How to do email marketing? – Step-By-Step Guide – When planning and executing our email marketing strategies, it is essential to have adequate planning of the main aspects involved: the message, the audience, the platform used, etc. At Edix we give you some guidelines on how to do email marketing effectively.
For your email marketing campaigns to work, you need to define a clear objective, send to the right people at the right time and, of course, offer attractive and valuable content . That is, it is not enough to write a beautiful email that has a striking subject, but you must design a strategy that makes sense. If you don’t know where to start, don’t panic, we’ll help you out.
The first thing you should know is that email marketing is one of the great assets that brands have to win customers, retain them and consolidate the link they establish with them . For something we have created in Edix a whole competition focused on email marketing for our Digital Marketing Specialist course . You just have to think about the desired emails you receive in your mailbox. Surely you will find a newsletter, a gift for your birthday, a Black Friday offer… content that makes you return again and again to the same companies and products.
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How to do email marketing? – Step-By-Step Guide
In addition, email marketing is an easy, cheap and scalable communication channel. What does the latter mean? That you can start sending messages to 100 subscribers and quickly reach 1,000 without having to change the technology, design or resources used.
So, whether you have an e-commerce, a blog or want to set up your own newsletter about what you are passionate about, or if you are looking for new ways to strengthen the relationship between brand and user, email marketing interests you. And this is what you should know.
6 Keys to effective email marketing
1. Define your goal
Before you start writing the email, think about why you are going to send it , what you are looking to achieve with that communication. A purchase, a visit to the web, a recommendation…? Do not send any message that does not make sense in your marketing strategy.
2. Take care of your database
Your audience is the one that will decide the success of your campaigns . If the majority of subscribers open the email, congratulations, that means your brand captures their attention and the content interests them. If, on the contrary, they ignore it… it means that something is failing. That is why it is so important to make sure that all the contacts on the list are valid (their email address is correct and they have indeed subscribed) and, in addition, they want to know what you have to tell them.
How do you do this? Firstly, asking for double confirmation when they subscribe to your list (send an email they have to click on) and, secondly, doing ‘cleaning’ from time to time to eliminate email addresses that no longer work, others that they never open the messages etc.
3. Let the customer journey be your guide
If you work in digital marketing, you know it well. The customer journey refers to the different stages a user goes through in their relationship with the brand: discovery, consideration, purchase, retention and recommendation . Depending on when each subscriber is, the communication they receive will be one or the other.
For example, if they just found out about your website (discovery), send them a selection of some of your best content. If they browse your catalog often but don’t finish clicking the add to cart button (consideration), offer them an exclusive discount. And if you bought a limited product a while ago and it’s back in stock, let them know (retention).
4. Choose responsive design
Essential. According to HubSpot statistics , 50% of marketing emails are opened and read on mobile devices . Your communication can be super interesting and have a wonderful design, but if it doesn’t look good on the smartphone, don’t expect great results.
Nowadays, most email marketing platforms offer responsive or multi-device templates, and in some like Mailchimp you can even check how it looks on each device and mail server.
5. Avoid the spam box
The biggest fear of every email marketer is that their shipments end up in the spam box, or what is the same, thrown in the trash without even being seen. Fortunately, there are ways around this:
- Complete the DNS ( domain name server ) records for your domain or subdomain through your provider.
- Do not use in the subject words and expressions such as free, offer, call now …
- Ask your subscribers to add you to their contacts .
6. Analyze the results of your campaigns
Just as you need a goal to make sense of your email marketing strategies, you need metrics to see if you’re achieving it. The fundamental ones are:
- Open rate : what percentage of users open your emails.
- Conversion rate : how many take the action you ask.
- Bounce Rate – The number of submissions that fail to reach their destination or end up in spam.
10 strategies for your emailing campaigns
Now that you know the must-haves of email marketing, the time has come to look for strategies to optimize your mailings.
1. Create a simple and useful form
It is the first step to generate leads , or interested users, to whom you can send your communications. You need to enable a form on your website or landing page that is visible, attractive and, most importantly, easy to complete. The ideal is to ask for only 2 or 3 mandatory data , which are usually name, email address and a third party that helps segment shipments (the next strategy in this list). The easier it is to subscribe to your emails, the more likely the user will click.
2. Segment
Send each user the content that may interest them the most, which means that not all the addresses on your list will receive the same emails, nor will each email you send reach the entire database. You can segment by location ( 5 plans in your city ), product category ( We have selected these garments for you), history (Since you bought this, I’m sure you’ll like this one), etc. The more you personalize the content, the higher the open rate you will get. See what Mailchimp says : if you segment your campaigns, you’ll improve opens by 14% and clicks by 100%.
3. Say hello
Do not wait to launch a good campaign to welcome that new lead who has just subscribed to your list with open arms. Send them a welcome message to introduce yourself, let them know what kind of content they are going to receive, offer them another content that may be of interest (it’s time to get your best posts out of the drawer) and, why not, ask them for any additional information that will help you, again , to segment.
Read Also: Benefits of Email Newsletters for Business in 2023
4. Pamper the subject, but also the preheader
What the subject of an email says is the main reason to open it. But the preheader, which in theory corresponds to the first line of the content, is also important. In fact, it is the only thing, along with the subject and the sender’s name, that is read without having to click on the message. Also, it always comes out, so yes or yes you have to edit it.
In both one and the other, bring out your more copywriting side and keep these tips in mind:
- Do not write all the text in capital letters.
- Do not abuse punctuation marks.
- Avoid words considered spam.
- Be short and concise with a clear objective: to capture attention.
- Use smileys to make your mail stand out in the inbox.
5. Generate conversation
Whenever it makes sense, encourage your readers to interact with the emails they receive. You can ask them a question, ask them to vote in a survey, rate the content they have received, etc. The question is to generate a conversation that will help you minimize the bounce rate (you will avoid falling into spam), boost engagement and, of course, also to segment.
6. Celebrate special dates
Take advantage of key events such as Christmas, Black Friday, back to school… to launch special campaigns, especially when you are looking for a purchase. You can offer discounts, gifts or useful information. Essential then: make a content plan so you don’t miss anything.
7. Offer exclusive content
Make your readers feel special by being part of your contact list . You can send them offers and discounts just for them, gifts for their birthday, access to subscriber-only content, and even a sneak peek of new products and services.
8. Test alternatives with A/B testing
Doing an A/B test in email marketing consists of launching two shipments with small differences to two different groups of subscribers to see which one works better. The ideal is to do it with a small sample of your database, and, once you have the results, send the winning option to the rest. You can test the subject, the main creative or the CTA within the content.
9. Automate shipments
When doing email marketing, there are many communications that you can define in advance so that they go out automatically at the right time. Examples are the welcome, the confirmation of a purchase, the notice of an abandoned cart or the birthday greeting. It is what is known as marketing automation , and more and more tools offer it.
10. Resume the relationship
We call cold leads , or cold leads , those contacts that have not opened our emails or interacted with the brand for a long time. A good email marketing strategy is to try to win them back with personalized content, such as We miss you but with an incentive that makes them regain interest, such as a discount coupon or a gift.
Now that you know the keys and strategies that will improve the results of your campaigns, you can already affirm that you know how to do email marketing. Or, what is the same, how to get your emails to land in the inbox, for recipients to open and read them, click on the links and strengthen the link with your brand. Of course, before you get down to business, we are obliged to give you a warning: email marketing… get hooked!