Email Campaign
Email is the grandfather of digital marketing. Email marketing has a bad reputation (and rightly so!) due to the’spammers’ of the past, but it has thankfully changed dramatically over the last 15 years.
Despite many positive changes in the channel, email as a marketing acquisition tool is frequently overlooked by marketers due to its historical reputation, a lack of channel knowledge, or a lack of established relationships with a trusted email vendor. Nonetheless, the most astute marketers, from small ecommerce sellers to Fortune 500 corporations, consider it essential to their media portfolio. Why? Campaigns that are successfully executed generate incredible engagement and, as a result, high volumes of incremental leads or sales.
How has email marketing evolved over the last 15 years?
In other words, it has gotten quite challenging. To begin with, effective email marketing today demands a staggering amount of technical know-how, including fluency in data science, knowledge of inherent “deliverability” strategies (such as “IP warming”), and coding skills.
Consumers are more guarded than ever about the emails they receive, opening only those from businesses and advertisers they know and trust, and (maybe most significantly) those that contain offers that might be of use.
Finally, in order for a campaign to even be delivered to a user’s primary inbox, the biggest, most widely used Internet Service Providers (or ISPs), like Yahoo and Gmail, require consistent engagement (email opens and body copy clicks) and complaint rate thresholds (user unsubscribes or marked as spam). Email marketers risk jeopardizing their entire infrastructure and their business if they cross these lines with ISPs.
The 5 Essentials of a Successful Prospecting Email Campaign
Email marketing is very much alive today. Any marketer looking for a digital channel that gives exceptional national reach, allows for demographic and regional targeting, and generates customer quality on par with PPC/search should give it some thought.
Working with an email firm with experience, integrity, and knowledge of the compliance landscape is crucial before starting an email acquisition campaign. These “5 Keys” can help you start a prospecting email campaign successfully. There is a great likelihood of long-term success when each component plays in unison.
1. Data
Any effective email campaign relies on responsive customer data. A crucial element in a campaign’s success is finding email publishers or affiliates that can segment customer profiles by demographic data. The ability to target customers based on their age, gender, income, or Fico score. The campaign’s short- and long-term success will be significantly impacted by the campaign’s ability to define and eventually send to these profiles. Leading email publishers spend a lot of money segmenting “opener” and “clicker” segments and deleting unresponsive customers to keep lists healthy. It is essential for a client to comprehend how opt-in consumer email data is created, purified, and segmented.
2. Compliance
Compliance inside the email marketing channel is both evident and complex. When vetting an email agency, you should consider the following:
According to CAN-SPAM regulations, does the email publisher delete every unsubscribe request within ten days?
Does the communication footer include both a link and a physical address to unsubscribe?
Does the mailer check the advertiser’s suppression list before each send?
Is there a digital copy of each data record kept with the full name, email address, signup URL, IP address, and timestamp where consent was given to receive third-party marketing messages?
How many times a month does a consumer receive marketing messages?
The effectiveness of a campaign depends on selecting a vendor with a fundamental understanding of CAN-SPAM law and transparency in how their customer data is mailed.
3. Use Creative Email
It takes a lot of skill to create email creatives (such From and Subject Lines) that get opened, effectively represent your brand, engage your audience, and provide a consistent visual experience across all ISPs, browsers, and device types. The content is separate and tailored to the email channel.
It is ineffective to merely reuse native, social media, or display creatives. Why? Searching through one’s email is entirely different from surfing social media or watching YouTube from the perspective of the consumer.
It’s important to choose an email vendor with experience in the field. Visually appealing creatives and content that motivates customers to act are essential components of any successful campaign. Finally, in order to make data-driven campaign adjustments, it is critical to be able to measure performance for each distinct email creative as well as for combinations of the from and subject lines.
4. Publisher Transparency
When working with an email agency, advertisers should demand complete transparency and information on the mailing partners the agency works with. From the perspectives of strategy, creative, targeting, analytics, media forecasting, and campaign optimization, transparency enables true collaboration between all parties.
Working transparently also prohibits the marketer from making identical purchases through two distinct networks, possibly at different pricing points, with the same email partners. The main goals of transparency are to safeguard advertisements and efficiently increase client goals.
5. Choosing a Vendor
When used in conjunction with a trustworthy, competent, and well-known vendor, email marketing is a very effective marketing technique. Hiring an unskilled agency or network to handle your email acquisition efforts could expose you to a lot of danger on several different fronts, and at worst, it could harm the current client base and reputation of your business.
When qualifying and onboarding a potential email agency, you should ask them specific questions about their experience with your sector or product, compliance procedures, unshakable comprehension of best practices, examination of particular case studies, and staff competence. The leading vendors in the market are patient and should give clarity to a market that can be challenging for businesses new to the channel to understand.
Email Can Be Your Most Important Digital Acquisition Tool
The majority of advertisers base their digital acquisition strategy mostly on search, social media, and native channels. These channels undoubtedly influence results, but they can be quite competitive and cash-flow demanding.
Furthermore, with recent modifications to the iOS platform and a “cookieless” internet, marketers now face even more difficult challenges in obtaining quality, enduring clients. It can be filled exponentially via email acquisition marketing. It is a tested, expandable, and reasonably priced platform that may support current acquisition efforts or, as is the case with many Fortune 500 businesses, take the place of the company’s primary digital acquisition channel.
Use these five tips to get a head start on winning over more clients in the market if you’re new to the email channel or keen to discover a new email provider.
