Creating a successful email campaign can be an overwhelming challenge. Especially when you’re learning a new tool or targeting new audiences. That’s why we created the Email Template Creation guide to help you with the process.
At SalesNexus, we’ve helped thousands of businesses succeed with email marketing. Over the past 16 years we’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t. Here are some of the tips and tricks to crafting effective email campaigns.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed by all of the great ideas you’ll have along this journey. Thus, it’s vital to start with the end in mind.
Write down your objective and use it to keep your efforts focused.
Identify the target audience
Who are you sending the campaign to?
Who will we be making this offer to?
Even if you’re not able to narrow your list down too much, getting focused and specific is the secret to success here as well.
Try to imagine your ideal customer or participant
What are their common traits?
Be specific about demographic categories like: age, family status, income, number of employees, revenue, industry, location… etc.
But, also consider less typical criteria:
What do they watch on TV?
Where did they go to college?
What hobbies do they have?This helps create messages and content that speak to your ideal customer.
This helps create messages and content that speak to your ideal customer.
Are these existing or previous customers or folks that have never heard of you before?
Draw a picture or “persona” of your audience. This helps to think about common traits that you can use to connect with the audience. These may not be strictly related to your products and services.
Here’s a helpful article on creating customer personas from Inc. Magazine.
Identify Your Objective: The Call to Action
What’s the objective of the email campaign?
The most essential element of marketing success is deciding what you’re trying to accomplish with your campaign.
Is it a purchase? A donation? Attending an event? An appointment?
Regardless of the answer, the success of your campaign will depend on how well you can clarify your objective and your “call to action”.
Be Specific – don’t sell all your products, pick one as narrowly as you can.
Pair very specific customer personas with very specific calls to action. This will lead to the greatest success.
If your target audience is very familiar with you and has engaged with you many times before then you can be pretty direct and aggressive in your call to action.
If I’ve purchased 5 one pound bags of coffee from you in the past year, then sending me an email offering 20% off on my next order is completely appropriate.
However, if you have no or limited prior relationship with the audience, then it’s you may want to try and be a bit more subtle. So, if you’re emailing a list of coffee enthusiasts that don’t know your brand, you’ll get a lower response rate to a discount offer. But, if you first send them something introducing your brand and it’s strengths, and a follow up offer of the discount, that can be far more effective.
This is known as “content marketing.” Essentially, it’s about earning the audience’s trust by offering them things that they see value in, without asking for anything in return.
Then once you’ve earned their trust, you ask for the sale.
Download the Email Campaign Creation Guide for more information on how to create effective email campaigns!