Effective Email Campaigns

A one time email effort isn't effective. Sending a one time email to a database of clients hoping to generate awareness, leads, etc., will prove to be both time consuming and the least cost effective marketing to put your marketing dollars toward. Email marketing is just a piece of your overall strategy to get your product in front of people. Email marketing needs to be used as a piece of your overall web strategy. Creating a one time ad hoping to generate something will most likely fail.

Here are some things to keep in mind while creating your email campaign.

1. Email Campaign Planning. - - Having a well thought out plan will aid in the develop, execution and follow up of any email marketing campaign.
   
   
   • Who is your campaign targeting? Understanding the audience and their needs should be the first question that is asked and determined. Understanding your audience will help you create, promote and deliver a campaign that will engage more of your audience. Having one email campaign may not be suitable for your entire audience.
     
   • What are you objectives & goals? What is the purpose of these email effort? Drive more traffic, creating awareness, generate leads or sales, improve customer relations? Defining and understanding your objectives and goals will help you in tailoring a campaign that is attractive your to your target audience.
     
2. Be Personal & Relevant! - - After you have identified your target audience, use that information to create a personalized and relevant campaign! Developing special offers for certain audiences, writing compelling text for another audience can be a difference in campaign success. Understand who your audience is and personalize your message!
   
   
3. The Subject Line - - Remember this is going to be the first thing people will see. They will read the subject line and determine whether they will open the email of not. Keeping the subject line is best and let readers know what is inside the email. Including your company name or personalizing the subject line can be key in high open rates. Using the keywords 'Free' can trigger spam filters and deliver your message to the black hole of 'Spam' or 'Junk Mail' folders where they may never see the light of day.
   
4. The Campaign Design - -
   
   
   • Offer choices - -Having HTML and text versions are a must. Offering a choice to your audiences will be a great benefit in click through rates. DON'T use one large image. Some images may be blocked, thus your message will be lost.
     
   • Short and Sweet - -Avoid scrolling. Scrolling emails may leave your audience quickly skimming your message and not click through to the awesome landing page you created.
     
   • Call to actions - - What are they? Where are they? Make sure your calls to action are prominent. Make sure you have more than one.
     
5. The RELEVANT landing page - - Creating a relevant landing page that is attractive and pertinent to your customers may be tricky. Don't use the index page as a catch all for all your links. As your landing page is one of your most important pages on your website, your index page probably is not an appropriate landing page for a campaign.When creating a landing page keep in mind your objectives and goals that were determined when creating this email campaign in the first place. You don't want to leave your readers scratching their heads when they click through. Make the click through a simple seamless process. The simpler the better for your audience.
   
   
   • Individual landing pages - - Each campaign should have their own landing page. Very seldom do landing pages double for other campaigns.
     
   • Mirror - Make sure your landing page and email campaign look and feel like each other. Use the same images, the same text and the same content. Again, you do not want to confuse the reader.
     
   • Calls to action - - Like the email campaign, your calls to action need to be prominent. Tell the customer what you want them to do.
     
   • Create links - - Perhaps out of habit people like to click. Make sure you have click able links to other relevant items on the site.
     
6. Test, test and TEST! - - First impressions can be the last impression. Make sure your email campaign is tested for:
   
   
   • Email compatibility. There are many email platforms and the emails should appear the same through all of them. The most popular are Outlook, Yahoo, Gmail, and Hotmail. Depending on the spam filters and individual settings some images or emails will not appear exactly the same. Reach 90% of your audience.
     
   • Broken? Are you images broken, worst of all are your links broken?
     
   • Test. Test the email yourself as well as other people to ensure everything is working properly.
     
7. Monitoring and Measuring Results - - Understanding your results for a specific campaign can only shape your next campaigns. The more people who open the email the better. The more people who click through to your landing pages the better. Studying and analyzing your email campaign performance can be the key to a more successful next email.
   
8. It's okay to modify - - In fact, modifying your email campaign to tailor your past results can only help you to become more successful. Understanding your audience, creating and developing a compelling email campaign, creating and developing a compelling landing page will only be perfected in time. Use your results to modify and create a better email campaign next time around.
   
9. Keep your list accurate and up to date - - Making sure you have a scrubbed list and a list that has accurate names and titles will only ensure the effectiveness and success of a campaign.