email will be opened, archived, or deleted–that’s a lot of pressure on a single line. It needs to be perfect.
On most devices, the subject line is highlighted with darker and heavier text that helps it stand out from the content. That gives you an advantage, but only if you create an impactful subject that fits in this 30-character format.
To achieve this, add personalization, power words, and an engaging gist of the content to the subject line. Use personal pronouns, like «You or Your». It makes the readers feel you are speaking directly to them. When used strategically, tricks like FWD:» or Re:» also improve open rates.
Here’s a great example of how uncommon goods create captivating subject lines.
Fill in Email with Engaging Content
With the subject line ready, let’s get started on your email marketing copy. Begin with hooks that drive readers in and get them to read on.
An ideal email copy is between 50 to 125 words long. Therefore, you want to keep the emails short but impactful. However, don’t pitch your offers too early on. Allows the readers to get comfortable first.
Leveraging personalization strategies, like addressing the recipient by name. Keep your email copy conversational, easy, and engaging.
A personal story is another great way to build an instantaneous emotional connection. Other creative ways include
- Images, infographics, online catalogues, videos, and GIFs
- Polls and surveys
- Some things that add value to your readers (useful information, free resources, etc.)
Lastly, add a strong call to action (CTA) at multiple places (likely near the start, middle, and end). The CTA should reflect one action you want the audience to take right after reading your email.
Using email tracking for Gmail, you can nail down the exact CTAs with higher conversion rates. From experience, however, the most effective CTAs are no-brainers for subscribers, like checking out new blog posts or reviewing abandoned carts – something short, clear, and to the point.
Track, Measure, and Improve
Finally, emailing is just the first step to achieving your campaign’s goals. For best results, you’ve to consistently track and measure KPIs and work on all the improvement areas.
Test everything – email copy, subject lines, CTAs, designs, and layout. Use email tracking tools to get accurate insights into the open- and click-through rates. These tools will also help highlight any red flags that might be stopping your emails from reaching the subscribers’ inboxes.
Track all crucial email metrics defined in your email marketing dashboard, including most visited pages, best-performing links, conversion rates, revenues per email, and more. Align these metrics with your bigger marketing goal to avoid analysis paralysis.
Email Marketing Campaign: Keep Experimenting
Remember, there will never be a ‘perfect’ email. But with constant experimentation and improvement, you can get super close to creating one for your campaign.
Therefore, follow the above-mentioned steps and A/B test your email to discover what’s working and how readers are interacting with your emails. In the long run, this will only strengthen your email marketing efforts‘ success.
