Crafting A Successful Email Campaign
Is email dead? Hardly. We still use this venerable communication method. Despite the rise of chat, email is still a vital part of our internet lives. But does this mean we can still use it for marketing?
We can.
Why Email Marketing
Email marketing is not dead. These days, if you’re getting a marketing email it’s because you’ve asked for one. We trust emails, so long as they don’t appear like spam and they are from companies that we’ve opted into for email communication. This means that any email address you get through your funnel is a warm lead.
So how do you build an email campaign to turn that warm lead into a hot customer? Here are some best practices for creating successful email campaigns in 2019.
Components
To build an email campaign, you need:
- A list of email addresses from people who have opted-in to receive emails from you.
- A goal for your campaign.
- A marketing funnel to accomplish the goal.
- An autoresponder to send the emails.
- A way to track the metrics of the campaign.
Any email campaign that lacks one of these five things is doomed before you send the first one, so take some time to shape these up before you start crafting copy.
Getting Email Addresses
The classic way to get email addresses is to have a signup form on your site to subscribe to your mailing list. This is often baited by offering a free download of something your ideal customers would like. While free downloads still work, using forms is a bit old-fashioned.
Given the popularity of chat, consider using a chatbot to gather email addresses and other customer information instead. Think of it like a customer service rep or a salesperson asking for information. It’s far more personable than a cold form and you may end up getting more conversions.
If your business already has a CRM system or an online ordering system, you may not have to ask for messages at all. By virtue of customers doing past business with you, you may already have their email addresses. Scouring your existing data for email addresses, assuming you’re not starting from scratch, will make things much faster.
Verify Your Emails
You’ve got a list. Now you have to verify it. Many people fake email addresses just so they can get a free download. People also change email addresses, mistype their information, and otherwise make your list data dirty. Any emails sent to those addresses will waste time, money, and throw off your metrics. How do you avoid this?
Use an email verification service against your list before you start. That will weed out the bad addresses so you can focus on the real customers, reduce your bounce rate, and increase your ROI. You should verify your list on a regular basis, say once a quarter, to ensure validity.
Stay Within The Law
Anti-spam legislation has been on the books for years, which is why marketers have to request that people opt-in to receive marketing messages. But new data protection laws like GDPR mean that you have to be careful about how you use the personal information you collect. Consider how you can comply with data privacy practices for your customer’s information.
What Makes A Good Email?
Not just any message will get through to your audience. There are about 2.5 billion emails sent every second! This means that you can’t treat your audience like they’re blank slates. You have to take the time to get to know them and what they like so you can write something that’s personable.
Furthermore, in any email campaign there will be a small percentage of leads who just love your stuff. They open every email and want to know what you have to say. They are your model customers (at least for email marketing). Find out what they love about you and your emails and expand on that. Making the best emails you can for your best customers will rise the tide for the rest of your email recipients.
Tracking
Finally, you need to understand email metrics and how your autoresponder collects that information. Tracking the success of a campaign requires knowing, at a minimum, how many saw your email, how many opened it, how many clicked through, and how many converted. Even if you are sending emails that don’t have links back to a conversion point, you’ll still need to know who is opening your emails.
Depending on these metrics, you can know which part of your emails is attracting or turning off your customers. If they are getting your email but aren’t opening it, you need to improve your subject lines. Opened emails with no click-through mean that you need to work on your copy.
This is the short and sweet version of what you need to make an email campaign work for you. Keep these fundamentals in mind and you’ll start your campaign on the right foot.