Simple steps to successful email marketing campaigns
Last week I had an interesting meeting with a potential client who does lots of email marketing, and they do it very well.
As we recently sent out an email newsletter for another of our clients and have had a few enquiries from prospective customers for the same, I decided to write a short blog post on the subject. If you’re thinking of jumping on the emarketing bandwagon, below are a few tips that will help you do it successfully.
Let’s start with a quick reference checklist on the steps involved in email marketing:-
- Gather your names and put them into one single, easy-to-locate place
- Build your list of email addresses
- Decide on the frequency and content for each email campaign
- Write content for your emails
- Select recipients for your campaign
- Send your email and remember, timing is important (most emails only have a shelf life of 3 days)
- Process responses, removing opt-outs and cleaning bounced emails from your list
- Follow up those people who respond to your campaign
- Do a post campaign analysis, looking at what worked and what didn’t
- Repeat the process for everything that worked!
And here are a few useful tips for when it comes to writing content for your email marketing campaign:-
- Write an interesting subject line to encourage recipients to open the email, ideally keeping it less than 50 characters in length
- Clearly state your offer and write a compelling call to action
- Don’t forget to include features and benefits
- Use headings to break up text
- Keep paragraphs short, maybe 2 to 3 sentences at the most
- Use bullet point lists as they are an ideal way to communicate benefits or more complex information
- Include hyperlinks within your text – don’t rely on recipients clicking on buttons or images
- Most importantly, follow the KISS principle: keep content short and sweet. Too much content may trigger spam filters and people just don’t want to read reams of text…
If you have any questions or need help creating or writing content for an email marketing campaign, please send us a message.