Email marketing: Top 6 ways to become resourceful with success

Table of Content
Step 1: Define your email marketing objectives.
Step 2: Create an email list for marketing purposes.
Bring in a list of well-known contacts
Re-create the list from scratch.
Title Bar
Slider
Upper Sidebar
Complete Post
Lightboxes
Step 3: Decide what kind of email campaigns to send.
Newsletter
Advertising Offer
Announcement
Event Invitation
Step 4: Construct your initial email marketing strategy.
Make your campaign's structure clear to read.
To increase engagement, use visuals and images.
Create Custom Email Campaigns
Make sure every subscriber is relevant to your campaign.
Make sure your campaigns are consistent with your brand and foster trust.
Make conversion simple.
When deciding when to launch your campaigns, be strategic
Submit more than just promotional material
Discover Ideas for Sending More Useful Email Campaigns
Step 5: Evaluate the success of your campaign
Subject Line Split Testing to Increase Open Rates
Improving Email Marketing Campaign Click-Through Rates

Are you aware of the digital marketing practice that provides three times as many email accounts as there are Facebook and Twitter accounts combined? Or does that email have a 6x higher click-through rate than Twitter does?

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You are probably aware from reports that email offers the highest return on investment of any marketing channel. You probably can't wait to start utilizing email to increase sales and revenue for your company. You probably want to know:

• How precisely do I begin?
• What actions do I have to take?
• How can I create a list?
• How do I gauge my progress?

With the help of this comprehensive guide, you can successfully launch an email marketing campaign and grow your business.

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Step 1: Define your email marketing objectives.

It could be alluring to just up for an email marketing service like Campaign Monitor and launch your first campaign.

But before diving in headfirst, it's important to stop and consider your objectives and what you truly hope to accomplish using email, as this will affect the kind of campaigns you send, the audience you target, the content you include, and the metrics by which you gauge success.

Due to its ability to increase conversion rates and foster brand loyalty, email should play a significant role in every digital marketing strategy.

Aligning your email marketing initiative's goals with your company's larger marketing objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs) is the key to setting the right objectives. Is increasing new product signups the objective? Does your sales staff have new leads? more people to attend your event? Added contributions to your cause?

It's important to take some time to consider your goals before beginning email marketing because it is the most effective way to reach your audience and can be utilized to accomplish a variety of different goals.

Here are some examples of how Campaign Monitor customers utilize email marketing to assist you in deciding what your goals should be:

BuzzFeed - The well-known news and entertainment website generates income by selling adverts, thus increasing traffic is a top priority for their marketing staff. In light of this, BuzzFeed often publishes email newsletters with links to articles on its website to boost both the volume of monthly visitors and the cash they bring in.

Rip Curl - The sale of wetsuits, t-shirts, board shorts, and other surfing gear brings in money for the global surfing brand. Their marketing staff wants to boost sales, so they use email to advertise new products they're offering and encourage customers to visit their online or physical stores to buy them.

UNICEF –  The international nonprofit organization offers moms and kids in underdeveloped countries all over the world humanitarian relief and support. Donations are the key to their digital marketing team's success, therefore they employ email marketing to connect with their donor base, inform them about the relief initiatives UNICEF is pursuing, and solicit donations.

SXSW, Inc. – Some of the most well-known events in the world, such as the annual SXSW film, music, and interactive festivals held in Austin, Texas, are put on by this lean corporation. Their marketing team uses email marketing to inform subscribers when new performers and lecturers are added to the lineup to promote ticket sales and attendance at these events.

Soho House – Celebrities and media moguls from all around the world frequently hang out at this famous members-only club. Their marketing staff uses email marketing to keep their members informed about events and functions they can attend to maintain their member base's interest in the club and regular use of the facilities.

As you can see from these examples, establishing your email strategy before you start sending will make it much easier to decide what to send and to whom, as well as enable you to develop targeted, high-performing email campaigns that will help you reach your marketing objectives.


Step 2: Create an email list for marketing purposes.

It's time to start building your email list so you can start delivering campaigns that will help you reach your goals now that you've decided what you want to get out of email marketing.

You can develop your email list in a few different ways, but the most effective strategy for each campaign will ultimately depend on the objectives you set in Step 1.

Bring in a list of well-known contacts

If you want to use email to stay in touch with current customers, you can build your email list largely by entering their information into the email marketing tool of your choice.

Customers of Campaign Monitor can either connect their accounts to the tools where their customer data resides (such as their CRM, accounting, eCommerce tool, and hundreds of others) and have the data automatically sync into their Campaign Monitor accounts, or they can manually upload an existing list (from, for example, an Excel file).

However, make sure you have sufficient authority to email these subscribers before importing any contacts. If you're unsure, consult our permissions guide or get in touch with our support staff, who would be pleased to talk to you about permissions and submitting your list.

Re-create the list from scratch.

You'll need to start gathering email addresses and creating your list from the beginning if you intend to utilize email to interact with an audience whose email address you might not already have.

Fortunately for you, the majority of the most effective email marketers out there use a 2-part strategy for growing their email lists. The equation is:

A valuable incentive + simple subscribe opportunities = a large email list

Although it is somewhat simplified, it is also just logic. No matter how many subscription options you provide a visitor, it's doubtful they'll take advantage of them without a worthwhile perk. And no matter how great your offer is, if you want people to subscribe to your list, you still need to make it simple for them to do so.

What makes for a wonderful incentive is the real query. And how can you make joining your list straightforward?

Here are some incentives you may use to get people to subscribe to your email list, though this is covered in much more detail in our email list development guide:

Compelling content – Offering to deliver your greatest content to subscribers through email if you run a blog or create content for your website is a potent inducement for people to sign up for your list.

First-order discounts - If you run an online business where you sell products, giving customers a discount on their first purchase in exchange for joining your email list is a fantastic incentive. It not only entices individuals to subscribe but also provides a reason for them to buy.

Free or expedited shipping upgrade - Giving your consumers free or upgraded shipping with their purchase is a terrific way to entice them to subscribe to your list. This offer is not only very pertinent, especially when made available throughout the checkout process, but it is also a strong incentive for consumers to subscribe because it will help them acquire the item they want faster.

Additionally, providing many straightforward subscription possibilities is a crucial component of the equation because it makes it simple for consumers to opt in. Here are a few suggestions, while the type of subscription form you use will depend on the incentive you're providing:

Title Bar

The Header Bar, which is located at the very top of your website, has a signup form and a call to action inviting visitors to join.

Using technologies like Hello Bar and SumoMe, Campaign Monitor users can quickly add a Header Bar to their websites. Any email addresses you collect through the Header Bar will be added instantly to the list of your choice in your Campaign Monitor account.

Slider

A slider is a little box that "slides in" to the bottom corner of your page and has a call to action asking visitors to subscribe along with a spot for them to input their email addresses.

Scroll Box is a great tool for doing this on your website (part of the SumoMe suite of tools). With the help of this straightforward tool, you can quickly create and add a Slider to your website. It also seamlessly interacts with Campaign Monitor, allowing you to add any email addresses you collect to your list.

You can easily create a new audience for your email marketing campaigns by using the email list development formula outlined above and pairing a worthwhile reward with obvious subscription possibilities.


Upper Sidebar

An opt-in for your subscriber list is best placed in your site's sidebar, which is often seen in blog posts and article sections. The opt-in should ideally be placed above the fold in the top section of the sidebar for optimal visibility, ensuring that it is viewed first.

This works best with a right-aligned sidebar because it capitalizes on the fact that visitors tend to skim material in an "F" pattern, making your opt-in CTA prominently displayed as soon as they arrive on your website, blog, or article.


Complete Post

It's reasonable to presume a visitor appreciated the read if they finished reading your article. Therefore, why not ask them to sign up so they won't miss out on future content?

In an area where businesses would ordinarily rarely put a call-to-action other than to encourage readers to comment and share, end-of-post opt-ins are a terrific spot to gather subscribers. Instead, combine your newsletter opt-in with a graphic call to action.

If you provide a content upgrade in context (on the subject) with the post in question, your conversion rates will undoubtedly increase.

Developing a new audience for your email marketing campaigns is simple if you use the email list-building formula outlined above and combine a worthwhile reward with obvious subscription possibilities.


Lightboxes

Numerous studies and testing have demonstrated that pop-ups can be useful, even though some people may find them obtrusive and bothersome. You need to do a few things perfectly to make an efficient pop-up opt-in that won't alienate your audience:

• The optimal price offer
• a compelling plea for action
• Timing

One to pay attention to is timing. A pop-up opt-in that appears after a reader has finished reading an article, or when they have scrolled down around 3/4 of the page, is much more likely to convert than one that appears on every page of the website as soon as a visitor arrives.

Some websites only display lightbox opt-ins when a user indicates an intention to leave (moving the mouse cursor outside the browser area). Author Neil Patel, who has written several best-selling books for the New York Times, tested opt-ins with exit intent and was able to boost conversions by 46%.

Test several lightbox opt-in messages and times to see which has the highest conversion rate for new subscribers.


Step 3: Decide what kind of email campaigns to send.

Email marketers like you can send subscribers a variety of email campaigns, and which one you choose will largely depend on the objectives you set in Step 1.

Let's examine the various campaign kinds and how they might assist you in achieving your email marketing objectives.


Newsletter

An email newsletter is a campaign that is sent out regularly and usually focuses on a single important subject.

Campaign AirBnB, a monitor client, often distributes an excellent newsletter to its network of independent photographers.

As you can see, the campaign is sent out once a month and revolves around the topic of photography advice and anecdotes.

A newsletter is the ideal form of a campaign to send if your objective is to stay in touch with a list of people you already know (such as current clients). It will keep your company and its goods in customers' minds and encourage them to visit your website again.

Visit our blog post on the anatomy of a flawless email newsletter for a closer look at the essential components to include.


Advertising Offer

In essence, every email campaign you send to elicit a response qualifies as a marketing offer email.

This can manifest in a variety of ways, such as:

a promotion exhibiting some of the newest stock and enticing consumers to buy
a campaign promoting a sale or other special deal on your goods or services


Announcement

An email sent to your subscribers advertising a new good, feature, or service is known as an announcement campaign.

This email from Campaign Monitor client Showtime announcing the premiere of their new program Penny Dreadful is a perfect illustration of an announcement campaign.


Event Invitation

A campaign to spread the word about your event and entice people to come is an event invitation email.

As you can see, the ad invites subscribers to the 2016 MKX launch and includes information on the occasion's date, time, and location as well as how to RSVP.

As previously stated, the kind of email campaign you send depends on your email objectives. Sending marketing offers and announcement campaigns will produce the best results if you're trying to increase direct sales, but if you just want to keep your current consumers informed about your business's latest projects, goods, or advancements, sending a regular newsletter will work best.


Step 4: Construct your initial email marketing strategy.

It's time to start developing your email now that you have chosen your objectives, established a small audience, and decided on the kind of campaign you'll send.

Email marketing campaign creation is made relatively simple by tools like Campaign Monitor, but there are several essentials you should be aware of to ensure the best outcomes from each campaign.

View our email templates that you can drag and drop, as well as our tutorial on email picture editing.


Make your campaign's structure clear to read.

Adults have an attention span that lasts, on average, eight seconds, according to research. Because consumers have such a short attention span, you may presume that they are scanning your campaigns rather than meticulously reading every word in search of something interesting.

It's not the ideal strategy to create lengthy, text-heavy email messages. Your emails must be formatted to encourage readers to read your content and direct them to the email's call to action.

As you can see from the aforementioned example, emails that adhere to the model include a brief headline that highlights the campaign's main message as well as supporting details and pictures to persuade readers to click through. The next step is then crystal evident to the reader thanks to a large call to action button.

To make your emails easy to read, use the inverted pyramid model. This will help to ensure that your campaigns are seen and have a good click-through rate.


To increase engagement, use visuals and images.

The email in the pyramid model example up top has mainly visual content and very little text. Ideally, you should stay away from text walls or blocks. This is because visuals—both video and images—are more arresting.

They also make information more memorable and stand out.

In contrast to just 10% of text-based content, research has found that people can remember up to 65% of visual content up to three days later.

Use graphics to encourage your readers to perform the desired action because people follow visual instructions 32% better than written ones.


Create Custom Email Campaigns

In our survey of marketers, we discovered that increasing email customization was the top objective for 38% of them and the top challenge for 36% of them. Email customization is made simpler and more efficient by employing automation for email marketing, segmenting your lists, and third-party integrations.

Content that is most pertinent to your readers' interests will certainly elicit a response from them. To increase interaction, start by including their name in the subject line. Then, alter campaign content based on list segments (more on that next).


Make sure every subscriber is relevant to your campaign.

It's a good idea to divide your email list's subscribers into several list segments, even in the early phases of list expansion. It is simple to decide the type of content to send to which subscriber using list segments. Response rates increase when you can customize information and make it more pertinent to a certain demographic.

Sending out mass emails to everyone is considerably worse than this type of focused optimization.

Why is segmenting email lists important? We are aware that list segmentation is crucial from a revenue viewpoint in addition to relevance. According to DMA data, 58% of all email revenue comes from segmented and targeted emails. Additionally, according to our study, segmented campaigns can improve revenue by up to 76%, and more than 76% of marketers think that fundamental segmentation is a key component of their email marketing strategy.

To increase click-throughs on your campaigns and provide better-focused content based on those segments, create the following popular email list segmentation:

Geographic location – useful for advertising store-specific information and focusing on a narrow market while disregarding subscribers who are located elsewhere and to whom the message would not be pertinent.

Demographics – effective for adjusting campaign messaging to any age and gender distribution.

Market – excellent for dividing up individuals into groups based on their interest in specific markets or industries so that no one gets the same email. Instead, make the message relevant to the industry, the product, or the market.

Past activity – useful for dividing up subscribers based on their prior open and click-through rates. To better tailor upcoming campaigns, conduct behavior research to find out what kind of content resonates with different audience demographics.

Workflow activity – excellent for designing campaigns that are targeted to subscribers who are at particular points in your sales funnel, for as sending a campaign solely to subscribers who have completed more than half of an auto-responder series.

Customer data – beneficial for eCommerce firms who want to deliver customized efforts to VIP consumers as well as campaigns that are focused entirely on customers who are at risk of losing them since they haven't purchased in a certain amount of time.

Segmentation can be approached in two major ways:

• Using the subscriber information they gave when they signed up, sort current subscribers in the back end.
• Utilize distinct sign-up lists to enable self-segmentation among subscribers.

The list to which your audience is added changes depending on the material they are engaging with when using the second technique, even if they see the same opt-ins throughout your site. Therefore, a user would be enrolled on a segregated list for vegans if they visit a recipe website and sign up from a page with vegan recipes.

Make sure your campaigns are consistent with your brand and foster trust.

Your subscribers likely interact with your company in other ways besides through your email advertising. To sign up for your email list, your subscribers most likely go to your website or social media page.

So that your customers have a consistent experience with your brand, your email campaigns must coordinate with the colors, typefaces, and branding you use across all of your other customer touchpoints.

Client of Campaign Monitor This is accomplished by Freshbooks in their email marketing campaigns. Their email campaigns flawlessly mimic the typefaces, colors, buttons, and iconographic designs they utilize on their website.

You may boost the likelihood that your subscribers will click on your website by making sure your campaigns are consistent with the branding they encounter elsewhere.

Make conversion simple.

You must make it as simple as possible for your subscribers to click through from your email campaigns if you want them to.

Our data shows that 41% of email opens occur on mobile devices, so if your campaigns aren't optimized across all devices, there's a strong chance you're unnecessarily hindering your subscribers' ability to convert.

When deciding when to launch your campaigns, be strategic

We advise using a planned strategy when developing campaigns so that your emails adhere to an editorial or promotional calendar. Planning your campaigns will assist you in avoiding sending too little content to your subscribers or, worse yet, waiting too long between sends.

The number of emails you send can have a big impact on your revenue and email engagement (and unsubscribe) rates, therefore frequency is important. If you send too many emails, your subscribers may become disinterested and unsubscribe as a result. If you send too few, your audience will stop paying attention to you. In certain cases, people forget why they signed up, which causes them to unsubscribe.


Submit more than just promotional material

Which of the following ways, if any, would you like companies to communicate with you in 2015, according to a study by MarketingSherpa?

Email triumphed over other options like SMS, social media, direct mail, and online/print ads, being selected by more than 70% of respondents. Since then, not much has changed, and customers still favor email.

They don't necessarily want every email to be an obvious advertisement just because they want it.

That is a certain way to have your list despise you to the core.

Use the Pareto Principle to plan your email campaigns and decide which material to include, aiming for an 80/20 mix. Simply put, 20% of your material should be devoted to your promotions, discounts, and products/services, and 80% of it should be committed to helpful and important information.


Discover Ideas for Sending More Useful Email Campaigns

Fear not if you are struggling to come up with themes and content for your emails except general advertisements. Every company, in every sector, has a wealth of knowledge to impart. You need to decide whether or not your subscribers will find that material to be useful or intriguing.

Don't worry; we've already done the research to generate a tonne of suggestions for content sources for your email campaigns. From our comprehensive guide, which includes 50 content ideas, the following are a few email marketing ideas:

• Product updates and information including how-to content, product videos, upcoming releases, and discounts Company information like career opportunities, press coverage, and behind-the-scenes stuff
• Infographics, industry research, poll findings, and recent blogs are examples of value-driven content.
• Humanizing your brand through people-focused material including team member blogs, executive interviews, customer feedback, and new hire bios
• Updates to the FAQ, case studies, success stories, and free tools are all examples of support material.
• Event details for public and private gatherings, seminars, and trade shows
• To maintain interest and engagement levels, take advantage of every chance to share informative content rather than promotional content.

You will be able to build and deliver a campaign that grabs subscribers' attention, presents them with relevant information, and makes it simple for them to convert if you use these foundations of high-converting campaigns to your first email.


Step 5: Evaluate the success of your campaign

You'll be able to gauge the effectiveness of your campaign once your first email is sent and begins to be opened and clicked by your subscribers.

You can monitor the success of your email marketing campaigns using two different channels: your email marketing solution (like Campaign Monitor), and your website analytics tool (such as Google Analytics).

If you want to see how people responded to your email campaigns, check out the reports section of your email marketing tool.

There are several reports available to Campaign Monitor subscribers that can assist with this, but the Snapshot report is the most popular one.

Your email marketing campaign's key performance indicators are shown to you in the report, including:

• The number of distinct subscribers who opened your campaign.
• The amount of email addresses that your campaign was unable to deliver to is known as "bounces" (for a variety of reasons).
• The number of distinct subscribers who did not open your campaign's emails.
• The percentage of all subscribers who opened your campaign is known as the open rate.
• The proportion of people who opened your campaign and subsequently clicked on a link is known as the click-through rate.
• Unsubscribe rate: The proportion of persons that left your email list as a result of this campaign.
• Spam complaints: The number of persons who marked your campaign as spam by selecting the "Mark as Spam" button in their preferred email client (and the percentage of users who did so) (e.g., Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Outlook, etc.).
• Shares: The number of people who shared your campaign on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook or forwarded it to a friend using the forward icon in your email template.

These analytics enable you to compare the effectiveness of one campaign to another and provide you with a high-level overview of how your subscribers are interacting with your campaigns. By selecting one of the various reports from the right-side menu, you may dig deeper and see the precise individuals who opened and clicked your campaign, what links they clicked, etc.

After spending some time examining how recipients responded to your email campaign, you may go one step further and investigate what transpired when they visited your website.

You must have a web analytics solution (like Google Analytics) installed on your website to accomplish this. If so, and if you've enabled our Google Analytics integration, you'll be able to view information about any website visitors resulting from your email campaigns, such as how long they stayed on your site, which pages they visited, what campaigns they came from, and more.

You may even download our Google Analytics dashboard, which will provide you with some useful information on the recipients of your emails in one convenient place.

You may begin modifying and testing adjustments to your email campaigns to raise open and click-through rates once you have all the data available.

Subject Line Split Testing to Increase Open Rates

You'll start to see what works and what doesn't in getting the attention and clicks of different email groups when you pay attention to the open rates across all of your email campaigns.

Split testing your subject lines, however, is the only method to steadily increase your open rates.

Email marketers will A/B test (split test) subject lines to increase open rates. To accomplish this, make sure that all text in the email, excluding the subject line, is identical. Different subject line lengths, different power words, and generic vs. specialized subject lines can all be tested.

By comparing two similar subject lines—one with the subscriber's first name included and one without—you can see how your segments react to personalization. In this experiment, Campaign Monitor discovered a 26% rise in open rates for customized subject lines.

Personalization is just one approach to increase open rates; the first is to use tried-and-true subject line templates like:

• Stop {Undesirable Emotion} Now
• {Desirable Outcome} (Your First 3 Steps)
• New {Thing}: What It Means For {Audience’s Role}
• What {Credible Influencers} Are Saying About {Topic}
• {Someone Audience Looks Up To} Can Afford Any {Product}, She Uses…
• Best {Emoji} + {Emoji} + {Emoji} = {Emoji}
• {Topic}, {Topic}, and {Seemingly Unrelated Topic}?
• {Personalized Company Name} + 497% More {Need} = {Emoji}
• {Emoji} Your {Emoji} With…
• {Personalized Name}, Earn {Something Desirable} Today Only
• You’re Missing Out On {Something Desirable}
• Tonight Only: A {Audience’s Role}’s Dream
• Want 587% More {Something Desirable}? {Emoji}
• This Is A Sales Email {Emoji}
• Don’t Forget! {Event} Today {Emoji}
• …When You’re Sick And Tired Of {Something Undesirable} {Emoji}
• “{Quote}”
• A {Topic} Process To Reduce 30-50% Workload {Emoji}
• {Topic} + {Topic} + {Topic}
• “I Love {Something Undesirable}!” (said no one ever)

Improving Email Marketing Campaign Click-Through Rates

Ideally, you want your email subscribers to click through to a landing page, a product purchase, etc.; in other words, they need to do something in the email to proceed to the next action you want them to take. You may enhance click-through rates by regularly adjusting your emails by keeping a careful eye on campaign analytics.

Beyond developing a stronger call to action, there are other things you can do to increase those rates, such as:

• Layout improvement: change your template to make the material easier to read so that it flows organically into a call to action. The number of click-throughs on a blog email increased by 127% after we redesigned it.
• Remember what we said about visual content? Try out some new images. Campaigns with more captivating visuals had a click-through rate that was 42% higher than those without.
• Visual CTAs - Clicking buttons comes naturally to people. Test various visual CTAs and button layouts to increase conversions and click-through rates. It's a notion known as "affordance," or a potential action between an object and a person.
• Try alternative CTA placements in your advertisements since it matters where you place your call to action. A CTA on the right side of the email enhanced click-through rates for Digital Doughnut's campaigns after testing the location.
• Segment your emails - If you're not getting the conversions you were hoping for, look for chances to further segment and better target your audience on your email list.
• Test time: The timing of an email's transmission is just as crucial as its frequency. We discovered that subscriber open rates have changed to our most recent email benchmarks and statistics. So make sure to test the best times to send emails and keep an eye on the campaign reports for those periods.

  Advertising, digital marketing, direct marketing, in-person selling, public relations, and sales promotion are the six main forms of marketing communication.