For those who have worked longer in the field of marketing, email campaigns were perhaps one of the first digital marketing activities.
Still in the early 2010s, email marketing was more popular than social media channels, even if it is hard to believe today. It simply means sending emails to current and potential customers with the goal of increasing brand awareness, driving engagement, nurturing leads, or making a sale.
Despite the rise of social media and other digital channels, email marketing is still a valuable tool in the digital marketing toolpack.
Plan your email campaign
What is the goal for your campaign? The goal can be, for example, to get people to download material attached to the email, get them to click to your website or sign up for an event, or even buy. Don’t try to do everything in a single email, and keep in mind that selling is not always the best thing to go for. To better plan your email, think about the audience. You don’t have to spam the whole list of email addresses every time. Choose a specific audience – whether it’s people who have left products in their shopping trolley, people who have filled in a form on your website but never answered to the email your sales team sent, or people who actively open your newsletter – and target the email for them. When you better know the audience, it is easier to plan the goal by using the customer’s journey.
Think about the people you are sending the email to and when it would be an optimal time for them to receive the email. If you are a European company selling to Australia or Japan, it is rather bad timing if the email is sent at an optimal time from a Central European perspective.
Pay attention to the design
Make sure your email is attractive and easy to read, that it looks and sounds like your brand, and that it looks good on both mobile and desktop. It is worth the money to pay for a designer to take a look at your templates. Keep in mind that the templates designed by a professional are not a one-time only material but can be used for a long time. Add white space, and use different sized fonts and pictures. Make sure the email looks nice.
Read data
You may check some basic data and learn that the best date for emails is Tuesday and get started with this, but keep in mind that only your own data tells the truth. As always with digital marketing, you receive loads of data, and by analysing it, you will learn what works with your audience. Take advantage of the data your emailing service provider offers. See what links or photo placements have received most clicks, what kind of a title has received most openings, and who has opened the newsletter and how many times. Tag your links to make sure all you get the info about sales or other activities that have resulted from your email campaign.
