All great email campaigns begin with an idea, and the success of the resulting messages depends on how well you organize the project. Creativity is essential for email marketers today, and a properly defined pre-campaign checklist can ensure your message is well communicated.
Imagine sending out a well received marketing email which is entertaining, accurate and beautifully designed. Pulling off a complete email send in coordination with designers, product managers and developers can result in a better, integrated approach. Planning each individual email campaign in detail can help ensure the success of your marketing plan from beginning to end:
Take time to understand your audience and messaging strategy
Before you begin concepts of an email campaign, think carefully about how your pre-campaign checklist will ensure alignment with your goals. Many marketers want to encourage purchases or signups – in these cases you should have a well packaged call to action as well as entertaining, enjoyable content which establishes trust.
Keep in mind your audience may range from new customers to prospect to lifelong customers – you’ll want to segment your list according to different messaging strategies. Better tailoring your marketing messages based upon the audience will further help to improve conversion rates and customer satisfaction.
Understand timing, seasonality and consumer patterns
Consumer behavior can vary widely across seasons, days of the week and even times of the day. Properly timing your campaign for maximum results can help ensure success. Start by understanding seasonality in your business – you should adjust the call to action according to the buying cycle for your customers. For example, if you have an outdoor service business you may want to have an informational newsletter during the winter and offer special pre-orders. Additionally, determining an ideal day and time of day to send your email can help improve results over time.
Review your creative design, copy and landing pages
Working with your designers and writers, always review the resulting product before clicking send. You may notice an opportunity to tweak some of the creative layout or to improve the coding standards. Coming up with the right creative campaign involves reviewing the message and campaign creative before sending.
Determine a analytics and testing plan
Once you defined your broader campaign goals, you should setup and test analytics tracking for your message. Many mailing programs have integrated analytics, and you can also append unique destination URLs so you can track on-site behavior in packages such as Google Analytics. Checking to make sure your campaign is tracking properly is an important testing stage.
Always fully review the quality and results from an analytics plan so you can determine how to optimize the campaign in advance of sending. Once you review your conversion tracking and message quality you’ll be ready to go.
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