TeamMany small businesses choose email marketing as their first campaign because it’s not just effective but also affordable and simple. You can learn how to launch your first email marketing campaign and become one of the many businesses that profited from this type of marketing. All you need to do is follow the tips listed below.
1. Know what your goals are
The first step of learning how to launch your first email marketing campaign is deciding on what you want to achieve. Why do you want to communicate with your customers? Do you want to educate them, promote a product or announce an event? Most importantly, who is your target audience? Maybe you don’t want to send the email to all the customers. You also need to think about what the reader should do after reading your email and include a powerful call to action. Why would they take that action? Ask yourself that, and it will help you create a good email, but don’t forget to think about your success metric as well. Once you define clear goals, as well as the way you’ll measure your success, you’ll make a more effective campaign.
2. Choose the email service provider
To learn how to launch your first email marketing campaign you have to decide which email service provider you’re going to use. Don’t use Gmail or Outlook for sending bulk emails because there are plugins for WordPress that you need for email marketing. Try Mail Chimp, where you can create your email database, manage it and use customizable email templates and campaign management services. Many of the ESPs (Email Service Providers) are free or offer free trials, so this isn’t going to cost you much. You can use self-service tools instead though, and they’ll provide tutorials and free support to make learning how to launch your first email marketing campaign as easy for you as possible.
3. Add emails to your database and build your list
The next thing you need is a database with all the emails of your potential and existing customers. If you use ESP you’ll easily create a sign-up form on your website, and it will be automatically linked to the email database. When asking your site visitors for their emails, you need to let them know what they will get in return. For instance, this could be something free like a catalog, exclusive promotions and offers, announcements about new products, or regular interesting emails. Make sure to send emails only to those who have given you permission to send them. Maybe you can ask your customers to sign up whenever they need to register on your website or purchase a product.
4. Respect the law
Different countries have different laws for emails, but most of them say that you need to have an unsubscribe link, unsubscribe those who requested it within 10 days and add a physical address to your email.
5. Write the email
Many self-service ESPs offer email templates that you can customize by adding text and images. You will need to create a strong, actionable, clear, and compelling subject line that gives your customers a reason to read your email, so let them know what kind of benefit you offer. To learn how to launch your first email marketing campaign you’ll also need to learn how to write attention-grabbing headlines. A catchy headline will make your customers read on further, but you also need benefits-driven content. Don’t just describe the features when you can turn them into benefits and keep your sentences easy to read and short. Bullet points and bolding specific parts of your email are going to make it easier to read. Don’t neglect images either, and make sure to add the alt tag description. You also need a clear, large call to action, such as a button with actionable text. It’s also important to personalize the text since this is one of the tips for effective email marketing. Add your logo, your address, and an unsubscribe link, and you’ve learned how to launch your first email marketing campaign!
6. Send the emails
You’re not done yet because you also need to send the emails. As you gain more experience with email marketing you’ll also want to do some testing. Wouldn’t it be great to know which day and which time is best to send the emails, as well as whether your audience reacts better to emails with text or with both image and text? Well, you can find all that out, as well as which subject lines and types of personalization work better for your readers.
7. Measure the success of your campaign
Learning how to launch your first email marketing campaign won’t mean much if you don’t also measure the success of your campaign. The way you’ll measure your success depends on your goals, but you’ll probably need to measure the open rate and number of clicks on a call to action button or the number of downloads. Depending on the goal you might also be interested in the number of orders or the number of registrations.
