Seven Best Practices for an Email Marketing Campaign

On any given day, multiple promotional emails throng our inbox. Among this clutter of emails only a few, if any, stand out and serve its desired purpose. From a company’s perspective, an email marketing campaign is a great way to keep in touch with their customers.

An email campaign could be about updating customers with regard to a new development or as a means of driving traffic to your website. However, not every email marketing campaign succeeds in achieving that. So, what are some of the best practices for running a successful email campaign?

A compelling subject line

This is first thing the customer sees, and as they say, the first impression is most important. A brief and effective subject line is the key to ensuring that the customer clicks on the email and is tempted to learn more about its contents. It should be tempting, but shouldn’t be an overt attempt at increasing sales – that can wait for later.

Relevant content

Getting the customer to click on the email is just the beginning of the marketing process. Don’t be too elated as things can go terribly wrong. The content of the email is the most important part of the mail. Generic information and updates about the company, product or service isn’t sufficient. The email should have content relevant to the target audience and their interests. Highlight how this product or service can prove useful to them.

Retain the brand’s look and feel

The customer is most likely to be familiar with your brand and its look and feel. Previous interaction would have led to the customer forming a particular perception of the brand. Your email marketing campaign needs to retain that essence. If the email campaign tries to portray an image in complete contrast to the brand’s ethos, it will prove to be counterproductive. The only exception could be if the brand is undergoing a revamp or design update.

Seek the customer’s permission

The email should clearly provide the customer an option to either continue receiving similar emails from your company – and hence not mark you as spam' – or unsubscribe from the mailing list.

Call to action

Calling to action is another important segment in the email marketing process. This is where you can either drive traffic to your site or make a sales pitch. Remember, it needs to be done subtly. In-your-face sales pitches fail more often than succeed. Also, remember to provide enough time to the customer to act on the call-to-action. The discount mentioned on the email should be valid for a week or ten days and not 24 hours.

Incentives

You have a beautifully written and designed email campaign ready to be sent, but it isn’t going to be effective unless there is some incentive for the customer. Incentives are a sure fire way of increasing customer engagement. A discount or a free trial will not cost you much, but will be a great value-addition from the customer’s perspective.

Social experience

The social experience related to any activity we perform during a day has become extremely important. It’s no different with an email campaign. A customer would want to share his/her experience with your brand. It is a great way to receive customer referrals.