Mastering Email Campaigns: Strategies for Success

There's more to a good email campaign strategy than tactics. Your customers are less likely to believe any brand-to-buyer advertisement. On the other hand, a buyer will consider what a peer says about your brand. 

The actual benefit of the social media boom isn't that you can update your feed for hundreds or even thousands of people. It's about turning your consumers into powerful brand advocates and also establishing thousands of peer-to-peer recommendations on your behalf to reach millions of people on the social web in a different way.

Let me tell you a secret. You have the most powerful marketing force at your disposal. No campaign strategy, bought or organic, can match its effectiveness. Your clients have the potential to be your most powerful advocate, sales team, and spokespersons.

What's the best part? - Their services are free of charge. However, there is one requirement.

Encourage your subscribers to tell their friends and colleagues about the offer they just signed up for through email marketing. You will be surprised to know how easy this is.‍

What is an Email Campaign Strategy?

‍An email marketing strategy is a collection of procedures that a marketer develops and implements to attain specific marketing objectives. This strategy provides organizations with a direct line of communication with prospects and customers to promote their brands.‍

Types of email marketing‍

To gain access to the elusive inbox, creative marketers have devised a variety of email marketing techniques. Of course, follow the proper method to achieve this. To assist you, I'll go through three different sorts of email marketing that you may use to get your customers’ and prospects' attention.‍

1. Email Newsletters

You can use the newsletter to notify subscribers about promotions, account information, product updates, and other information. When done correctly, a newsletter can increase brand recognition and exposure.

You should consider a multitude of elements while designing an email newsletter, including:

• Length of content

• Information Types

• Design 

• Images and text placement
  

2. Catalog and Video Email 

Catalog email marketing is similar to a newsletter, but instead of communicating through short articles or dialogue pieces, it concentrates on photographs and brief descriptions with the price. Catalog emails are similar to hard copy catalogs mailed through the mail, except they don't involve printing or shipping charges.

Another type of email marketing that combines a narrative with photographs, video footage, and graphics is video email, which is a mix of newsletter and catalog marketing. Video marketing necessitates a higher level of technical knowledge than other forms of email marketing.‍

3. Press Release Email

Most small firms underutilize press releases as a marketing tactic. A press release is most commonly connected with print publications such as newspapers and trade magazines. Still, it can also be used by small enterprises to communicate with clients about a new inventory item or promotion. Unlike newsletters or catalogs, press releases focus on a single topic and are intended to inform readers and attract them to visit the company online or in person.‍

4. Email invitations and surveys

The reader of an invitation email is asked to reply to an event or a sales offer. An invitation email can be a powerful marketing strategy for getting people into a physical store or a company's website to take advantage of a special deal on a specific date and time.

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Customers are encouraged to submit feedback through the survey, which may be analyzed and utilized to develop customer service roles and procedures. In most surveys, the participant receives minor remuneration, such as a coupon.‍

5. Thank-You Email‍

Customer service is the backbone of a small business, and thank-you marketing emails are enticing and gratifying to customers. When a company takes time to respond to a customer's experience and ensure that all expectations are met, customers feel valued. It should then be tailored to the individual customer and include current and future offers, as well as a modest gift of appreciation, such as a discount on a future purchase.‍

How to encourage your customers to share your email content?

1. Call to action ‍

You should start by creating a call-to-action that encourages prospects to share your content via email. Turn one of these buttons into a personalized mail to link once you've added it to your website. It's essentially a hyperlink that uses mail instead of http://, so a new email compose window appears when a lead clicks on it instead of a link to a website.

It's simple to set up this mail to link, and you can even tweak it to include your pre-filled subject line and body content.‍

‍Why Do These Buttons Give Results?‍

Email is an example of social proof, which is the idea that "if other people are doing it, and I trust them, that's validation that I should be doing it, too."

While most marketers think of social proof on Facebook, email can generate new leads Facebook. According to Oberlo, for every $1 spent on email marketing, you can expect an average of $42. 

Where Should these Buttons Be Placed?‍

Urge Your leads to share your material in three different places.‍

1. The Confirmation Page

When a lead fills out your form to receive a marketing offer, this is a fantastic time to encourage them to tell their friends and colleagues about it.

2. The Email You'll Send As A Follow-Up 

Whether or not you supply leads with their offer on the thank-you page, you should consider sending them a follow-up email that they may refer to at any time. This should be straightforward and include the following information:

• A hyperlink to the offer's location.

• The share by email button.
  

If relevant, a call-to-action for the next step in your purchase cycle (you may want to hold this for your lead nurturing campaigns, so you're not too aggressive right away).

3. Your Email Marketing

Hopefully, your campaigns should be highly targeted to specific segments of your leads. Even if this is the case, you can advertise particular offerings in which your recipients believe their friends or coworkers will also love the content. Provide them with the option of sharing your offering.‍

4. Create unforgettable experiences.

Almost three-quarters of Americans place a higher value on experiences than on items. Instead of handing out pens or water bottles and hoping they are noticed, provide clients with an experience. They will not only enjoy it more, but they will also be more likely to share it on social media, which is a more scalable medium.

But as you write your emails, don’t forget that mistakes are made, and they happen more frequently than you might believe. After all, even if we're brilliant marketers, we're only human. So, how can you keep those embarrassing blunders out of your email campaigns?

Factors that Marketers Should Check Before Sending E-mails

According to the Forbes Agency Council, before you hit the "send" button on your next email marketing campaign, these are the important factors that marketers should check before sending any type of email.‍

1. Broken Links

One of the worst fears for marketers is discovering that your email's essential call-to-action contains a broken link after clicking "send." Isn't that a waste? Especially when the purpose of an email campaign is to generate leads.

That's why we stress the need to double-check your links for functionality. To use the links, you must first click on them. Every single one of them. Does the (correct) page appear to be loading? Do you get a 404 error when you try to access a website? Unbreak any broken links you come across.‍

2. Forgotten Links

The forgotten link is a close second to the dreaded broken link. When you use an image as a call-to-action (CTA) button, the most prevalent (and regrettable) case of the forgotten link occurs. Double-check that everything you should follow is connected. Anchor text, CTAs, social media follow/sharing icons, and photos are examples.

3. Grammatical/Spelling Mistakes

Whether you're producing an e-book, a blog post, or your following email marketing message, spelling and grammar are essential in marketing. Send your test email to your team's most giant grammar nerd to catch any mistakes, and make sure to spell-check everything!

4. Image distortion

What do you think of your images? Are they crushed or stretched? Pixelated? Is it exceedingly large? Did you remember associating alt text with them when they didn't render? Check to see if your photographs appear the way you want them to, and if they aren't, make the necessary adjustments.

5. Formatting Issues

When you view the email in your inbox, ensure the formatting is as you intended. Is there a line that has bled into the next because you failed to add a space between them? Are the bullets appearing if you used them? (Tip: Because some email clients don't support HTML bullets, use asterisks (*) instead of rounded or squared HTML bullets.) If something doesn't appear suitable, correct the formatting before sending the email to your actual list.

6. Color Problems

Is the font color you're using straightforward and easy to see, or does it make your eyes strain because it's a strange shade? Is it tough to read the text you've put on top due to background color blocks? Also, while color blocks might add a nice visual aspect to your email, you should be aware of the following scenario:

Assume you've opted to use a dark gray background for your entire email — or just a piece of it. You chose white as the font color to make the text readable. What happens if the recipient's email client fails to render that background color (which can happen)? Text that isn't visible!

7. Sender's Name/Subject Line

Is it clear that a person, not a machine, sent your email? In other words, are you using your company name (robot) or the name of someone at your organization as your sender name? (human). Emails sent by a natural person are more likely to be opened than those sent by a company name alone. 

The length of your subject line is another element to consider. Is it going to be cut off? According to a recent study, subject lines featuring movie titles and music lyrics have a 26 percent open rate. A good rule of thumb is - to keep your subject line to 50 characters or less. You want as much of it to show up in the email pane as feasible (especially on mobile devices).

8. Dynamic Tags That Work

Check if any dynamic tags (e.g. [FIRSTNAME], etc.) are working correctly and pulling in the necessary data. If you're going to utilize active tags, make sure your list is tidy and that you only use labels for which everyone on your list has information. For example, if you're trying to include the recipient's Twitter username in your email but the contacts on the list you're emailing to have never given you that information, you'll have a lot of issues.

9. Formatting Plain Text 

What does your email look like in plain text format? Depending on your program, the test email should be viewable in both HTML and plain text versions. Yes, it is critical to optimize for both HTML and plain text. Look for the following in your test send (all of which we go over in detail in this post): similar copy to the HTML version of the email, compelling copy, shortened links (and only a few), all caps in headers, and plain text bullet points (e.g., asterisks *) to ensure your email is optimized for plain text.

10. Accessibility on a Wide Range of Devices, Browsers, and Email Clients

It's better to see for yourself how different browsers, programs, and platforms (mobile or desktop) perceive your email. To save time, test a few choices once across the most common devices, browsers, and clients, and then develop a template to use for each email you send using the winning version.

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RELATED READ - Advantages and Disadvantages of Email Marketing

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The Final Note 

If you aim to get the most out of your lead generation tool, try using the "Email to a Friend" button. Who knows, maybe email marketing may become a top lead generation channel for you with this simple addition!

But remember, when you compose an email, you want to focus all of your efforts on creating a reader-friendly and valuable message. You shouldn't be concerned about your subscribers' ability to read your email correctly.

The ten-point email marketing checklist demonstrated above will help you focus on what matters most to you—wowing your subscribers with your content—while avoiding any costly errors.