email Campaigns 101: Lessons Learned from Successful email Campaigns

While most of us have inboxes bursting with emails, there is always room for the ones you enjoy receiving and opening. If you have a good message or story to tell, it’s not too late to start a great email marketing campaign to broadcast your products or services. Multi-channel customers tend to be the most loyal and have larger average order sizes, so it’s time to get started or to perfect your existing campaign.


Understand your relevance to your audience
First, always put yourself in the mind of your audience. Whether he is a business (B2B) or consumer (B2C) target, he is busy and is already receiving a downpour of email. Keep the message clean and brief. Understand how important you are to the recipient. Learn what is important to the customer and what subjects they want to hear about.


Give a reason to continue opening your email
Don’t have a hard sell on every email. Vary the content and format. You may have a couple of branded templates you use, but keep the customer wondering what she will find when she opens.

In a campaign to college students, open rates soared over time when we would intersperse good content with messages to buy. For example, some humorous emails with great design on “how to tell your parents you flunked you mid-terms”, “do’s and don’ts for your sweetheart on valentines day”, and “the world’s worst roommates” ; some serious content on the job market outlook, career trends, and NCAA sports commentaries; interspersed with messages to purchase books and apparel, kept open rates as high as 32%.


Interesting “subject” and “from” lines
If your name is recognized, be sure to put it in the “from” line. If it is not, try experimenting with interesting names and you will see open rates will vary. Once you find a good one, stick to it and become recognized.

Change your subject names to be interesting, yet accurately descriptive. Try not to use terms that are caught by spam filters, such as “free!”

Don’t overlook the value of a good plan
Plan out your email content for the next 4-6 months. Write several in advance. That way, if you are having writer’s block or other priorities come up, you will not have to interrupt the campaign. It is amazing how the content flows when you think it through months in advance. If a great “hot” topic comes up, you can be flexible and change your plan.

Unsubscribe Option
Always offer the recipient the opportunity to unsubscribe. One of the fastest ways to alienate a customer prospect is entrap him in email prison with no way out!

Measurements
Be sure to measure your campaign. You will want to look at open rates, clickthrough rates, bad addresses and unsubscribe rates at a minimum. Beware of opt-in email recipients who give you “good addresses” that they never open again! These will not be captured in your bad address numbers.