subject: 5 Tips For Your First Email Marketing Campaign [print this page] So you're setting up your first email marketing campaign? Assuming you've assembled a bona fide list of email addresses with appropriate permissions, you're well placed to start putting together an email marketing campaign. But don't just rush into it - although employing the services of a professional agency to handle the campaign and post-campaign analysis is thoroughly recommended, there's absolutely no harm in planning the aims, goals and overall design of your first campaign.
Email Marketing & Building Relationships
Winging an email marketing campaign is risky to the point of foolish, as you can not only lose your initial investment, but also damage your brand and lose customer loyalty. Your email subscribers have given you their permission to contact them with pertinent marketing communications and it's important that you honour their trust.
The real returns from your email marketing campaigns do not necessarily rely on the promotion or service on offer, but also the relationship you're able to build via these personalised communications. So here are 5 tips to help you ensure that your email marketing campaigns hit the spot:
1.Schedule!
Time your emails to maximise open rates and click through rates. For instance, consider what the average email user is faced with on a Monday morning; they may not have opened their emails all weekend, or been away for a week and need to catch up on the backlog of emails. That means that email marketing campaigns may go to the bottom of the pile or overlooked altogether. Research has actually revealed that email marketing campaigns sent on a Tuesday or Wednesday tends to have a higher open rate than any other day of the week something you should definitely bear in mind!
What's more, if you're sending out several emails a month, try to schedule them consistently so that they always arrive in your customers" inbox on the same day and the same time each week. This creates a feeling of trust and expectation between you and your subscribers.
2.Personalise
Email marketing campaigns should always be personalised. It can be as simple as including a name at the beginning of the email (eg "Dear Robert" or "Hello Bob!"), or could be as complex as customised promotions or product recommendations based on the user's preferences. Whatever tact you take, you should find that open rates and click through rates should increase just based on this small action.
3.Preview
Many email clients - such as Apple Mail, Entourage, MS Outlook and Outlook Express - provide a preview pane where plain text and HTML emails can be seen before opening. Bearing this in mind, it's always a good idea to put the most interesting or attention-grabbing news, recommendation or promotion near the top of your email. In many instances, this preview may provide the deciding factor as to whether the email is opened or instantly resigned to the deleted items folder.
4.First Impressions Count
Consider your subject line - on average half a second is all you have to create a great first impression that compels the recipient to open the email. The subject line is arguably one of the most important aspects of your campaign and as such should have the right amount of time and effort dedicated to it. Ideally, creating a subject line for your campaign should be one of the last tasks that you undertake, and should succinctly describe the benefits and should succinctly describe the benefits or crux of your email marketing campaign, cutting out the unnecessary hyperbole.
5.Signed, Sealed, Delivered
Although it's highly advisable to personalise your email marketing communications, you should also ensure that you always include your own signature with relevant contact information and links at the end of your email (including a two or three step unsubscribe link). This not only provides an extra link back to your main website, but also adds another trustworthy angle to your communications, further bolstering your relationship with your customers.
Professional email marketing campaigns designed, managed and analysed with AC Web Design.
