How To Plan and Execute Your First Email Campaign
The best thing about email marketing? It’s your own media platform. You have complete control over how and when you communicate with your audience.
Planning an email campaign allows you to build relationships with your customers, making them feel as though they are getting the inside deals or alerts. Crafting your first email campaign can be a little overwhelming. Here are some steps to follow to make sure you are on the right track:
Choose an Email Marketing Platform
First, you will want to choose a platform to run your email campaigns through. When choosing an email marketing provider you’ll want to look for a high percentage of delivery rates and tools that match your goals.
A few popular email marketing platforms include:
Once you have your chosen platform, make sure you spend some time familiarizing yourself with the platform so you don’t miss out on the services and campaign tools that are offered!
Brainstorm Content and Draft Your Campaign
Brainstorming content for your email campaigns is what makes your campaigns different and unique from other companies. You’ll want to think of creative subject lines that grab the attention of your subscribers and engaging content to place in the body of your email that leads them to your site or promotion you are offering!
Here are some tips when brainstorming email content:
Generate a word or phrase list
Try connecting random words together to create a catchy phrase or slogan
Create a mindmap to gather your thoughts
Go for quality over quantity
Nurture a creative space to set yourself up for success
Once you have brainstormed your email content it is time to create the first draft. The first draft should be clear and concise. You will want to start with a greeting, provide an overview of what your subscribers can expect from you in the future, and offer something useful to your subscribers right away!
Get Feedback and Adjust as Needed
Sharing your first email draft with your team for feedback is important to make sure that they don’t have any new ideas. Afterall, the goal of an email campaign is to grab your subscribers attention and understand your audience; no one understands your audience better than the team that works with you!
How does the copy sound? Will this message hit the mark with your audience? Edit the email content based around the feedback you receive!
Finalize, Schedule, and Send
Once you have edited the draft, you will want to make sure all of your displays and links perform properly. This is the final step before scheduling the email to be sent to your subscribers.
Scheduling the finalized email campaign can be exciting and intimidating. Once it is ready to go, send it out! Be sure to look into ideal days and times to send emails for optimal visibility.
Check Campaign Analytics
Once the email has been sent and active for a measurable time period it is time to check on your KPIs. In email marketing there are three key metrics that should be tracked; open rates, response rates, and conversion rates.
Your open rate measures how many people actually open your emails once seen in their inbox. The open rate is found by dividing the number of people who open the email by the number of people who receive the email. Typically a good email open rate can fall between 17-28% depending on the industry you are in; however, we like to aim high for around a 50% open rate.
The response rate of your email campaigns is the number of emails that are responses to your email campaign. This number takes into account direct replies to your marketing emails. Typically, a good response rate should be about 10%; however, anywhere between 10% - 25% is considered a good response rate!
The last metric you will want to measure is your conversion rate. The conversion rate is the percentage of subscribers who take the required action in your email campaign. Generally around 5% is a good conversion rate but it again all depends on the industry you are in. Whether you are tracking clicks to your site or direct clicks from a promotion within the email, you should always aim for a higher rate than your last campaign!
Email marketing allows you to start small and grow your campaigns into automated emails with more and more subscribers. It is best practice to segment your email campaigns to send based on customer behavior and data with personalized content. Remember to always track your metrics to measure growth and make changes for future campaigns!
