Email campaigns are a small business’ best friend when it comes to reaching a large amount of people in a short amount of time.
As a “bulk” email that is sent to the people who have subscribed to your email list, email campaigns generally have one of two goals:
- Convince potential customers/existing customers to purchase a product or service.
- Help potential customers learn more about your business or a related topic.
Here are some tips to help you plan a successful email marketing campaign.
How to structure your email campaigns
When building your email campaigns, think about your overall goal and what kind of story it will take to get there. Unlike a quick newsletter that gets right to the sale or shares recent news, an email campaign uses a story to build momentum that leads to the goal of a sale or promotion. The emails you send should build trust, reinforce your capabilities, and assure the potential customer that you understand their problems—and that you can solve them.
A typical email campaign should run between 3-7 emails in total (though there is no rule saying they can't be longer). But when it comes to the first email in your campaign, cut straight into a story that builds to the goal of your offer or promotion.
Your message
We know we already said this, but we'll say it again: the emails you send should build up to your goal. And here are some examples that can help you achieve your mission.
Highlight your offer - The cool thing about email marketing platforms is that they offer some great ways to highlight your promotional offer. Let’s say you’ve already created an attention-grabbing subject line (shoot for 35 characters or less)like this one:
25% off website copywriting!
Your email content can have a big promotional splash highlighting the 25% off in bold color if you choose. This along with your brand colors and logo can create a very professional, on-brand marketing piece.
Communicate the value of your offer - Remember to always reinforce the value of your product or service. You build trust and confidence by showcasing your understanding of the problems your potential customers face and how your product or solution has been proven to help—which brings us to the next topic.
Building confidence with reviews - People are most likely to buy when they know they aren’t the first person to take the offer. They want to trust the results you promise will actually happen—so show them! Add reviews and quotes from happy clients to your emails or even a video testimonial if you have one to share. Just keep them short and easy to read.
Your email body content
When it comes to writing the rest of your emails, you can go one of two ways depending on what resonates best with your audience—or how you prefer to communicate to your audience.
- Option 1 is to write simple and concise messaging that clearly states your offer, what your product or service does and the benefits it will deliver.
- Option 2 is to write longer, story-like copy that shares your understanding of the problems the customer faces, what you’ve seen, and how you solve it. Writing longer emails for the first few you send can be helpful as an opportunity to tell more of the story you've planned as well as the value you can provide—this is the time to build that trust after all.
Remember, since people are drawn to companies (and people) they like, make sure your tone is friendly, relatable, and even fun if that’s your brand’s personality. Oh, and stay away from words like FREE or BUY to avoid getting trapped in spam filters.
Here’s a great example of simple email messaging:
Dear [name],
Thanks for stopping by my table at Creative ConFab. As a professional digital copywriter who has written for some of the biggest brands in the outdoors industry, I’m excited to offer 25% off on website copywriting for Creative ConFab attendees.
Boost your sales, increase your brand awareness, or simply jazz up the way you describe your businesses capabilities with a website copy refresh—now more affordable than ever before. Hurry, available for a limited time only!
[GET YOUR FREE ESTIMATE!]
The final details
After you’ve written the emails for your campaign there are some logistical details to finish things off.
- Know which segments (or parts) of your email list you are going to send the emails to. Maybe that's everyone. Maybe it's not
- Add who it’s from, a subject line, and be sure to preview the email to see what it will look like after you send it
- Check to see how it looks on both desktop and mobile devices
- Schedule when the email is sent. Your pacing may vary but for most email campaigns, 1 email per day or every other day is standard
Pro-tip: Track your open rates and click throughs to see who’s engaging with your email and add them to the KPI charts you have in the Performance tab in your Enji account.
A/B Testing your email campaigns
Now that your email campaign is ready to launch, one way to determine what resonates with your prospective customers (and get better at this over time) is to send two slightly different versions—one version to half of your contacts and a second to the other half. This is called A/B testing. Try one of these ways to develop an A/B test:
- Different subject lines
- The length of your copy (long vs.short form)
- Different designs for each
- Different CTA's (calls to action)
Pro-tip: Only have one thing be different between your email versions—that allows you to know what exactly was different and which version worked better.
Picking an email marketing platform
There are more than a few options out there, but we love and recommend Flodesk to manage your campaigns. Mailchimp is another strong option but is better suited for your business if you’re trying to do more complicated (read: advanced) things. The investment in an email marketing platform is a smart use of your money since email marketing consistently helps small businesses make money (with numbers to back it up).
Regardless of what email marketing platform you use, you can easily build a campaign in it. Here are a few things to remember:
- Make sure the contacts on your email list are imported and organized
- Most platforms have great design templates, so don’t feel like you have to design things from scratch! Choose the templates that work for you and customize them with your content and brand assets (your logo, colors and fonts you’ve stored in Enji)
You’ll discover which type of emails work best from looking at your open and click through rates. Then you can focus your next email campaign in that direction. Nice, right?
