Ricardo Nunez http://lusosystems.com 3m 715 #emailmarketing
The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
Crafting an Email Marketing Campaign
Crafting a well thought out email marketing campaign has never been more important. With an increasing number of consumers utilizing email on a daily basis, it is crucial to understand how email marketing works and how to execute proven strategies. With that being said, a majority of business owners and marketers simply do not know how to execute it properly. In this article, we will go over some of the different tips to utilize in order to effectively execute a successful email marketing campaign.
1. Get Permission
When it comes to email marketing, you need to do one thing first – get your customers permission. Emails that are sent out randomly and to everyone in your customer database, without an expressed request from your clients, often come across as spam, and they are almost certainly to land in the trash bin. To avoid this, get started by building a solid email marketing list first.
There are plenty of different ways to achieve this. One of the best ways to do so is by giving away something of value for free. This might include a prize giveaway or a valuable coupon toward the purchase of something in your shop. That way, you will be providing a significant amount of incentive to the prospective customer while providing them a good amount of value in return for their email address.
However, you could also offer product updates or a simple newsletter as an incentive to get them to sign up. Some stores are also successful by asking existing customers if they want to be on the mailing list to be the first to know about upcoming promotions. Whichever route you choose, it is important to provide a clear purpose for the email list and to have a strong call to action as well.
2. Manage Expectations
When it comes to email marketing, managing expectations is important. It is up to you (the marketer) to set the consumers’ expectations. If you have a strong call to action along with a strong follow up, you should be able to craft and execute a strong campaign. However, if you make promises to send one email per week and you end up sending them every single day, you are likely setting up your campaign for failure. At the same time, if you promise daily updates for signing up then get lazy and start sending them once a week or month, recipients are likely going to lose interest or unsubscribe. This is why following up with those that sign up for your list is so important. Set up an auto-responder that emails a follow up immediately after someone signs up for one of your lists as a way to introduce yourself, welcome them and detail what it is that you are going to be sending in the future and when you plan on sending it.
3. Analyze
It is essential to consistently analyze your results for each segment of your campaign in order to determine the effectiveness and make future tweaks to your strategy. Your open rate is going to tell you a lot about how well you have built a relationship and established expectations. If the number is very low, it is likely that people are simply not opening your emails and possibly deleting them right when they receive them. This likely means that you need to work on your subject headlines and managing expectations or providing more relevant value. Your Click Through Rate (CTR) tells you whether or not you have targeted your email enough. If it is very low, you might need to improve the copy of your email. Lastly, if your unsubscribe rate is high compared to your opt-in rate, you probably need to re-work your entire campaign because you are doing something seriously wrong whether it be not providing enough value, not providing relevant and valuable content or something else.
Creating, executing, and maintaining a successful email marketing strategy is a great way to grow your business and your brand. This is a strategy used by start-ups and established businesses alike, and it continues to offer great returns to many for the time and money invested.
About the Author
Ricardo Nunez is the founder of lusosystems.com, specializing in professional SEO services focused on getting results.
(
