Creating a Successful E-mail Campaign

Company newsletters have long been used to share information about current events, upcoming highlights, and latest news.

E-mail newsletters offer many benefits beyond a printed form, and can be easily segmented to reach out to different audiences including:

• current customers
• past customers
• prospects
• vendors
• sales reps
• current and potential employees

To get the most from any e-mail campaign, you'll need to do some homework.

6 basic steps to planning your e-mail marketing campaign:

It’s all about the list!

Before you start to think about what you want your e-mail to say, or how you want it to look, you need to think about who you’re going to send it to…

Collecting data should be an ongoing process and you need to collect as much subscriber data as possible from every touch-point.  List acquisition is just the beginning.  If you follow list acquisition best practices (build your own list, ask for permission, validate addresses with a welcome message, etc.), you’ll have the right data that you need to begin a conversation with each subscriber.  But that’s only the first step in good list practices.

Once you have your list, don't stop there. List hygiene is critical.  To get the most from any list you should have an ongoing process for:

• correcting misspellings
• managing bounces
• removing invalid addresses
• auditing and segmenting

Create an Editorial Calendar.

Marketing is all about consistency, and that includes e-mail marketing. All too often, companies will launch their first e-mail without a follow up plan.   

Take the time to map out what you're going to say, when you're going to say it and to whom. Then spread the writing assignments around the office, that way all the work doesn't fall on one person.

In this sample e-mail marketing planning calendar, we've outlined 6 months worth of e-mails for a fake office furniture company. This simple planning tool helps you map out: 

• e-mail topics
• associated web page updates
• target audience
• draft dates
• approval dates
• launch dates

Make it Relevant.

It’s time to remove the phrase “e-mail blast” from your vocabulary.  Nothing kills your audience faster than sending unwelcome, uninteresting, and unneeded e-mails to your subscribers so stop blasting out the same message to everyone on your list!

Instead of trying to come up with a generic message that appeals to everyone, or, gasp, sending a message out to your whole list whether the information is relevant or not, take a few minutes to segment your list.  Profiling doesn’t have to be complex. Even simple segmentation works well.

Design It.

When planning your e-mail strategy, there are several design factors that you must consider as design effects deliverability, usability, and conversion. 

Be sure that you use a designer who is familiar with the differences between e-mail marketing and web design.  E-mail has a completely different set of rules and errors in the code may cause your e-mails to render incorrectly.  It’s also important to be aware of the differences of each e-mail client.  Your e-mail might look fabulous in Outlook but horrible in Gmail. 

Calls to Action.

This one is for those of you who are new to e-mail marketing.  Important messaging and calls-to-action must be kept above the fold, or in the top 300 pixels of the e-mail.  If these items are lower, they might not be visible without scrolling.  Your calls-to-action should be clear, concise, and quick.  “Download Now” might work better than “Click here to download more information.” 

Also, your calls-to-action should link to specific, targeted landing pages.  If someone clicks on a button in your message expecting to download a white paper, they shouldn’t land on your homepage.  People don’t have time to search for the information on your site so if you’re not taking them to the right place, you’ll lose them.

Statistics.

Now that your e-mail message has been launched, you can sit back, relax and watch the stats roll in!

Reporting and tracking subscriber data is generally handled through your ESP.

Be sure to track the metrics that matter (click-through, conversion, etc.), as it will help you figure out the ROI for your campaigns and you’ll know the value of each subscriber. 

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