Starting a Successful Email Marketing Campaign
Despite the use of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, email marketing is still a popular and successful technique for bringing in new customers or keeping current ones loyal.
Whether you’re looking for tips for a more successful campaign or you’re creating your first one ever, these ideas will help you along the path to bringing in business.
Gather Email Addresses
Of course, you can’t have a successful campaign if you have nobody to send it to, but that doesn’t mean you should start buying email addresses, either. Ask your current customers (or those who call you for information) if they’d like to sign up for your newsletter. Consider providing a discount coupon for those who do sign up as an incentive. Be ready to answer questions about how often you’ll email, how often you’ll provide discounts or exclusive offers and whether you sell email addresses to other companies. Ideally, your answers will be no more than once per week, at least once per month, and no, you’ll never sell email addresses.
Personalize Your Campaign
Nobody will pay attention to an email that obviously doesn’t mean anything to them. Personalize your emails by using subject lines directed at individual readers and being professional while using colorful images. Segmentation of your email marketing campaign is also important. Segmentation allows you to categorize your email list according to how long someone has been a customer, whether he or she is single or part of a family unit, or what types of products he or she purchased in the past. Segmentation also helps you by allowing you to determine who is a potential lead, who is already a customer and so forth.
Use Analytics to Your Advantage
Just like websites and social media, email campaigns allow you to track and analyze their success. The service you use to send your emails should allow you to track data, such as whether an email was read, how long the person kept it open, and whether it resulted in the reader contacting your company or purchasing something. You can also track whether someone decides to unsubscribe. You can use this information to tweak future campaigns so that you are sure you’re reaching your desired audience and providing it with truly relevant information.
As with most advertising campaigns, not all will be a success. Much of email marketing is trial and error, so don’t be discouraged if your first campaign lacks follow-through. Simply reevaluate it, make the necessary changes and try again.
