How to Run a Successful Email Marketing Campaign

Since rising in the early days of the internet, email marketing remains one of the most effective digital marketing methods for increasing website traffic. If your brand is looking to get more leads, launching a research-driven campaign is a wise decision.

But with over four billion emails sent in 2021 alone, you can’t expect to achieve your goals with an impulsive email marketing campaign that fails to address your brand’s specific needs.

Instead, consider the following tips to create an email marketing plan that strengthens your relationship with customers and ensures they receive your latest updates.

Define Your Campaign Goals

Just like other digital marketing strategies, including SEO and Google Ads, you need to define your campaign’s goals before sending out emails. As your objectives determine the way forward, this thoughtful approach is crucial to your success.

So, how do you determine your objective? Think about whether you’re trying to increase brand awareness, drive more website traffic, generate feedback or boost sales. Also, consider how these fit into your brand’s broader marketing goals. 

Once you’ve decided on the ideal outcome for your email marketing campaign, you can workshop what message will resonate wonderfully with your target audience.

Know Your Target Audience

Every business has its own audience that appreciates its products and services for different reasons. Define your audience by researching their demographics, such as age, gender, location and income. This information will dictate how you craft your email copy and imagery.

You should also research your audience’s general interests and online behaviours to form a complete picture of their values and help you capture their attention.

Backed by a clear campaign goal and audience, create an email marketing plan that appeals to their specific needs. Naturally, this leads to more leads taking the ideal action, whether that’s purchasing or following you on social media.

Segment Your Email Lists

It’s great if your business has established a thriving target email list with hundreds or thousands of people ready to receive your message. However, you can ensure more people take effective action by segmenting this into smaller groups.

What is the purpose of this? By dividing your list into groups of consumers, you can send tailored emails that deliver a message that addresses their exact wishes.

Tracking how your traffic interacts with your website provides sharp insights into their interests. For example, a common email segment identifies customers who abandoned their shopping carts. A timely email reminds them to complete their purchase.

Send at the Perfect Time

An email marketing campaign is most effective when your subscribers look at their inbox just as the email arrives. Although every brand’s audience will have different habits, certain times consistently deliver better open rates.

The ideal time to send your email is typically between 10 am and 2 pm, as your message won’t get lost in the morning rush when people are just getting stuck into the working day.

Meanwhile, if your audience spans the globe, always account for changes in time zones to ensure your message arrives at the perfect time. Use email automation tools to schedule your campaign in advance.

Design Attractive Emails

Even if you have a great deal for customers, you face an uphill battle to grab their attention with a bland or poorly formatted email. Instead, opt for a highly visual, consistent and neatly structured template that ensures customers receive the message.

With the average person only willing to give you a few moments of their day, the ‘inverted pyramid’ format keeps customers focused on your brand. This starts with an eye-catching banner image and headline that directs their interest down the page. 

Then, a tailored message and clickable buttons with a clear call to action get people to visit your website. Always remember to keep image file sizes small to ensure they load fast no matter the user’s device.

Personalise Your Emails

Personalisation has consistently improved digital marketing outcomes, with email marketing campaigns benefiting hugely from bespoke enhancements. For instance, just including the recipient’s name in the subject line can increase open rates by 26%.

However, you can take things further by building dynamic content into your email campaigns. This AI-driven technique will automatically change sections of your content to ensure they appeal to individual users.

This personalisation could be a special discount on a product line that the user has consistently shown interest in. It could also be content that changes by the season so that it suits customers situated around the globe.

A/B Test Your Campaign

Although you can rigorously plan out every detail of your campaign, you won’t know how it performs until you click send. However, you can use A/B testing to assess each email and determine the most effective approach.

So, how does it work? When you create an email marketing plan, produce two copies of the same email with different subject lines. You might also decide to use different wording for a deal or include a previously unused call-to-action.

By sending versions of the same email to your target email list, you can measure the results to determine which one delivers the best outcome.

Use Email Marketing Tools

Managing a high-quality email marketing campaign takes a massive amount of work. Fortunately, several comprehensive email automation services remove much of the legwork to ensure you can focus on other needs.

Perhaps the most popular automation tools are Mailchimp, Campaign Monitor and HubSpot. Although they offer many of the same features, you’re bound to find one where the user experience matches your particular workflow. 

Each email marketing tool also has different pricing structures, so depending on your business, one of them has the features you need for the ideal level of investment.

Boost Your Email Marketing Performance

Leading a highly productive email marketing campaign has the power to revolutionise your business. Alongside a clearly defined goal and target audience, delivering a tailored message at the perfect time ensures you drive more conversions.

The talented team at First Page Digital leads incredible email marketing campaigns for companies around the globe. With our specialists using the latest techniques, we can skyrocket your success with a forward-thinking strategy.

Get in touch today to discover how we’ll tailor a campaign that resonates with your customer base and ensures they pay attention when your brand’s emails arrive in their inbox.