Step 1: Choose an email management software
Ensure that you use specialist email management software to help you create, send and measure the impact of any email marketing campaigns. There are a plethora of options out there but our recommendation would be Campaign Monitor. Benefits include:
√ ease of use – drag & drop interface to easily create branded, professional looking emails
√ complete customisation
√ mobile optimisation
√ easily create personalised customer journeys
√ connects seamlessly with 100’s of business apps
√ industry compliance
√ built in data security
√ analytics to help you get better results with your marketing
Step 2: Collect email addresses
When looking to collect email addresses from your website (obviously ensuring you are GDPR compliant with opt-in forms), think about placing sign-ups in the right places not just on a contact page – for example, blog posts or the about us page.
Step 3: Build and manage your email lists
Segmenting by behaviour is the easiest and most powerful way to segment your email list – any information that you have about your contacts is something that you can filter and target by, for instance, those people who haven’t purchased from you in over 3 months or those who have subscribed to your newsletter. You can be as simple or as complex as you wish with your segmentation and by sending more targeted messages to specific customers will give you a clearer handle on what elicits engagement and action.
Here are examples of segments you may wish to adopt:
: New subscribers
Your goal with brand new subscribers is to build trust, introduce your products, and get them to make their first purchase.
: One-time buyers
Try to get them to buy a second time – repeat purchases are far more profitable. A bounce-back email is an ideal campaign to run, or a campaign that delivers an offer on a product related to the product that was just purchased.
: VIPs
Your “whales” are those customers who make large or consistent purchases from you. These customers are worth a lot and, better yet, they rarely require discounts to come back. To engage these customers, employ targeted email campaigns that court them and keep them buying—say and showcase how much you value their business and don’t forget to gather feedback on what they want to buy so you can sell it to them later.
: Defecting customers
When a customer is slipping away, to potentially never purchase again, offering discounts to win them back can make financial sense. The perfect email for this segment is called a win-back, which should include an eye-catching offer with a deep discount used to entice them to return.
: Cart abandoners
You may want to test a series of abandoned cart emails that goes out over two weeks. Start with gentle reminders first and, if they don’t work, move on to greater incentives, like discounts. You’ll find that many of your recovered carts return before the discounts are even required.
According to Campaign Monitor, email with personalised subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened
Step 4: Monitor, measure and test
Take a strategic view of ascertaining what you want and need to know first rather than collecting metrics and data purely for the sake of it. Common metrics to measure include:
List growth - how many new subscribers you’ve added on a weekly or monthly basis, or between your most recent broadcast emails.
Open & click through rates – what are people interested – do more of the good stuff that works!
Revenues – what effect is your email marketing having on your bottom line?
Test your email campaigns, revise and test again to work out what works best for your business.
Spam avoiders:
- Being too “salesy” by using all caps, exclamation marks, and trigger words like “free”
- Big images with very little text, because many spam filters don’t recognize images
- Emailing old lists you haven’t properly maintained over the years
Step 5: Keeping your email list clean
You need to commit time and energy to regular housekeeping of your email list:
- Remove duplicate addresses
- Remove addresses with typos & fix them
- Update/remove invalid addresses
- Delete emails from bounces.
