Do you want to know how to run a successful email marketing campaign? With approximately 125 billion business emails received and sent daily, there is a lot of competition for the attention of your audience.
The number of emails sent every day also continues to increase. This is why it is essential to learn how to do marketing by e-mail well, in order to be able to reach your target audience and keep their interest.
At the end of this guide, you will know the steps necessary to carry out an e-mail marketing campaign in order to obtain more attention, commitment, prospects, and sales.
What is an e-mail marketing campaign?
An e-mail marketing campaign is an e-mail sent by a company to one or more customers or prospects. A successful e-mail marketing campaign will encourage recipients to act, engage with your business, and help you get more prospects and sales.
One of the big benefits of email marketing is that people still use email widely. In fact, as this article reveals the reasons why e-mail marketing is not dead, 90% of adults and 74% of adolescents still use email regularly.
This makes e-mail marketing the ideal tool for building customer relationships to help you generate prospects and sales.
But before launching a successful email marketing campaign, you need to do some preparatory work, so you’re ready to succeed when you finally send this first email.
There are several tools that can simplify your task. It is worth investing in an all-in-one tool like:
Systeme.io: Manage your entire business online from a powerful and practical all-in-one software
How to run an email marketing campaign
Here are the steps to follow to create and launch your email marketing campaign :
1. Create a targeted mailing list
The most successful email marketing campaigns start with a list of emails filled with qualified prospects interested in what you have to offer. The best way to create a targeted mailing list is to convert visitors to your website into subscribers.
But did you know that on average 80% of visitors to your site will permanently leave your site, without registering for your newsletter?
This is why we recommend that you use exit intention contextual windows to convert abandoned visitors into subscribers and customers.
Output intention pop-ups detect user behavior to encourage them to take action (example: sign up for an infoltre) at the precise moment when they are about to leave your site forever. This smart technology can skyrocket your conversions.
What can a contextual exit intention window do for your business? See our case studies for examples:
2. Know your goals
All good marketing begins with setting goals, and e-mail marketing is no different. To run a successful email marketing campaign, think about what you want to achieve. Typical objectives of an e-mail marketing campaign include:
- Welcome new subscribers and tell them about your business and your values to start building a relationship with them.
- Stimulate the commitment with your content and your business, whether it is promoting a webinar or trying to make an initial sale.
- Feed existing subscribers by offering them something they will appreciate.
- Re-hire subscribers who have not been particularly active.
- Segmentation of your subscribers to be able to send more targeted e-mail marketing campaigns.
You can also set email marketing goals based on your conversion goals.
3. Understand types of e-mails
It is also important to understand the different types of emails you can send. People put them together in different ways, but here are the three main types of e-mails.
We all know the promotional emails, which talk about offers and sales and are self-promotional.
Then there are the relationship emails, which give subscribers what you promised, such as a weekly newsletter, a free gift, relevant information they can use, etc.
There are also transactional emails, which include :
- Subscriber registration confirmation
- Welcome messages
- Order or purchase confirmation
- Acknowledgments of changes to subscriber information
Transaction emails are usually triggered by subscriber actions and relate to an action they have taken on your site.
Now that you know the types of emails you can send, it’s time to take the next step to create a successful email marketing campaign.
4. Know your audience
If you’ve been marketing by email for a while, you’ll probably know who your audience is. If you are just getting started, you will need to make informed assumptions so that you can target your content. Do not worry; you will start collecting information about subscribers as soon as you send your first campaign, so next time you will have real data to use.
In the meantime, collect data from Google Analytics and your social media profiles, such as the Facebook Insights data below :
If you have a small budget, you can also use an all-in-one tool at low cost to facilitate your tasks and avoid walking around in the tools to get the data.
Both sources contain data on demographic data, location and areas of interest, as well as many other statistics, which will give you an overview of who your customers are and what interests them. It is a good starting point for designing successful email marketing campaigns.
5. Use technology wisely
The best email marketing services have tools to help you create more successful email marketing campaigns. Look for features such as :
- Easy creation and automation of campaigns, including models and workflows.
- Integrations with software you already use, such as WordPress and OptinMonster.
- Ways to segment your audience.
- In-depth analysis of campaign performance by e-mail.
Features such as the Systeme email automation illustrated below will help you plan transactional emails and blog-based updates, respond quickly to customers and create and broadcast promotional and relational emails. These are all good ways to succeed with e-mail marketing.
6. Create excellent opt-ins
It goes without saying that you must have people on your mailing list to run a successful campaign.
To do this, you will need to create attractive opt-in forms that attract attention and encourage people to register. Experiment with different types of opt-in forms on different parts of your site, including :
- Welcome pages, which appear when people arrive on your site. You can also use the page slide function so that people can access the content directly when ready.
- Lightbox, which can appear on any page and temporarily hide the rest of the content to focus on the opt-in. These convert very well. (Watch out for user experience)
- Output intention contextual windows, which appear when people are about to leave the site. Now is a good time to offer your main magnet.
Make sure to check out OptinMonster for ALL options for creating opt-ins, exit pop-ups, ribbon banners, etc for your email marketing campaign to double, even triple your conversion rates.
For better results, place the opt-ins in several places and choose their display mode thanks to the rules and targeting at the page level. This reduces the level of discomfort while maintaining efficiency.
7. Plan emails and follow-ups
Once you know your goals, the type of email, and the public, and you’ve drawn people to your list with targeted opt-ins, it’s time to plan your email marketing campaign. This will give you an overview to use when you start creating emails in steps 7 to 9.
A good approach is to note :
- Frequency of emails, which we will examine below
- Type of email, as mentioned in step 2
- A rough idea of the content
- The main action you want subscribers to take (such as registering for an event, following you on social media, buying a product)
Kuno Creative says that when creating your emails, you need to make them timely, relevant, interesting and valuable.
For example, many companies welcome new subscribers with a short set of e-mails to help them find out about their products and services.
Asana sends a series of 4 emails. The subject lines of the email are:
- Welcome to Asana
- What do you need this week?
- Plan your day with Asana
- Reach your next deadline
The first is a welcome email with 3 key tasks that you can accomplish in the software. Three days later, another email asks you what to do and encourages you to start using the product. Two days later, an email talks about the Asana dashboard.
The series ends with an email two days later, which highlights the view of the calendar.
Do not overwhelm your subscribers by sending emails too often. This will send them directly to the spam button. Instead, stick to the schedule you told them about so they know what to expect.
Do not be afraid to seek the advice of subscribers on email planning via a survey or survey. You can also offer an opt down option for those who like your emails but don’t want to receive them as often.
Once you have defined your email plan, it is time to start writing.
8. Create an optimal object for your email
A good starting point for any successful email marketing campaign is the subject line, which plays a crucial role in encouraging people to open and click on your emails. Like the title of your blog article, an email object line should draw attention so that people want to go further.
You also don’t have a lot of words to make an impression; show that most object lines range from 41 to 50 characters. Even less of your object line is displayed on the mobile screens, so it is wise to put the most important parts at the start.
Options to improve your object lines include:
- Tell people what they will get when they open your emails; no need to be intelligent or spiritual unless it is your brand personality.
- Adding customization because including the names of people in the object line can keep them more engaged.
- Avoid the spam trigger words that your emails arrive in the inbox.
- Borrow one of these high conversion email object lines and adapt it for your own use.
9. Write an optimized email body
Then it’s time to write your marketing message by email. You have to create a hook from the start that will make people want to keep reading.
For better results, keep your marketing message by e-mail short and avoid submitting your offer too soon. You have to make sure that people get comfortable first.
Contact subscribers by name. Personalized emails are more successful. to customize your emails as needed by sending e-mails that meet different user expectations. This makes them more targeted and more likely to succeed. that educating and segmenting your audience will increase your email click rate to 50%.
Other elements to consider when writing your email message include:
- A personal story: Being human never hurts a business and often helps people make an emotional connection. Some of the most successful emails we have seen use this technique.
- Something of value to your readers: It can be an element of content, useful information, or the resource you promote. Explain clearly how it will help them. The example below of SEMrush highlights the potential benefit of the first line of the email.
- A survey, survey, GIF, or video, all of which are proven to keep readers more engaged.
Of course, you don’t have to put it all in each email. Ideally, your emails should be short, with only a few main points in each of them. If you decide to go longer, make your email readable and easy to read.
The last part of your email marketing message is the call to action (CTA). Your CTA reflects the most important thing you want people to do when they read your email.
CTAs usually appear several times in your email marketing message. Although you do not wish to present to readers too soon, there will likely be a CTA near the start, in the middle, and towards the end.
The best calls to action are short and clear. If your message is correct, then it should be easy for subscribers to click on your link.
10. Focus on email marketing design
E-mail design is important in any successful e-mail marketing campaign. If your emails look terrible, it reflects you badly and can keep people from reading it. With more people than ever reading emails on mobile devices, it is important to use a reactive email template so that your email resizes automatically so people read it on a phone, tablet, or desktop computer.
Most good emails contain more text than images. There is no question that the images make your email more attractive, but know that many people deactivate the images. This means that your email should always work even if people cannot see it.
Our advice: avoid hiding information in the images, as this is bad for the accessibility of emails. And don’t forget to use alt tags to describe the images so that the people who disabled them know what they are supposed to see. A good description can encourage subscribers to activate the images, which will make your emails even more beautiful.
11. Test and follow-up
Finally, sending your email is only the first step toward successful email marketing. To be truly successful, you need to collect data to improve future campaigns.
This means testing everything: design and layout, e-mail marketing message, object lines, and action incentives. Consider testing emails with different segments and also experiment with the hours of email sending.
You should also monitor the analysis of your service provider’s emails regarding openings, clicks, subscriptions, and transfers. This will allow you to understand what works and what does not work with email marketing.
Another problem to watch out for is the reputation of your sender, which affects the deliverability of emails. Use it to see if there are alarm signals that could prevent your emails from reaching subscriber reception boxes.
Finally, manage your email subscriber list by trying to re-hire inactive subscribers and deleting them if your attempts fail. It is preferable that the opening and clicking rates of e-mail marketing have fewer active subscribers than a large number of inactive subscribers.
Now that you know how to run a successful email marketing campaign that can help you double or even triple your sales using email and other marketing techniques.
