You’re probably sitting in the comfort of your home or office thinking, “Okay, now is the best time to start creating email campaigns” but you don’t know where to start. Or, if you’ve already invested in an email service provider (ESP), you start asking yourself and your team, “How do I know the email campaigns I will send will generate revenue and not be a bad investment?” There isn’t just one be-all end-all to a successful email marketing campaign but there are some best practices to follow.
Build your email list organically
Getting your emails into someone’s inbox is probably the hardest part of email marketing. The best way for you to build your email list is by organically building it. What you need to do is to ask your potential subscribers using an easy opt-in method with clear reasoning for getting someone’s email.
You’ll need to address these questions so that you provide transparency to your subscribers from the get-go:
- What do I get when I give you my email address?
- Am I going to receive spam?
- Will I be receiving discounts or special offers?
- How often will I be hearing from you?
- Will my information be protected?
Yes, you may be turned down by many people but it’s the safest way to grow your customer list without incurring any kind of penalty.
There are many ways of getting emails the right way but one of those ways you want to completely avoid is that you never want to buy email lists from brokers otherwise you’ll look spammy and will turn away potential customers from your business because the recipients will have no idea where you got their emails in the first place. Plus, its likely that you’re violating the rules of the Canadian Anti-Spam Legislature (CASL) and the GDPR under the rules of consent.
There’s also a good chance that those emails you buy aren’t verified for legitimacy. Using tools like NeverBounce or others from this list will help you filter out the emails that will not work for you at all and validate the ones that will. Without verifying them, the emails you’ll send from the broker’s list will likely bounce and never reach your potential customers (and even then, those customers might not even be a part of your target audience anyway).
It’s really important that you include a strong call-to-action when asking for permission to use someone’s email and this is where good copywriting comes into play.
Ensure you are whitelisted
Many people will complain that their emails aren’t going through to the recipient and they don’t know why. Usually the first time you send your emails to your list, your email may be blacklisted as a spam email provider. Thankfully many ESPs do their due diligence and make sure that your emails are not blocked by ISP’s by optimizing your emails for sending using built-in spam checkers or you can use a third-party like Litmusor Email on Acid.
Getting whitelisted means that you’re taking the necessary steps to “befriend” your subscriber. What this means is that you’re asking the recipient to add you to the email equivalent of a friend list – asking them to add you on their email address book or list of safe senders. But you might be thinking, where should I place these requests?
The welcome/follow-up email
When recipients subscribe to your list, you can choose to send an automatic welcome email (if you have automation software) outlining what they will be receiving as part of signing up for your list. You can also include instructions for whitelisting your email address relative to their email service provider. This is also an opportunity to introduce yourself at a deeper level to establish a personal connection with your subscribers.
Thank-you page
As soon as subscribers sign up to your email list, you may want to continue their customer journey by pointing them to a landing page that thanks them for signing up, details what they will be receiving in emails from you, and provide them instructions on how to put you on their whitelist.
Choosing your email marketing platform
It goes without saying that to have a great email marketing campaign, you’ll need the tools to help you succeed at that. Although email service providers such as Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and Outlook are free, they don’t allow you to easily design emails that look great, function well or automate your marketing for you. Thankfully there are many email marketing solutions that provide these customization options for your business needs and are great at applying responsive design techniques that work.
Here’s is a shortlist of some credible email marketing tools that will make your life easier creating email marketing campaigns:
These are just a few of the many all-in-one marketing software providers that are out there that have robust email marketing features so consider this list with a grain of salt and do your due diligence!
I suggest reading reviews on g2crowd to find the one that fits your budget and business needs!
Note: You can also design emails from scratch yourself if you have coding knowledge in HTML, CSS and Javascript! I’ll talk about this more in a later post!
Design your emails with your customer in mind
Everyone will be using different devices and different email clients so it’s very important that you design your emails so that they are accessible. This is called Responsive Email Design. It’s a way of designing your emails such that your subscribers will have a great, hiccup-free experience engaging with your email content. You’ll also want to make sure that you let your subscribers know that they are in control of what they will be receiving so ensure that you include opt-out or preference settings in your email footers.
I don’t know if this applies to you, but for me it’s infuriating when I receive an email that doesn’t fit on your device’s screen, the images don’t load properly or the text is so small or so large that the entire email is unreadable and doesn’t let me change my preferences or completely unsubscribe from that email list.
Create your email content
Now it’s time to live up to your subscribers’ expectations by giving them the content they will find valuable. Try to put yourself into your readers’ shoes and ask yourself what do you find valuable from your company? When writing your content, ask yourself if your messaging is consistent with the expectations you’ve set in your follow-up email or landing page.
Be sure that your content can inspire your readers, is sharable, is easy to digest and gives your readers deliverables they can immediately act upon. You’ll also want to try using personalization in your content by using segmentation variables available to you within your email marketing solution of choice.
No one wants to be sent something they can’t use so be sure that your emails are equipped with content they can use otherwise, you’ll see the numbers in your email list dwindle down.
It’s also important to be consistent with your delivery. Your subscribers signed up with you because they know they will get something very useful from you so be sure that you deliver to their expectations!
Analyze your email performance
Once you’ve sent out your first batch of emails, it’s critical for you to analyze their performance. Are your subscribers opening your emails? Are emails bouncing? How much time are subscribers spending on your emails? Are they clicking on a link in your email to your store or to a landing page you created that contains special offers? Knowing how your emails perform sets you up for later success because you’ll start seeing how your customers engage with your email content.
How do you even start with email analytics? The platform you choose for email marketing would typically have built-in analytics. But if the one you choose doesn’t, Google offers a free campaign tracking solution with their Google Analytics tool. Dave Chaffey from Smart Insights outlines exactly how to do this in his article.
Test, test, and test some more!
It’s absolutely a must to A/B test new emails you will send out next. You’re already working with a customer base that responds and engages with your emails so it makes sense that you try new email approaches to see how your customer base reacts. Improving here can help increase your conversion rates and make a huge difference in your strategic approach to email marketing.
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By now I hope you have a better understanding of how email marketing works and its perks for your business. Email marketing is a great marketing channel to increase your bottom line and grow your customer base and customer retention.
