With 89% of marketers reporting their primary channel for lead generation is email marketing campaigns.

And, 59% of marketers say email is their most significant ROI (return on investment). You can understand why it’s essential to incorporate email marketing campaigns into your business.

By the end of this post, you will understand the steps to take to start building your email list. And, the steps to take to engage and communicate through email.

The first thing to understand when sending emails is you have to remember you’re a guest in their inbox.

That’s why it is so essential to get permission to appear in their email inbox.

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes; they receive lots of emails every day. You have to compete and stand out from the other emails they receive.

The best way to do this is to entice the customer to give you their data. And, make it clear from the start why they should give you their data.

In return, it is always better to explain what types of email they will receive and how often.

The best marketers use a mixture of great content with relevant offers for your products or services.

This type of campaign can deliver the mix through automated emails.

Still on the fence with email marketing for your business?

Here are some stats that should convince you.

3.7 billion email users worldwide
4.1 billion email users predicted in 2021
28.5% average ROI vs 7% for direct mail
£/$44 return for every £/$1 spent
72% of people prefer offers by email vs 17% on social media
Email is 40 times more effective in getting new customers than Facebook or Twitter
The average order value of an email is three times higher than social media
94% of people say email is the main reason they get online every day

Stats from campaignmonitor.com

So, let’s get right into creating and sending your email marketing campaigns.

Establish goals for your email marketing campaigns

Planning is vital in business and marketing. And, establishing your goals is essential before you invest your time and money into email marketing.

Goals such as to inform, engage, communicate, teach and sell should be in the mix.

The advantage of email marketing campaigns is that you can guide the customer through “know like and trust”.

What we’re looking for inevitably is a new customer or more sales.

Who will you contact

Deciding and finding the audience for your email marketing campaigns is fundamental to your success.

If you are an established business, you may have a database of customers and prospects. Having a reliable, clean database will give you an advantage.

You can send out an email to get this database to a signup page on your website. You can also automatically upload this database to your email provider.

And, you can send out an initial email to ask the customers to click a link to accept the information.

If you are a new business, the job will be harder in the beginning. You will need a signup page on your website, and use social media to send traffic to that page.

Also, as you start to sell your product or service, you can ask them to join the list when they purchase.

What is your objective

I have mentioned earlier that a clearly defined objective for your email marketing campaigns is essential.

Without a clear objective, you cant start to build out your campaign content.

So, take the time to plan out the purpose of the campaign. And, what steps you will need to take to deliver the objective.

What content will you include in the email marketing campaigns

For instance, if your objective is to sell a “widget”.

And, your regular face to face transactions usually requires you to explain the benefit of the widget.

Then email marketing requires the same information drip-fed.

Tip: never buy a list of names and emails from a company with claims of “clean lists” that are pre-approved by the user.

Think about it how many times have you given your details to a company not knowing who will contact you.

Their business is to create revenue by selling a list, not necessarily selling a list that’s valuable to your business.

Choose your email provider

Choosing an email provider is another part of setting up your email marketing campaigns.

There are a wide range of providers at different cost levels and also different functionality.

When you start email marketing for the first time in your business, it’s better to purchase a provider that is low cost for their software.

Tip: do not expect Gmail, Hotmail, or email providers like that to run your campaigns or data collection.

Their purpose is to supply one to one email functionality.

Here are some great email providers to start your email marketing:

Aweber
Mailchimp
GetResponse
ActiveCampaign

I use Aweber for its all-round ability to grow a database, and it’s extensive functionality.

Decide on what type of email marketing campaigns you will send

The types of email you send should reflect what you have learned from your audience. Having a mixture of different types of email formats can allow you to send emails more frequently without upsetting your customers.

For instance, it would allow you to send out:

newsletter
informational email
engagement email
educational email
sale or discount email

This schedule allows you to send five value-driven emails per month.

A newsletter email can provide company and industry-specific updates to your customers.

Sending this type of information allows you to stand out as an expert showcasing how your product or service is helping others. And, also provide value with the latest changes in the industry or sector.

Sale or discount offer

An offer email (or sales email) can focus on a specific product or service. Each offer should be a time-sensitive and limited amount. This type of offer gives a sense of urgency to take action.

Engagement

An engagement email focuses on getting the customer to take a micro action.

This email can be to read a blog post or article, watch a video, go to a web page.

By giving the customer value with an engagement email, you are also building trust.

Educational

Educational emails highlight problems that customers face and deliver solutions that include your product or service.

Creating your email campaigns

The most challenging thing to do in marketing is starting with a blank page.

When it comes to creating your email marketing campaigns, it’s the biggest issue that stops businesses from starting.

However, it’s like riding a bike or learning any skill; practice makes perfect.

Once you get over the initial fear and start to see what works and what doesn’t, it becomes easier to tweak the campaign.

Include images/video

Statistics show that using images or videos on email marketing campaigns can also enhance the customer experience.

Personalise

Your email software will allow you to personalise your email marketing campaigns in many ways.

For instance, you can use the customer’s name, company, industry, or sector (as long as you have those details in your database).

Statistics show that using a customers name in the email subject line and the email content has a higher open rate and increased customer action.

Optimise for mobile

With a growing number of people checking there emails on mobile devices, the email design must be responsive.

Responsive emails can be read easily on any technology from pc, tablet and mobile.

Most sure that your email campaign software will do this for you.

There is nothing worse when opening an email than having to enlarge, reduce or move the content on the screen while reading.

Measure the results

Building Relationships Before Closing The Sale Is Good For Business

Everything you do in business and marketing should be measured. Otherwise, all your efforts could focus on the things that don’t work.

When it comes to email marketing campaigns, the following list of measurements are helpful:

The number of unique opens – The number of individual subscribers who opened your campaign.
The number of bounces – The number of email addresses to which your campaign could not be delivered (for a variety of different reasons).
The number of emails not opened – The number of unique subscribers who did not open your campaign.
Open rate – The percentage of all subscribers who opened your campaign.
Click-Through Rate – The percentage of people who opened your campaign who then clicked on a link.
Unsubscribe rate – The percentage of people who unsubscribed from your email list through this campaign.
Spam complaints – The number (and percentage) of people who marked your campaign as Spam by clicking the ‘Mark as Spam’ buttons in their chosen email client (e.g., Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Outlook).
Shares – The number of people who forwarded your campaign to a friend (using the forward icon in your email template) or shared it via social networks like Twitter and Facebook.

Resend the campaign to non opens

If a high percentage of customers open your emails, that’s great. But what about those that didn’t open them?

One of the tricks that good marketers use is to resend the email to those customers who didn’t open the first one.

Change the subject line and send the email to those that didn’t open.

Clean your list

Email software providers usually charge per subscriber. So, if you have subscribers who haven’t opened your emails for some time, it’s better to clean them.

Cleaning your database is useful in several ways. If someone is not opening your emails, how much value do they have?

Send them an email to say goodbye before deleting them from your database. And explain you don’t want to fill up customers inbox with emails they don’t want.

Give them a choice to click a link to stay on the database or be removed from your database.

This action gives them a chance to make their own decision.