6 Tips for Implementing an Email Marketing Campaign

Email marketing is when a company uses a regular campaign of emails to spread awareness about their brand to their email subscribers. Email marketing can be used to promote upcoming events, offer subscriber discounts and sales, and build community around your brand. Effective email marketing campaigns can boost your eCommerce by using deals and promotions to drive customer engagement. Many email service providers (or ESPs)—which are companies that allow you to build email lists, craft emails, and send them—offer services to make starting an email marketing campaign accessible and affordable.

There are several different types of email marketing strategies that can be used to spread information about your business. Some of the types of marketing emails include:

1. 1. Promotional emails: Promotional emails are used to promote your business’s products, events, or services. Promotional emails have a clear call to action (CTA), encouraging the customer to engage with your brand directly.
2. 2. Newsletters: An email newsletter is an email sent on a regular basis that provides your customer with updates. They may include new content, promotions, and more. Newsletters are typically sent on a timed schedule (weekly, monthly, etc.) to help you maintain the attention of your subscriber base.
3. 3. Announcements: An announcement email highlights a specific piece of timely news such as a new product launch, special offers, or a change in company leadership. Announcement emails can help your customer base feel more personally engaged with your company.

Email marketing has a number of benefits, which include:

• Boosting sales: Sending an announcement email about a new product launch or popular item returning to your site can boost company sales. Offering timed promotions can also increase conversion rates.
• Brand awareness: Regular communication will help you to connect with your subscribers, increasing your brand awareness. Regularly updating your subscribers with information about your company will keep your business at the forefront of the customer’s mind. Email marketing can also increase customer loyalty, making your customers feel connected to your business.
• Affordability: Email marketing is a cost-effective way to reach your broad customer base, especially for a small business. Many email marketing companies offer their services at low monthly fees for their subscribers, with some even offering free plans.
• Email automation: Email marketing software can schedule emails to your entire subscriber list. Marketing automation tools make various types of communication—like follow-up and unsubscribe requests—efficient.
• Targeted marketing: The best email marketers analyze their subscriber demographics and adapt their messaging. This allows you to personalize your digital marketing.

To implement your email marketing strategy, start by following these easy steps:

1. 1. Choose the right email marketing software. Research the services of the different email service providers (ESPs) out in the market. This is the service you’ll use to craft and distribute your email campaign, so make sure that you’re considering which one has the best email marketing tools for you.
2. 2. Compile your email list. Add a form to your website that offers people the option to sign up for your email list. You can add email signup forms to your homepage or landing page, during the customer checkout flow before a purchase in your online store, on blog posts, or on your social media platforms. You can also automate a web pop-up that prompts customers to opt-in to your emailing list. Offering an incentive—like a discount—to new subscribers is also a great strategy to grow your email list.
3. 3. Choose an eye-catching design. Most ESPs offer a library of email templates with drag-and-drop design capabilities. Dynamic email design can increase subscriber interest, and decrease the likelihood of your customer unsubscribing.
4. 4. Choose an engaging subject line and sender address. Interesting subject lines, personal sender names, and clear pre-headers can increase your email open rate. A great way to gauge the effectiveness of different subject lines is a/b testing, which is when you send two versions of your subject line (an A version and a B version) and measure the responses to both approaches.
5. 5. Analyze an email’s performance. After you’ve sent out an email, you can use your email marketing software to track user engagement with the email—like open rate, click-through rate, and unsubscribe rate. Use those learnings to improve your future emails.
6. 6. Target your subscribers. As your email list grows, you'll want to consider segmentation—which allows you to target different demographics. Look at your business's metrics and assess which forms of email marketing work best for different groups on your email list.

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