Being that email marketing is a popular and effective strategy, starting your campaign could feel intimidating. Though, there are so many tips and tricks to help get you started. In this article, we are going to go over the most important steps to starting an email campaign.
Creating An Email Campaign Plan
Planning is such an important step to set yourself up for success. But, it can still be a long and stressful part of the process. To make planning a little easier, the following are the most important steps to planning your email campaign.
1. Setting Specific Goals
Recognizing and defining your goals is always the first step to any marketing strategy. The only way to be successful is to know what you want to come of a process. So first, ask yourself why you are creating an email marketing campaign. What do you want to get out of this process? For example, your goal can be to increase sales. Or, you could want to increase visits to your website. Whatever it may be, you must have a clear goal before moving forward with your email marketing campaign.
2. Defining Your Audience
Having a clear idea of who should be receiving your emails is the next step to success. The ideal audience of your email campaign should be the same audience that you typically aim your product to. For example, if you run a woman’s clothing company, who is your audience besides women? You must recognize their age, income, hobbies, location, occupation, etc. The more detailed your ideal audience is, the more targeted your campaign can be.
3. Sign-up
It is usually most difficult to persuade consumers to sign up for emails. But, there are still many ways to get consumers to be on your company’s email list. The most common are website pop-ups. Pop-ups offer a discount or other incentive for your consumer to enter their email address. They are unavoidable as they are strategically placed to come on screen either when a user enters your website, or before they check out. Whatever sign-up method you would like to use, it is a good idea to think about how you plan to get consumers to sign-up for your email list.
4. What To Write
Now that you have defined your goals and your desired audience, it is time to determine what you are going to write within your emails. Obviously each email you send will consist of different content. Though, it is smart to think about the ideal written content to include in your emails. A smart way to make the process easier is to create a list of email ideas. This way, each time you write your marketing email for that specific week or day, you know what to include or base your email content on.
5. Schedule
Finally, you must think about the best times to send your emails. Do you want to send a new one everyday, every other day, every week, etc. What time of the day would be best to send it? Once you come up with a schedule, it is important to stick to it. If you establish a schedule, and it is not working best for you, you can change it. But only change your schedule with a warning to your audience. Defining and sticking to schedule builds trust and credibility between you and your audience. Breaking this schedule with no warning or explanation will confuse your audience, and decrease your credibility.
Design and Test
Once you move past the planning stage of your email marketing campaign, it is time to design your emails and test them out. When designing your emails, keep in mind the most important information for your consumer to see. The recipient of your emails will likely skim the written content. Get your point across within one to two sentences, the first two of your written content.
You could also make the most important information bold, or put it in a different color. Add an image that gets your most important information across. Whatever you do when designing, be sure to make the most important information pop, so your user will see it immediately.
Testing your emails is one of the final and most important steps. It could also be the most intimidating. Although, you won’t know if your campaign will be successful if you don’t test it. This is the part where you send your first email to your email list, and watch the response that you receive. When testing your emails, remember that you will be measuring the response and you have the option to tweak and fix anything in your emails to make them more effective.
Conclusion
Email marketing campaigns are popular because they work. Any new marketing campaign could be intimidating and feel like a stressful process. Follow the steps and tips that we laid out through this blog to be successful in your campaign, as well as make the process easier.
If you have any questions,