How to Create an Email Marketing Campaign That Delivers

Email offers not only an impressive return on investment ($44 for every $1 invested) but also tremendous performance when it comes to lead generation, producing 50 percent more sales than other lead generation methods.

That’s why email marketing is a must-use strategy for industrial and manufacturing businesses.

Companies often find the process of creating and launching an email marketing campaign challenging, though. This post provides your team with a helpful resource, offering an overview of how to create an email marketing campaign for your business.

1.     Set some concrete goals

Before your team starts your first email, you need to create Specific, Measurable, Actionable, and Timely goals for your email marketing campaign. When you build S.M.A.R.T. goals, you set your company up for success.

You know what you want to accomplish, when you want to accomplish it, and how you plan to accomplish it. In short, you provide your team with a foundation for launching a successful email marketing campaign.

Work towards creating your S.M.A.R.T. goal by answering the following questions:

• Who do you want to reach with your emails?
• What do you want from your email marketing campaign?
• How do you plan on getting what you want?
• When do you want to accomplish your goals?

When you make your S.M.A.R.T. goal, it’s essential for your goal to align with your company’s overall strategy. If you’re looking to drive more leads for a specific service or product, for example, then you want your email marketing campaign to support that to get backing from company decision-makers.

2.     Brainstorm opt-in strategies

With your goals outlined, your team can move onto compiling opt-in ideas. When it comes to an opt-in strategy, your business wants to develop smart ways to generate email subscribers. Without email subscribers, you don’t have an email marketing campaign.

A few examples of some successful ways to earn subscribers include:

• Creating gated content that requires an email sign-up
• Offering an exclusive discount or promotion
• Adding pop-ups on specific pages or after specific actions
• Using a current list of contacts

If you decide to build your email subscriber list from an existing list of contacts, like current clients or new leads, make sure you have permission to email these users. Emailing these readers without permission can hurt your credibility and relationship with these users.

While you can use a variety of approaches to build an email subscriber list, you want to choose the best one for your goals and audience. An offer for free shipping, for example, may work well for an email campaign focused on generating repeat purchases and brand loyalty.

In comparison, an email marketing strategy for generating and nurturing leads may focus more on gated, downloadable content. This approach works well if your business doesn’t feature an online store or provides custom products.

3.     Compile content topics

Next, your team can brainstorm content topics for your email marketing campaign. Depending on your email strategy, you may have several email marketing campaigns, which require separate pieces of content.

For example, if you have an email marketing campaign for current clients and another for leads, you probably want to send them different types of content. Your clients, for instance, may receive company updates and industry news while your leads get product information, market updates, and more.

A few ways of generating email content include:

• Reading industry news sites for popular topics
• Coordinating with sales team members on FAQs
• Browsing industry forums and social media

In addition to developing content topics, your business also needs to determine the frequency of your emails. Some companies deliver emails every week while others send them every month. Your team must decide on your frequency before delivering your first email.

4.     Choose your email marketing platform

For the best results with your email marketing campaign, it’s essential to adopt an email marketing platform. With an email marketing platform, like MyEmailFX or Mailchimp, your business can streamline campaign management.

Even better, platforms like MyEmailFX provide your team with analytics. You can review critical data, like open rates, and launch insightful tests, like experimenting with different subject lines, to find improvements for your campaign strategy.

Depending on your expected subscriber list size, your company could use a free email management platform. It’s critical, however, for your team to choose an application that can scale with your business and growing subscriber list.

5.     Draft your emails

A crucial step in how to start email marketing revolves around your email content. You need to not only design an email but also write them. This step requires the help of a designer and developer, plus a copywriter.

In some cases, your business may not require a copywriter. If someone in-house can write the email content and match your deadlines, then you can handle the process internally. A professional copywriter with experience in your industry, however, can make a difference.

No matter who writes your email content, it’s essential to have someone proofread every email. You don’t want to send an email with typos or errors. Both convey a negative signal to readers, which can impact their view of your company.

Even if you use tools like Grammarly, get someone to read through your content.

6.     Develop split testing experiments

While not required for launching your email marketing campaign, split testing plays a tremendous role in the success of email marketing. That’s why it’s helpful to get into the habit of split testing all your emails.

The most common A/B test, for example, is headlines. Set aside 10 to 15 minutes, and your team can develop alternate headlines for your emails, which can drive opens. Over time, your company can spot trends, which can help you compile future headlines.

In most cases, your email marketing software should include a split testing feature. If the platform doesn’t, consider finding another application. While A/B testing may not seem like a priority for your team now, it’s critical to email marketing.

7.     Launch your campaign

Now that you have your goals created, opt-in strategies prepared, and content drafted, you can launch your campaign. Before you officially launch your campaign, though, make sure to test every single feature, from your pop-ups to your email buttons.

This proactive step saves your team from embarrassment, as well as maximizes the success of your campaign. Plus, it provides you time to fix errors, like a design issue with an email, to make a memorable first impression on readers.

Following your campaign’s launch, it’s essential for your team to monitor its performance. A significant change in numbers, like email sign-ups, can indicate an issue. Low open rates can also hint at a problem, like with emails getting redirected to a user’s spam box, rather than their inbox.

8.     Measure your results

Measuring is a constant part of email marketing. You want to assess the performance of your campaigns and strategies regularly. That way, you can improve your campaigns and work towards accomplishing your S.M.A.R.T. goals.

As most email marketing software includes analytics, this step is simple. Your software compiles all the data your team needs, like open rates, plus makes it easy for you to view, download, and share reports relating to your email campaigns.

For the best results, monitor your email marketing strategy on a weekly and monthly basis. If you send emails less frequently than that, you can modify your check-ins. These check-ins, however, let you monitor your performance and goal progress.

Launch a lead-generating email marketing campaign

Now that you know how to create an email marketing campaign, are you ready to launch yours?

With IndustrialFX, plus MyEmailFX, your business can create a powerful email marketing strategy that generates and nurtures leads, as well as builds brand loyalty. Discover how our team of more than 200 digital marketing specialists can help you by contacting us online today.