Hosting Your First Business Email Marketing Campaign

Email marketing is the oldest form of digital marketing that allows you to reach new clients and establish strong relationships with your existing clients. Through emails, you can virtually send exclusive content to your target audience. Doing it correctly can lead to conversions and even sales for your business, but doing it wrongly can ruin your brand reputation. So, how can you run a successful marketing campaign for your company with emails?

Ensuring Success In Your First Email Campaign

Below is your complete guide for launching your first email campaign efficiently.

What Is Your Goal?

There are several reasons for hosting an email campaign. It could be a short and long-term goal. Most businesses do it to generate leads, promote their brands, generate sales, or improve brand reputation. It can also be an avenue for building or maintaining existing customer relationships. Defining the reason behind a specific email marketing campaign is the first step to ensuring you meet your business goals.

Do You Have An Email List?

Irrespective of the goal of your marketing campaign, you need a quality emailing list to make it successful. The list must be made of your target audience. Aim to reach people who are more likely to patronize your business. You cannot buy email lists or collect random lists from people who haven't offered their explicit consent.

The risks associated with buying emails or using automated tools to get random email addresses go beyond a poor open rate. Your campaign will have high bounce rates, high spam complaint rates, and a bad reputation with email servers. Building a high-quality email list may take time, but it would promote the success of your campaign. Also, use an email verification tool by Captain Verify to get rid of bad emails occasionally.

Automate The Process

Handling your email marketing campaign manually is not an option. After securing your email list, you need a reliable email marketing service provider to handle the campaign. Some companies offer all-inclusive marketing services, including email marketing. Also, you can get software that allow you to automate the email marketing process.

Traditionally, an email marketing service provider offers mobile-optimized email templates, data analytic tools, and automated email responses. These tools, or service providers, closely monitor the progress of your campaign, allowing you to change your strategy when necessary.

Make Your Email Design Professional But Compelling

How your email looks plays a crucial role in determining how your prospects will respond to your campaign. Email servers are also going to analyze your email design when determining authenticity. All emails from your firm must be clear, concise, and grammatically correct. More importantly, they must be optimized for mobile devices as most people check emails with their mobile phones.

If you want to grab the reader's attention even before they open the email, make sure your subject line is captivating. However, you don't want your emails to look too promotional, especially when you aim to build a relationship with your subscribers.

Add A Touch Of Personalization

Your subscribers know you aren't just sending emails to them. They understand you have a list of people who receive the same emails. However, you should not make this apparent in your email body. First, make sure every email starts with the name of the subscriber. Things like "dear reader" and "dear fan" are outdated.

Apart from adding names to your emails, another way to personalize emails is to ensure each email is relevant to the subscriber. Most large organizations use analytic tools to collect data about website visitors and use the data to categorize their email subscribers into different groups. For example, a fashion company may have other groups of people interested in shoes, clothes, and bags.

Watch Your Frequency And Timing

Many companies spend time worrying about the quality of their emails but end up neglecting email timing and frequency. What is the purpose of sending a properly written email if it gets to the recipient at the wrong time? Program your email delivery tool to forward the emails at the right time when people are more likely to open them. Studies show that the best times for emailing during weekdays are 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.

Email frequency refers to how often you send emails to your subscribers. You don't need to send too frequently that they get sick of you and block you. On the other hand, you don't want to send too few emails that they forget about your business. Your email campaign manager will advise you on the best frequency for emails depending on the type of campaign.

Ensure Regulatory Compliance

If you want to take your business email campaign to the next level, you must ensure regulatory compliance. Currently, commercial emails are regulated by the CAN-SPAM Act. It includes essential guidelines about how businesses should send emails to maintain professionalism. Following these guidelines also make your emails less likely to end up in spam folders.

According to the CAN-SPAM Act, all emails from organizations must have the firm's physical address and an unsubscribe button. Most importantly, it must be clear that the email originates from within the organization, which means you must add your business name and logo. While smaller brands can get away with not meeting these regulatory guidelines, bigger brands risk facing legal consequences.

Don't Forget To Test

Before sending emails to all your subscribers, you need to test it to see how it will appear on the recipient's end. Testing gives you a chance to make adjustments to your strategy when necessary. Multiple analytic tools help you track data during the test. You will be able to see data on the bounce rate, open rate, click rate, and conversion rate of each email.

The most popular type of email testing is A/B testing. It also happens to be the easiest type of email testing. All you have to do is make two versions of the same email and send it to a few subscribers at different intervals. The goal is to see which format, timing, design, and frequency is more efficient.

How To Choose A Reliable Email Marketing Service

As stated, an email marketing service can help you launch and maintain your campaign effectively. However, choosing the wrong platform may do more harm than good. Below are some key factors you must consider:

Consider Deliverability and Reputation

Email deliverability describes the rate at which your emails successfully land in the recipient's inbox. Automated email campaign tools should have high deliverability rates. The best email service providers build good relationships with Internet Service Providers ISPs by following email marketing best practices.

What Features Does It Offer?

What features do you need to launch your email marketing campaign, and what features does this software offer? Ideally, it would be best to go for a service that provides segmentation, autoresponders, analytics, testing, and automation. Also, the platform should integrate seamlessly with other platforms like CRM and websites.

What Do Others Have To Say?

There is no better way to find out about a product or service than to ask strangers what they think. These platforms usually have a host of testimonials on their websites to entice new customers. However, it is not enough to read these testimonials as companies are more likely to post only positive content about their brand. Search the Internet for unbiased reviews about the platform and find out which reputable companies use their service.

Do They Provide Support?

If you have an emergency and need to contact the people behind the platform, how easy will it be to contact them? Find out if they have a live chat option or telephone number that guarantees swift response. If you can only reach them via email, how long do they take to respond? While waiting for their response, are there blog posts or frequently asked questions you can check for possible solutions?

Think About Scalability

Changing email service providers each time your list increases is bad for business. When choosing a suitable option, don't just consider the current size of your list; project future growth and select a platform that can scale as your business grows.

Pricing Vs. Budget

Budgeting for your marketing campaign is a great way to show financial responsibility for your business. You must set a budget first before you start looking for providers and not the other way around. Most companies offer several pricing options. It could be paying as you go, monthly subscription, or subscription to a specific package that gives you access to a limited service. It could also be unlimited access to all the features. Irrespective of the service you choose, read the terms and conditions to ensure no hidden charges.

Start Your Campaign Now!

It is not easy to host an email marketing campaign. However, adequate planning and access to the right resources will make things easier. Alternatively, you can employ a professional email marketing company to handle everything from creating the email to sending it out and analyzing the results.