Ingredients of best Email Marketing Campaigns

Email Marketing is one of the form of the Direct Marketing methods where you deliver your message right in front of the eyes of the consumer. It has come a long way from being a plane text messages to present beautiful email templates.

There are various softwares available which help you in building your Email Marketing campaigns. Mailchimp is one of the most popular automated email marketing software. It has built in email marketing templates where you need to just drag & drop to create one. You can upload your email marketing list and can crosscheck the actions taken by your customers. It provides a free email marketing version where you can send up to 2000 mails and can later upgrade to add more features.

Before you start your campaign, here are some ingredients to remember while making a best Email marketing campaign:

Get more & more people to subscribe

• Use simple & easy to fill Opt In forms

• Take advantage of Social Media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc), use them as one of the ways to log in on your webpage 

• If you are a blogger and host some very engaging content, offer some free relevant material in exchange of his/her email

Jon Loomer who is an authority on Facebook Marketing, offers free material in form of pdf & e-book in exchange of an email.

• Use triggered call to action in Opt In forms 

Source - https://blog.bufferapp.com/get-more-email-subscribers-how-we-doubled-email-signups

Example : 

1. Red box - This opt in form has mentioned the number of present subscribers which encourages you to be part/join the community
2. Blue box - Preview of the benefits of being a subscriber
3. Purple box - A little bit customized CTA, than a generalized one

Subject Line can make it or break it for you

You are wondering why people do not open you email. I hope you are not doing any of these 

• Writing your subject line in all CAPS

This put off your customer as too loud and is shouting for attention

• Using Internet slangs like imo, dat, kk etc

It tells that this is just another spam

• Using generalized words like Hi, Limited Offer, Be the first etc

The customers get bombarded with these subject lines through out the day & hence do not open all unless you are lucky

• It is HE not SHE

Personalisation is an effective approach to get you email clicked, but be very sure you are not using it wrong. Segment your Email list as per gender or region or as per your requirement to get the right salutation

• Wrong Punctuation 

Using Emojis, exclamation is BIG NO as it make it look like a spam     

• Subject line length 

The length should be as minimum as possible so that a customer can also read the brief of the email which encourages him to open the email 

You get an idea what the body of the mail contains

You do not have any clue about the body of the mail

Timing is all that matters 

You have to understand that you are not the only one who is sending emails to the customer. Customer is being bombarded by 100 of mails daily but if you send mail to your customers when they are expected   to open it most then it can bring some moolah to you. A person is normally expected to check the promotional email 

• in the morning (8 am - 11 am) 
• in the noon after lunch (2 pm - 4 pm)
• in the night (8 pm - 11 pm)

Give them some time to breath

Most of the people are expected to unsubscribe from your mailing list, if you are sending them emails multiple times in a day.

Frequency is the major reason why people unsubscribes from the mailing list

A/B testing 

It is one of the most important method where you test different approaches to run a campaign. This gives you an optimized & effective approach which gives you the desired results. 

You are free to use/try/test different approaches for the above mentioned points and see what suits you best.   

Some Examples : 

1)

Source - https://blog.bufferapp.com/get-more-email-subscribers-how-we-doubled-email-signups

2) Images from Obama Campaign                        

 An example from my Inbox 

RangDe is an micro finance organisation which encourages people to lend money on simple terms to other needy borrowers. You can observe that they follow the best practices of email marketing of the some we have discussed.

In the above copy of the mail, observe the text in the highlighted box

• Subject line - Precise. It encourages you to see to whom the investment is going. 
• Timing - The mail was sent late in night. 
• Unsubscription - Unlike writing a general unsubscription statement, it uses the word "disbursement notifications". Now if you have invested a amount, you would like to keep yourself informed of invested money.       

There are number of best Email marketing practices that marketers follow. What are your favorite Email marketing campaigns?