Have you already developed your email campaign strategy?
Email campaign strategy determines the direction of your business. Despite the fact, that email marketing is considered to be one of the cheapest and easiest types of marketing to implement, it requires much preparation.
Before sending an email campaign, you should give it some serious thought. Consider not this or that particular email, its goal and expected results, but the whole strategy.
Strategy is a set of methods and tactics to achieve a goal. Only performed together, you will see the result.
Luckily, email marketing doesn’t stand still. It is developing very quickly and significantly. In such a crazy tempo we witness an occurrence of a great number of different methods, tactics and ways to improve it.
In this article we will dwell on several successful email campaign strategies, tested experimentally.
Email campaign strategies
- Multichannel communication
Email marketing doesn’t mean that only email can be used. A lot of services allow to combine several channels of communication for better engagement. For example, if a subscriber didn’t open your email, you can send SMS or web push notification, it depends on the service.
UniSender and SendPulse are the examples of such services. UniSender allows to send emails and SMS. SendPulse is a platform for sending email, SMS and web push notifications. All these 3 channels can be used together automatically.
Thus, you can be sure that a recipient will receive your message, or you can choose the most appropriate channel for every subscriber.
- Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence is a unique technology. Its aim is to analyze subscribers’ activities on the website, time when they tend to open emails and devices used. On basis of this information, technology determines when and what emails it’s better to send in campaigns. In SendPulse you can send campaign using AI via web push or email. It’s a great chance to increase customer loyalty.
- Subject line
Your subject line means much more than you think. It is a “face” of your email, if not even of your company. If you manage to make it eye-grabbing and intriguing, subscribers will read your email expecting useful and relevant content.
To make users open your email, create short but informative subject-line – the first words are to arouse curiosity and a desire to discover more.
Make sure that it reflects the main idea of the email.
If you have several ideas of a great subject-line and can’t choose, use an A/B test.
With an A/B test, you’ll be able to test 2 subject-lines, set the winning element and find out which one performs better, according to the email open rate.
A/B test is available in SendPulse, GetResponse, MailChimp, etc.
- Personalization
Every your subscriber knows that they receive not an individual email, but the same one as the other hundreds and thousands of recipients and they become angry because of bulk email campaigns.
A good method of dealing with this problem is personalization.
Using personalization, you can insert some personal data about your clients such as name, gender, company, etc. It will make you closer to your subscriber, and help to establish trustful relationships.
Personalization is easy to apply, you can ask your subscribers for personal information or insert the necessary fields into your subscription form.
Every email marketing service today allows to send personalized email campaigns.
Don’t be aside, add this method to your campaign strategy!
- Segmentation
Segmentation is another powerful method in email marketing. Your target audience consists of people with different interests, needs and preferences and, of course, you can’t treat them one and the same way.
Create segments of your clients according to various criteria. Thus, your work will be client-oriented, personal and individual.
For example, you own a sports store. Segment your clients according to kind of sports preferred: football, baseball, basketball, tennis, etc. Thus, you can send them relevant goods.
Another important criteria for segmentation – is the role of your client in your business: former client, perspective, evangelist, inactive. Plan your work accordingly! For example, never send emails to former clients.
This is an example how Amazon uses segmentation. They offer their clients to choose categories of goods they are interested in. This way, every subscriber will receive relevant email only.
Use segmentation and clients will appreciate your care!
- Automations
Automate your email marketing to save time, not to forget about important events and avoid mistakes. Email marketing automation allows to set gradual campaign sending automatically on the predefined schedule.
You can use automations after a user subscribes, on special date – user’s birthday, triggered emails, for example, after a user clicks the link.
All these options are available in SendPulse.
Choosing sequential automation, you will manage to send all the above-mentioned campaigns.
Choosing email automation, you will be able to create event-based automation flow with filters and conditions. This is a much more advanced feature that will surely help your business improve and grow.
- Responsiveness and mobility
Responsive design is a must today, as people check their inbox on different screens with different resolution. Make your campaigns look well on the smallest screens.
Mobility will make it possible for your clients to work with your service using a mobile phone, not only a PC, from anywhere.
- Reengagement
This is the problem faced possibly by all businesses. Generating new leads seems to be the most difficult task, but a real challenge is keeping them active and engaged. They day you notice inactive subscribers, don’t get disappointed but start the reengagement campaign!
Answer the following questions:
- Why have they become inactive?
- Do we send them relevant content they signed to?
- How can we make them interested again?
Having answered these questions, you’ll discover the problem.
To win clients back, offer them a special discount, free shipping, free trial, giveaway, etc. It depends on your business.
Below is an example of a re-engagement campaign.
Sometimes it happens that users forget when and why they subscribed or they are no longer interested, or their preferences changed. Look at the example of email below. A sender tries all the possible variants to understand why a subscriber became inactive.
Of course, it’s easier to maintain your current clients’ engagement, but what’s the point in it if they are not interested?
Make sure that you include a visible unsubscribe link in every your email. If you want to work better and to improve, add the unsubscribe reasons to your form. In SendPulse, for example, you can choose or create your own reasons.
So, there are many successful email campaign strategies. Their effectiveness depends on how you will apply them to your business. Try different strategies to discover the most appropriate and beneficial for you!