Email marketing is one of many channels available to modern businesses and stands out thanks to its scale and impact. Emails are here to stay, continue to grow in prominence, and offer amazing opportunities for marketers.
Over four billion people use email worldwide (greater than half of the global population).
More than 333 billion emails are sent and received daily.
About 81% of business owners use email as their primary customer acquisition channel.
Nearly half of consumers would welcome weekly emails from their favorite brands.
With impressive stats like these, it’s not surprising that email marketing provides an average return on investment (ROI) of $40 for each dollar spent. Compare this to another popular channel, keyword ads, which only averages an ROI of $17 per dollar spent.
The first step of effective email marketing campaign management is understanding what an email marketing campaign is. In basic terms, it’s the sending of emails to your current customers as well as potential customers. The goals for email campaign marketing vary, but most focus on:
Building brand awareness
Welcoming new customers
Engaging current customers
Increasing sales
Email marketing is incredibly versatile and affordable. You can send customized emails to an exclusive list or reach a vast audience with similar levels of personalization.
The price to send emails is substantially lower than many other types of marketing in each of these cases:
Promoting a product
Announcing a contest
Nurturing leads
Generating web traffic
Cross-promoting other marketing channels
Sharing exclusive offers
Here are some common email marketing campaign types:
Welcome emails
Newsletters
Promotional campaigns
Abandoned cart recovery
Post-purchase campaigns
Reengagement
Testimonial request
Your business has unique goals and needs, so consider the primary ways that you want to leverage email marketing.
Next, let’s look at the steps for crafting your ideal email marketing campaign.
Most email marketing campaigns share a similar foundation and follow these five steps:
1. Outline your goals
What are you hoping to accomplish? Before you do anything else, identify your key objectives. They’ll serve as a guide throughout the development of your campaign and steer your efforts once it begins.
Don’t forget to put tracking tools in place. Your goals are only relevant if they’re measurable, and they’re only measurable if you have tracking capabilities enabled.
2. Choose your target audience
While email campaigns are incredibly scalable, success only comes when you’ve tailored the message to the right people. Understanding your customers’ motivations and pain points helps you provide relevant solutions. And developing an audience profile helps you create authentic messages that hit all the right notes.
Your profiles will be informed by demographic details such as:
Geographical location
Age
Gender
Occupation
Income level
Education level
Marital status
Online habits
Shopping preferences
Hobbies
When you provide quality content with unique benefits, your audience will respond with positive actions that help you reach your goals.
3. Put your tools in place
Now that you know what you’re trying to accomplish and who you’re talking to, you’ll need to gather the necessary tools. What email service provider will you use? What automation will you employ for scheduling and sending messages based on user activity? Having the right email marketing campaign software is essential for maximum effect.
4. Get your lists in order
You might have laser-focused goals for your campaign, but disorganized email lists are barriers to success.
That’s why email segmentation is a must. You can’t deliver a compelling and relevant message to your entire email database. Use list segmentation to focus on the target audience within your overall list. These specific people will receive the messages you carefully create to meet their needs.
5. Create your emails
Even the best-laid email marketing plans won’t succeed if the content isn’t high quality. Take all the data you’ve gathered about your target audience and create something memorable. You’ll have your own email campaign goals, but providing a positive brand experience for your customers is just as crucial.
Keep your communications clear and ensure that every email has a purpose. It’s tempting to launch large drip campaigns because the high number of touchpoints might keep your audience engaged, but you’ll do more harm than good if you include duds in the mix.
These components will help you create better email marketing campaign ideas and put them into practice effectively. Get to know your audience, craft your campaign based on what you learn, and harness the power of great email campaign software to get the response you desire, all while earning the trust of your audience.
Let’s look at some best practices to keep in mind as you develop and refine your campaigns. You’re undoubtedly doing some of these things already, but there’s always an opportunity to improve. And if your campaigns aren’t evolving, you won’t be able to hold your audience’s attention.
1. Provide clear instructions
Have you ever read an email and then wondered, “What am I supposed to do next?” The best email marketing campaign examples make it clear how the reader should continue their journey. Maybe there’s a button that takes readers to a product page where they can learn more. Or you might include a link that lets interested individuals schedule an appointment with one of your sales representatives.
Audiences shouldn’t be left wondering how to proceed because it’s worse to build engagement that goes nowhere than to never build engagement at all.
2. Start the customization early
We’ve already mentioned the significance of making your emails relevant to your target audience. But this personalization needs to begin well before the first line of the body copy.
Start by using your audience data to craft a subject line that feels relatable and conveys benefits. This is your opportunity to catch the reader’s attention and compel them to take further action. Then, build upon that personalization with a headline that shows how much you value your audience’s time and attention.
3. Make it visually engaging
Every successful email carries a specific message. But don’t focus so much on the written elements of that message that you neglect the visual component. In our digital world of instant distractions, it’s asking a lot for your audience to spend a couple of minutes reading an email. You need to have an engaging design to make it worthwhile.
Here are a few elements to consider:
Imagery: Choose photography and graphics that will resonate with your audience and enhance your message. If you really want to stand out, include a GIF to bring motion to your email.
Branding: Readers should be able to quickly recognize your business as the sender of the email. In addition to your logo, think about how you can employ the colors and fonts from your style guide for maximum effect.
Responsiveness: Your audience will be viewing your emails on a wide array of devices, so make sure that they’re responsive. An email that’s beautifully formatted to a reader’s device is another subtle way to show that you care about them and are invested in their experience.
4. Give it another look
After crafting an email with compelling copy and engaging visuals, have a proofreader review everything for accuracy. Here’s why:
Typos reduce your legitimacy in readers’ eyes.
Poor word choices hurt your reputation.
Broken links lead to frustration from the very people you’re trying to serve.
5. Run A/B tests
You can refine countless things from your end before sending an email, but you can never perfectly anticipate how it will be received. By sending two iterations of each email, an A version and a B version with some key variations, you can let your target audience teach you more about their preferences and motivations.
The best practices you develop through A/B testing will improve individual campaigns and inform your future endeavors. So never miss an opportunity to gather insights from your audience.
Twilio SendGrid has the tools and resources to help you make your email marketing campaign strategy a success—whether your next campaign is targeted to just a few dozen customers or is going out to thousands.
Our industry-leading deliverability rate of 99% helps your campaigns function like clockwork. We send more than 100 billion emails monthly, which is why we’re trusted by clients like Glassdoor, Spotify, Uber, and Airbnb.
