Insights.
Email marketing - what is it and how to start an email campaign
21 Jan, 2018
Marketing
Email marketing is one of the most effective forms of marketing that, when used correctly, is the surest way to reach your potential customers.
One advantage of this approach is the ability to effectively promote a specific product or service. Targeted email messages are sent to a selected group of users or even to a single user.
With a good strategy, you can get closer to your users and build and maintain a relationship with them. For example, you can prepare special offers for individual customers on their birthday. Users love it when you take care of them, and with such a small gesture you can gain great sympathy from your subscribers.
How to start a campaign
1. Collecting contacts and choosing a tool to send emails
The first and most important thing you need for email marketing is permission to send emails to your users. If you have email addresses of your users that have not been collected for the newsletter, you must first collect new email addresses. Once you have collected them, choose a tool for sending emails. We recommend MailChimp - a simple tool that you can easily master even as a beginner.
2. Input/import existing email contacts
Enter by hand, copy/paste or import method via Excel or another spreadsheet, depending on what you prefer.
3. Segmentation of the contact list
Segmentation is a process where we divide users into smaller groups based on our segmentation criteria. This allows us to send personalised and relevant emails to each group. Segmentation results in a higher likelihood of opening the email and more clicks within the email itself.
Examples of subscriber segmentation:
New subscribers - e.g. sending a welcome message to each new subscriber
Preferences - e.g. subscribers who want to hear news on the blog or those who want to be informed about discounts
Interests - e.g. Subscribers who like to watch horror films more than those who like comedies
Location - for example, inform your subscribers who are in your area about an upcoming event
By email open rate - for example, reward subscribers who are active. For example, reward subscribers who are active and open emails
4. Email sending calendar
Determine the days and hours you send emails because people get used to receiving your emails at certain times. Timing can have a significant impact on whether your subscribers open your emails. Therefore, think carefully about when you send your emails. Google Analytics gives you the best answer to the question of when you should send emails.
We recommend sending emails in the morning, when most people are on their devices and checking their emails. However, it mostly depends on your audience, so test the days and hours you send emails to determine the best time to send.
You won't be able to figure out the perfect time right away, but do some A/B testing to determine which time periods work best for you.
5. User-friendly content
In this day and age where we are all inundated with a multitude of emails, you need to stand out from the crowd and get the user to read your email. Tailor the content of your email to your organisation. The most important thing is that you offer users something of value, such as event information, e-books, discounts or special offers.
Your email needs to be simple, well formatted and readable:
- Keep the title as short as possible
- Address the user by name
- Write in short paragraphs - users don't have time to read illegible emails
- Highlight the most important things (bold, italicise or underline the most important words)
- Choose a responsive template - many users read emails on their mobile phones
6. Monitoring, analysing and adapting
Tracking the analyses allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of an entire campaign or a specific part of it. This allows you to compare the success of different campaigns and make informed decisions about future marketing strategies. Track metrics such as: How many people opened the email, how many clicked on the links, and how many emails were not read. Let this guide you and adjust your campaign according to the results.
Tools
We have selected three of our favourite tools to help you create email campaigns.
1. MailChimp - one of the most popular tools for creating email campaigns. It offers good tools for email design, campaign analysis and data collection. It can be used for free until your email list exceeds 2,000 subscribers, while the paid version starts at $10 per month.
2. Constant Contact - one of the largest and fastest growing email services. Any user can check and analyse email campaigns, share emails on social networks and save photos and files. It offers a 60-day free trial, after which the price starts at $20 per month.
3. GetResponse - is the easiest tool to use and is ideal for absolute beginners. With the help of GetResponse, you can easily create engaging registration forms, landing pages, A/B tests and track campaign results. You can try GetResponse for 30 days, after which the price starts at $15 per month.
Conclusion
Email marketing continues to deliver good results, so if you're not sending emails yet, you should start now. Simply collect email addresses, choose one of the email tools, design a strategy and automate emails, track the results and let them guide you. Make sure you send specific, targeted and personalised messages that are optimised for multiple devices.
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