email marketing explained step by step

email marketing explained step by step

When it comes to starting an email marketing campaign, there are specific steps that you should follow if you want to be successful.  

You need to establish clear goals and objectives, build your business email lists, choose the type of email campaign that you want to send, create and design your first email campaign and measure your mail campaign results. 

Establishing Your Goals and Objectives 

Like with any marketing strategy, you need to develop clear goals and understand your objectives before you dive in head first. 

Before you sign up for an email marketing tool, you have to clearly set out what it is you want to achieve with the emails that you want to send to your target audience. You want your email marketing strategy to fit with your wider business goals and objectives.
  
For example, your business goals may be to attract new leads to sign up for your branded products and services, or maybe to get more people to attend your company events, or maybe you're looking for more donations for a particular cause. Whatever your overall business goals are, you have to make sure you take the time to think about how you are going to use your email marketing campaign to reach those goals. 

Building Your Business Email Lists 

After you've established your email marketing campaign goals and objectives, you can start to create your email lists so you can start sending out your email marketing campaigns. There are several ways that you can go about building your email lists. The first option is by importing emails from known contacts. 

These are typically the details that you have on your existing customers that you can import into your email marketing tool. You can either manually enter these addresses into your email marketing software, or you can link your email marketing tool to your email account to automatically extract the information. 

Another option that you may want to consider is to build an entirely new list of emails from scratch. 

If you do not currently have any new contacts, you may want to go to social media to try to attract people from your network to subscribe to your email list by giving them special discounts or freebies. You can also use the website of your organization for this reason. 

Choose the Type of Campaign You Want to Send 

You can maximize the effectiveness of your email marketing campaign by following the ten most common and popular formats of emails. These formats have been tested for years and are practiced by top businesses people and established companies.  

Each format is unique and has a distinctive purpose, which attracts the interest of different kinds of audiences. Whichever format you choose, each will generate its own kind of reaction. 

Newsletters 

Newsletters are used for company information, upcoming events, etc. The typical format consists of two columns: one narrow column with a table of contents, logos, sponsors, and feature articles and another wider column with stories and original communication articles and materials.  

If there is more than one article, then it's better to use section breaks to make it look smart and eye-catching. You can even put a Read More or Learn More button at the end of each article for detailed information for readers who are interested to know more. 

Events and Invitations 

This type of email is time sensitive, so you have to be aware of the perfect timing. 

After an event / invitation email is sent, there should be a gap of at least one month so that the subscribers can plan and make time to prepare. 

The event / invitation email will include call-to-action buttons, such as the Save to Calendar button, the Register for Event button, which will redirect them to another form page and the Post-Event Feedback Survey Form button for the convenience of your client. 

You can also send details of your audience activity to all those subscribers who showed interest in the event message, both the attendants and the non-attendants, after the date of the event.

Before, during and after the case, you may need to send dozens of emails, so keep your emails short and timely. 

Promotions

This format is used to sell your products and services for promotional promotions and special sales. In these emails, you can highlight Limited Edition or Stock Limited items and get your customers to respond quickly. If you are an e-commerce shop, you can also place a call-to-action button such as Book Now or Order Now.

Setting a deadline on the offer in the email gives the customers that extra push to use the offer right on the spot. Your email marketing campaign will be highly successful if you can make your customers buy products directly from the promotional email. 

Press Releases 

If you want to share any company information, like the latest business partnerships, new CEO, or new product launches to the local media, then you have to follow the press release format of the email. For this kind of email only, you should make a separate email list where there are just a few addresses for the local media outlets.  

Press release emails are different than other formats because others will use it as a reference when they show this information on TV or in the newspaper. 

Magazines and news outlets are going to write an article based on the information found in your press release, so you have to make sure it's full of valuable information and worth sharing.

There are four sections in a press release: the headline, the body, any statement or quote, and an “about” section.  

Announcements 

This is similar to a press release, but the audience you will send these emails to is entirely different. Mainly the customers and those who are interested in your company's latest updates are the ones that should get announcement emails.  

Announcements could be moving into a new location, product updates, or upcoming product launch information. Only facts and specific information are put in announcements emails, so there is no need for any call-to-action button. 

Holiday Greetings 

During the holidays, you can model and use unique email templates, like one for Halloween, Christmas, or New Year's. Nowadays, to make your greeting cards more interesting, you can use special HTML or GIF photos. 

Currently, most ESPs allow you to monitor customer birthdays so that on their special day you can even give them a birthday wish message. This can help boost your reputation and show that your customers care for you. 

Welcome Note 

You can set an automated system to send a welcome email to new customers that have recently registered and subscribed to your email service. With a simple “Hello X! Welcome to Y” message you can create a friendly atmosphere with your new customers.  

Thank You Email 

When you reach a certain level and have hundreds of loyal customers that are buying your products and using your services for years, it's important to show them appreciation. Every year or even twice a year, you should send out thank you emails to your loyal customers.  

Most of the time, companies send thank you emails on the day when the company itself was founded. 

It demonstrates that you respect your customers and encourages them to feel a deeper connection to your product. 

Notification / Reminder Emails

These types of emails inform customers of any notices of renewal or service confirmation. Normally, these kinds of emails do not involve the location of a call-to-action button in the email body.

Certifications and Confirmation Emails 

You would typically only send this type of email for verification of certain agreement forms and certifications, which require step-bystep tasks. By including multiple call-to-action buttons, you need to make these steps as easy as possible. The sort of email "I read the terms and conditions and accept" falls within this group.

Creating Your First Email Marketing Campaign 

The first step that you must take when you create your first email marketing campaign is to structure it for easy reading. For adult attention spans getting shorter and shorter, you need to build emails that are easy to get through to the average adult. 

For the sole purpose of driving the audience to the final call-to-action, you want to construct a precise version. First, you'll want your email campaign to be personalized. You can use a segmented list, or even third-party integration, to configure the campaign with most email marketing programs. 

To promote more engagement with your campaign design, you want to make sure you add the person name to the subject line to attract the attention of the reader and then produce a copy that contains relevant information On the basis of their preferences.  

You want to make sure that you are using all of the data the subscriber provides when the sign up to determine the kind of content you want to send them.

You also need to make sure that your email campaign makes it extremely easy to convert the reader to a new lead or customers. You need to ensure that your email campaign is easy to read since more than 40 percent of readers open their emails on a mobile device. This means it's essential that your email campaign is compatible with mobile devices.