Internet marketing | 9 steps to executing an email campaign

By Jennifer Paddock

Below are 9 steps that will help you start or improve your email campaign.

1.    Email campaign strategic planning
Your first step is to plan the goals you wish to achieve as your email campaign will act as a tool to help you achieve these goals. Promotional emails often have immediate goals behind them such as encouraging recipients to make purchases or to request further information. You will also need to decide on your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for your campaign, examples include open rate, click-through rate, number of emails forwarded and return on investment (ROI).

2.    Define list
One of the most important factors that contributes towards a successful email campaign is having a genuine opt-in database, ie. users who want to hear from you. This is a list of people who have agreed to allow you to send them marketing information and they are the campaign’s most valuable asset. The most important information that you need from your subscribers is their email addresses but it is also useful if you can acquire their first names, surnames, gender, nationality, telephone number, date of birth and the date that they opted-in. Of course you need to be careful of how much information you ask for as a long list of required fields will often dissuade a busy person from taking the time to subscribe. Therefore you must find a balance between keeping the required fields short enough to encourage people to opt-in, whilst at the same time obtaining their vital information.

Marketers that spam people put the reputation of their company on the line and in some countries this is actually a crime for which the business can be prosecuted.

3.    Creative execution
Emails can be created and viewed as either text emails or HTML. Note that sometimes HTML emails are rendered as text emails.
Text emails are, as the name suggests, text only. Think of these emails as creating a text file in notepad on a Windows computer. They are plain and smaller than HTML emails and as the text is the main focus it is important that great care is taken in the copywriting of these emails.
HTML emails can include colour, images, hyperlinks, different fonts and all the other bells and whistles. It is probably what you have had in mind when thinking about your email campaign.
Parts of an email:

The Header
This includes the ‘To’, ‘From’ and ‘Reply to’ fields. It is important to use these fields as an opportunity to create a feeling of familiarity with the recipient. The recipient should feel that the email is somewhat unique for them and was sent personally to them. You can use a personalized company email address, for example: john@companyname.com, for the reply field. The email should also be addressed to the recipient’s name.

The Subject Line
This is arguably the most important part of the email as it will largely dictate whether the recipient opens the email and reads it or simply deletes it without reading it. Spam filters also scrutinize subject lines so avoid the words ‘Free’, ‘Win’ and ‘Buy now’ if you don’t want these emails to end up in the recipient’s junk mail.

Body
This is where the text and images will be situated. Ensure that the text of your email can be read without the images as some computers will have problems loading them and you don’t want this problem to kill the message in your email.

Footer
This should include the contact details of your business. It can also include a ‘forward to a friend’ link to increase your database. It is important that your footer also includes a clear ‘unsubscribe’ link.

4.    Integrate campaign with other channels
It is possible to use an email campaign on its own to market your business, but it can be used as an effective compliment to your other online as well as offline marketing. When using an email campaign in conjunction with other channels it is essential that consistency is maintained between the channels in respect of content, tone and design.

5.    Personalize the message
If your database has entries for recipient’s names, use them! ‘Dear Kim’ is a lot more effective than ‘Dear Reader’ so keep your greetings personalized if possible.
It is also advisable to segment your database into categories and customize the content of the emails to target the specific needs and interests of those in each category.

6.    Deployment
You will need to send tester emails to ensure that they will pass spam filters. The design should also be tested to ensure that it will load and render clearly on the computers of as many recipients as possible. Once you have tested these things, your delivery rate should be excellent. You should also take into consideration the time that you send the emails. Generally between Monday morning and Friday afternoon are the best times to send them but it will differ from audience to audience.

7.    Interaction handling
It is not only the emails that form part of a business’s email campaigns that are important in establishing relationships and maintaining the business’s reputation with clients. Every interaction via email is part of the business’s marketing practice.

8.    Generate reports
The key to growth is tracking, analyzing and optimizing. Set up an email tracking system so that you can obtain statistics in a user-friendly manner.
The key measurables in assessing the success of an email campaign are:
•    the number of emails actually delivered;
•    the number of emails bounced;
•    the number of emails opened;
•    the number of recipients who unsubscribed;
•    the pass on rate; and
•    click-through rates and conversion.

9.    Analyse results
Use the numbers generated from the reports to assess the success of the email campaign and to improve the next one.

Click here for more information on the University of Cape Town Internet Marketing Course.

Back to SmartyPants Newsletter - February 2010 Edition