17 Feb 10 Tips on Creating Email Marketing Campaigns
Read time: 5 minutes
Creating email marketing campaigns is a great way to engage with your customers directly. Email marketing campaigns can be used to promote new elements of your business, offer individuals exclusive deals and keep your business top of mind amongst your customers. We’ve put together 10 tips on creating email marketing campaigns to help you develop engaging and exciting emails for your customers!
10 tips on creating email marketing campaigns
1. GROW your database
Email campaigns are only effective if you have people to send them to! To build up a decent email database, start asking your new customers if they’d like to sign up to your mailing list when they make purchases from your business. A great way to add subscribers to your database is to run competitions that encourage participants to submit their email address to go into the draw to win a prize. But remember, you need to disclose that by signing up they’ll be added to your mailing list.
2. Create email lists
Sort your email database into different lists. What did they buy when they joined your mailing list? What are they most interested in hearing about from your brand? Creating lists will help you remember to send relevant content to your customers. Lists are also useful if you’d like to send exclusive discount codes or updates to a specific group of your customers. They can add a personalised touch when you target your emails to certain members of your audience.
3. Use an email campaign platform to create your emails
We recommend you use a platform such as Mailchimp to create email marketing campaigns. Mailchimp has a free version to get you started and allows you to set up professional looking emails and sort your database into different lists. Using an email campaign platform to send your emails to bulk email addresses will also minimize the likelihood of your email getting blocked or marked as spam. If you send an email from Outlook (or similar) to too many email addresses at once, some servers may block your email address and your campaigns won’t be received by your customers.
4. Write an exciting subject line
Think about what makes you open an email from a brand. What can you include in the subject line that sounds exciting and will compel your customers to open your email? Include words/phrases like ‘new’, ‘sale’ and ‘just in’. Be careful using words like ‘win’ and ‘free’ in your subject line – this may have a higher likelihood of being flagged as spam.
5. Use your logo and branding
When your customer opens your email, make sure they see your logo and branding so they know the email is legit and not spam. Unfortunately, with so much spam and scams coming through emails these days, people need to be cautious when checking their emails. Having strong branding in your email will also help keep your business top of mind.
6. Use bright imagery
Always use bright, quality imagery in your email campaign. Good images will help keep your customer engaged with your email as they scroll through your content.
7. Add alt tags
Always add alt tags to your images when creating an email marketing campaign. If the images don’t load on some browsers, they will see the alt text in place of the image. Visually impaired users will hear the alt text where their phone/computer reads the image.
8. Include something your customers care about
When deciding on content to include in your email marketing campaign, think about what your customers actually care about. To minimize the likelihood of customers unsubscribing from your list, include exciting content that they’ll be happy to receive in their inbox. Are you holding a sale? Do you have new products that your customers will love? Are you hosting an event? Make sure your email includes information that your database will find valuable.
9. Link to your website
Always include links to your website or Facebook page so your customers can find more information about the topics you’ve included in your email. Make it easy for your customers to get to your website and purchase your products. We always recommend using a link button in your emails rather than a URL – this looks neater and reassures customers that the link is not spam.
10. Test your emails
Before sending your email marketing campaign to your database, send a test email to yourself and check it on your computer and your mobile. Take a look at the layout, proofread your text and check your links are all going to the right place.
Did you find these 10 tips on creating email marketing campaigns useful? Redsteps turned 10 in mid-2019, so we’ve been celebrating with a series of ’10 tips’ blogs to help you with your business’ marketing. Follow us on Instagram for more marketing tips and tricks!
If you’re looking for help on your email marketing campaigns, contact us today. We offer email marketing communication packages that are tailored to your business and brand!