How to Create an Email Marketing Campaign that is Successful

Everyone knows the value of an email list as a marketing guru for email marketing. However, how to create an email marketing campaign that is successful is always challenging for many marketing people.

Even though instant messengers, live chat, and many other promising new tools have come and gone, good ol’ email has survived. Email addresses are fairly easy to get; every person has at least one.

A simple opt-in form to gain email addresses and hope that customers come is not enough for an email marketing campaign to succeed. In order to attract subscribers to your business and get them to listen to your messages, you will need actionable, effective steps. A typical email campaign has an open rate of just about 20% among industries, so it is not easy.

It is my pleasure to help you. In just nine steps, you will learn how to build a highly converting email marketing campaign. Creating a profitable campaign will not only keep subscribers interested but also keep them engaged. Come on!

What is an email marketing campaign?

The goal of an email marketing campaign is to target a specific audience with a set of individual email messages. Often, they contain calls to action (CTAs) that encourage recipients to download white papers, register for webinars, or purchase products.

To accomplish your campaign’s goals, each email needs a well-crafted subject line, in-header content, and an appropriate call-to-action. One major CTA is often accompanied by a secondary CTA in a good email marketing campaign. In these call-to-actions, clear and bold language should be used without interfering with the message itself.

Email marketing campaigns can be sent out as a single message or in a series over a period of time. With a series, it is nevertheless important to maintain consistency with the overall concept, even if the CTA is different from email to email.

How to create a successful email marketing campaign?

Email marketing campaigns have the ability to compel recipients to take action, engage with your brand, and lead to increased revenue.

It is therefore the perfect tool for generating leads and making sales through the building of relationships with customers. A strong customer base is crucial when you first start building an email marketing campaign.

#1. Define your goals for email marketing campaigns

You need to wait for a little and answer some crucial questions related to your planned campaign prior to logging into your email management system, such as Mailchimp. The following questions will help you create an email marketing campaign that will be successful despite the delay.

Below is a list of questions:

Is there a specific goal I want to achieve with this email campaign?
Is this email marketing campaign within my budget?
Who is working with me on this email campaign?

Having determined what you want to accomplish with your email marketing campaign – such as getting your latest product in front of your target audience or keeping your organization top-of-mind – you can allocate your budget to different departments, such as design, software, and copywriting.

#2. Build Your Email List

A good email list of qualified leads interested in your product is the foundation of the most successful email marketing campaigns. Getting your website visitors to sign up for your email list is the best method of building it. By creating an email engagement strategy using this subscriber list, you can send greetings to your customers, build anticipation, and encourage them to make purchases. All the while, you are also establishing a lasting relationship with the customers.

In case you have not had a business website yet, I would suggest Shopify. You can set up an online store within thirty minutes and enjoy the benefits of a robust selling platform. After you create the opt-in forms, you will be able to collect the visitors’ email addresses.

If you want to attract people’s attention and encourage them to subscribe, you must create compelling opt-in forms. To maximize your website’s performance, experiment with different forms of opt-in on different parts of your site.

You should be able to acquire the email addresses of your website’s visitors since they are already invested in your business. This can be done in many ways, with four basic opt-in funnels:

Subscriber box: Visitors can sign up for newsletters by entering their email addresses in the subscription box at the bottom of the website.
Spin Wheel: You can give visitors the opportunity to win surprises by spinning a wheel on your website when they enter their email addresses.
Pop-ups: Often used at many stages of the customer journey, pop-ups can be used on first visits, exit intentions, and checkouts, among others.

Sweepstakes: Applicants can participate in time-limited sweepstakes by providing their e-mail addresses in order to win discounts.

#3. Segment your audience

One of the most important email best practices is segmenting your audience. Segmenting your email list allows you to target your messages to specific groups. When it comes to campaign analytics and reflections afterward, this can be extremely helpful. Through this, you will be able to see which groups are most likely to respond.

Several ways can be used to segment a large email list based on the subscriptions people receive.

Clients only

Updates on our products
Bulletin
A daily update

HTML

Using your CRM to import sales leads and segment your email list can be one way to master segmentation. You can effectively analyze and manage customer data through the use of marketing automation software and your CRM.

Each email should be segmented and personalized.

Your email marketing campaigns need to be segmented and tailored to the people on your list if you want to be successful. There may be members who wish to subscribe to get offers while others might wish to read every update you send, no matter how often you send it.

You must provide options for your members.

Personalization at sign-up: Make sure people know how often they will be receiving emails, and give them options about what kind of messages they would like to receive. Provide this option when users sign up. It gives users a better understanding of what they are agreeing to. They can also modify their subscription settings or unsubscribe at any time. As early as the welcome emails might be the best time to inform them of this.
Attempt to unsubscribe: A subscriber may unsubscribe because you send them too many emails. Let people choose the type of emails they would like to receive and customize their experience. This might prevent them from unsubscribing. Find some additional information on optimizing unsubscribe processes here.

#4. Conduct audience research

Researching your audience is an important part of any successful email marketing campaign.

In order to achieve your goal, you must understand your audience’s wants. You may know what you want from your campaign, such as generating pre-orders for your upcoming product. Otherwise, you won’t get the results you want.

To research your audience, follow these steps:

Speaking to people who work directly with customers, such as salespeople or customer support representatives

You should browse industry-relevant blogs and news sites
Researching influencers who can help sell your product
Participating in online forums

Finding out what Google searches are most common in your market
Monitoring social media posts and comments

By understanding what engages your target market, you can answer such questions as:

Can our email address any pain points or issues?
How should we phrase our email campaign?

What kind of content should we include in our emails?
Our audience is interested in learning more about what topics?
Could we partner with an influencer, for example?

Answering these questions will help you determine how and when to communicate with your subscribers.

#5. Outline your email marketing campaign

The next step on how to start an email campaign is to outline your campaign after you have your email goals, subscriber list, and audience research in place. Using all the previous research you’ve done, this step should be easy.

You’ll want to include the following information in your outline:

The number of emails you will send or is the campaign is ongoing or short-term.

When will you send out these emails?
How each email will be structured (if limited) or how the first few emails will be set up (if ongoing)
What will the email’s call to action be?

You can create your email marketing campaign once you know who is in charge of what!

#6. Design your emails and newsletters

Users of email marketing services have the option of customizing their newsletters and emails. Is it best to use the templates provided by email marketing services?

Generally, email and newsletter templates that are included with email clients are only meant to serve as a starting point. Therefore, the designs included may not match your brand’s guidelines. It’s best to start off with a blank template and then customize it using HTML to give your emails a more consistent, branded look.

Your subscribers will convert more smoothly if your emails are personalized as if they are your own. Once that happens, you’re less likely to be mistakenly marked as spam or junk, which can have a negative impact on the email’s open rate and conversion rate. In addition, with so many newsletters being sent out nowadays, it is essential for you to stand out from the crowd while still following all the rules.

You can use the following guidelines when designing emails and newsletters:

Provide unsubscribe options – You shouldn’t be concerned when they do. You can actually take it positively when they unsubscribe. Your message may be too early or unrealistic for them, or maybe you’re not what they’re looking for. Essentially, you allow people to opt-out voluntarily if they don’t like what you’re saying. Don’t worry, it’s the ones who remain who deserve your attention.
Include a preview of what you’ll be sending to show that you’re not spamming. Show subscribers, you care about their privacy. Provide a free download that they can save to their computers and tell them how often to expect a newsletter. These instructions might seem simple to you, but you’d be surprised at how many people don’t know how to do them.
Responsive email templates a necessity: More people than ever read emails on mobile devices, making responsive email templates a necessity. Therefore, make sure that your emails are automatically resized on a tablet, desktop, and phone.

More text and fewer images: Despite the fact that images make emails more attractive, a good email has more text, and many people disable images when sending emails. Don’t forget to use alt tags for your images so people can figure out what the pictures are about. This can help you have your emails enabled with images.

Templates allow you to create email messages for every campaign purpose, eliminating the need for re-creation in subsequent campaigns.

#7. Choose a good email service provider

It is not true that pre-built templates are suitable for every business, but good email marketing services provide tools for you to develop an effective email marketing campaign.

Check for the following features:

Create campaigns, automation, workflows, and templates on a user-friendly dashboard.
Audience segmentation methods

Analyze the performance of your email campaigns
Integrations with popular platforms or software, such as Shopify, Magento, and WordPress.

Out there, numerous email clients will offer you these services either for free or premium. It is imperative that the provider you choose will meet your requirements and most of all be affordable.

#8. Write your email marketing campaign’s content

Opting in is only the first step to achieving success. Your email conversion rate will be truly tested when you deliver your original content, from your welcome message to the first issue.

An email marketing campaign cannot be successful without content. Finding email content, however, can be challenging. Emails tend to be short.

It is a good idea to start with the subject line since it is one of the first things people look at when they open an email.

In the same way, a blog post title grabs attention, an email subject line should entice subscribers to act. On mobile screens, there are even fewer characters to see, so make sure you put the most important part at the beginning.

It would be best if you improve your subject lines as follows:

Personalize your subject lines by including the recipients’ names to increase engagement.
Your email will reach the inbox more easily if you avoid spam-like words.

Don’t attempt to act smart or witty unless that is your brand’s personality. Tell people what they can expect when they open your emails.
Make your email subject lines more effective by borrowing subject lines from other companies.

Your next step should be to write the body of the email. Right from the beginning, create a hook to entice readers to continue reading. In order to get the best results, keep your copy brief, sweet, and avoid getting into sales too soon. Your readers should feel comfortable before you get into sales.

An email addressed to the subscriber by name is more likely to be successful. Even email marketing can be customized for different user groups based on their needs. It has been shown that by segmenting your audience, your email click-through rate can increase by up to 50%.

You should have someone proofread your email after you have finished drafting it. Then make any necessary changes.

#9. Send email marketing campaign

After you have designed, written, and proofread your email campaign, you can now send it.

Check these last-minute items off your checklist before delivering your email:

Check your list of included and excluded senders

Make sure your subject line and email are error-free
Ensure that you have a fallback option for your personalization tags

If you prefer to preview the email on your desktop, tablet, or mobile device first, you can also send it to your inbox first. Your inbox allows you to spot improvements, such as altering the subject line or fixing a broken link, by looking at your email within the inbox.

You can schedule an email to be sent once all of these checklist items have been completed.

#10. Plan follow-up emails

To persuade readers to click on the CTAs and take action, you usually need to send multiple emails in your campaign.

For example, a short email series is a good way to introduce your company’s products and services to new subscribers in an email marketing campaign.

Email subject lines for this fictional online service provider might read as follows:

Welcome to [weblihost.com], here’s your gift code!
What do you want to do with this week’s offer?
What is do you expect from weblihost.com?

What is on your mind regarding the last post

We send emails sparingly so that subscribers are not overwhelmed with emails. Be clear about your schedule with them so that they know what to expect. Sent surveys or polls to subscribers occasionally to find out how they feel about email frequency. Give them the option of receiving fewer emails if they prefer.

#11. Track your email campaign results

It is important to measure, track, and analyze the results of your email campaigns. Without checking on their performance, you will not have any answers for your superior when they inquire about the results of the email marketing campaign.

Tracking your results is easy with an email management tool.

Mailchimp, for instance, provides information such as:

Open rate

Links clicked
Unsubscribe rate
Bounce rate

Subscriber interactions
And more

Data like these can be used to gain a deeper understanding of your users and campaigns.

Google Analytics is another tool you can use along with your email management tool. If you have this tool, it will allow you to see how much traffic is directed to your site via email, as well as how it behaves on your site. This is a free tool and a must-have for any company.

This data can help answer any questions you may have regarding your email marketing campaigns.

Basics of cold emailing