Running an email marketing campaign can be challenging and even frustrating at times. This is especially true if you do not have much marketing or advertising experience to serve as a guide. If this is the case, how do you know where to start and what aspects to focus on first?
Fortunately, there is a wide variety of readily available content online in the form of guides, articles, and blog posts that can help you grasp the basics quickly. Here are a few tips, pulled from a variety of sources to get you started.
1. Building your email list
Growing your email list over time is a key to having a sustainable email marketing program. Actively adding new people to your list is a must for long term success, since there is natural attrition on virtually any email list that will lead to a file size reduction over time, if it isn’t counteracted by acquisition marketing initiatives. But, how exactly do you go about adding to your list? For most marketers, a multi-phased approach likely makes sense. First off, there are some simple and cost effective methods to ensure you are leveraging. If you have a website, are you giving visitors the ability to sign up (on every page) to receive your newsletter or promotional offers? Are you leveraging your social channels to promote email sign-ups? Look across the channels your customers use to connect with your brand (digital and real world) and make sure you’re providing people with the opportunity to sign up at every instance.
Beyond these options, you may also want to look at leveraging outside partners (affiliates or email marketing firms) to acquire new customers and new email subscribers. Using these sources can be among the most effective methods to grow your list as quickly as possible.
2. Email compliance
In the United States, companies are able to send email to recipients who have not previously signed up or otherwise opted in to receive communications from them. This is a great advantage for email marketers looking to use the channel for customer acquisition. However, organizations must follow the rules of the CAN-SPAM Act in order to market via email. Any successful email program relies on a foundation of being compliant with appropriate marketing and privacy regulations. Ensure you are up-to-speed on the relevant regulations that impact your marketing campaigns and your business in general.
3. Email means mobile
It wasn’t so long ago that most people received, read, and interacted with emails on their desktop computers. But, with the proliferation of smartphones and other mobile devices, there has been a shift in usage to the point where the majority of people now access email on their mobile devices more often than the traditional desktop on their desk at home or the office. Why does this matter? Because many marketing emails (newsletters, promotions, etc.) are delivered in HTML, enabling recipients to easily interact with them. An email that is designed to look great and be easy to interact with on a larger desktop monitor may be just the opposite on a smartphone screen. There are any number of design programs that ensure email designs dynamically adapt to the device being used to view the message. However, we may have reached a time where the primary message is designed for mobile and adapts to desktop, rather than the other way around.
These are just a few of the many aspects involved in building a successful email marketing program. But, they represent three key areas to consider.
