10 tips for writing a successful e-mail marketing campaign
1. Multichannel by coordinating e-mail campaigns with other marketing efforts. Match a personalized e-mail campaign with a personalized direct mail campaign, mentioning the same offer in both. Using cross-media marketing has consistently proven to increase response rates.
2. Keep your customer database clean and updated. Keep track of how customers responded to your last campaign and remove those who do not wish to be contacted in the future. Keeping an updated list allows you to focus your efforts on customers with the greatest likelihood of conversion.
3. Personalize your e-mails to ensure greater response. Research shows that more than two-thirds of direct mail recipients prefer personalized messages. One study found that adding the recipient's name to a document increased response rates by 44 percent.
4. Make it easy for your customers to respond. Lay out a clear path for customers to follow using well placed links and clear, direct instructions. Provide a variety of ways for your customers to respond or contact you. E-mail is a very popular tool but some customers still prefer to place an order by phone, or by mail.
5. Use consistent branding in your e-mails so customers recognize and trust your messages. Reinforce your brand and style by using images and aesthetics from your website or other advertising or marketing efforts.
6. Measure your results. E-mail marketing offers the unique opportunity to see exactly who is opening your e-mails and which links they click-through. There is an enormous amount of data that can be collected, but only by measuring those results can you quantify the response.
7. Encourage your customers to Opt-in. There are many simple ways to increase deliverability that marketers often don’t take advantage of. Make it easy for recipients to add you to their address book or Whitelist to help ensure guaranteed delivery. Provide links that allow customers to add themselves to your mailing list or signup to receive updates.
8. Test. This tip is simple – Test everything. Use the cost-effective power of e-mail to test every aspect of your campaign. Experiment with the placement of your links. Test different wording to avoid SPAM filters. Try different ratios of your media mix. You can send multiple e-mail campaigns for the price of one direct mail campaign, an opportunity you can’t afford to ignore.
9. Include a call to action and create a sense of urgency. By using deadlines and limited time offers you can encourage your recipients to act right away. Be sure to place your call to action at the top so it will display in the preview pane and also at the bottom to give them a second chance to act.
10. Don’t overwhelm your customers by inundating their inboxes with daily e-mails. Take advantage of the precision timing that e-mailing offers by sending relevant e-mails at relevant times. If your e-mails are flooding a recipient’s inbox, they are more likely to ignore them or even unsubscribe.