What really matters in an email marketing campaign? - Guest Blog by Annie Cooley

What really matters in an email marketing campaign?
by Annie Cooley

There are theories around the send time, html vs. plain text, sending demographics and so on. An email campaign cannot rest on these theories alone. An email, by itself, needs to be effective in that it is able to engage the recipients to open and to take action. 

Let’s break down these crucial elements.

Effectiveness
Review past campaigns to determine what was most effective with them. Why do you think you receive the quantitative data you do (i.e. opens and clicks)? Do you notice certain content or layout that brings positive results? Also look at the campaigns that did not offer the good results. Why do you think these were less effective?

Engagement
Building engagement is about creating compelling content that not only strikes the reader’s attention but offers them the benefits and features of your product effortlessly. Are you sending a mass email to all your contacts or have you segmented your list? When you are reaching a greater audience the level engagement will be far broader. When you target specific groups of contacts you are able to automatically add another level of relevancy to your message. You already know particular details about your list therefore are able to creatively engage your contacts on a more personal level.

Action
Most email campaigns are focused on providing an avenue for the recipients to take action. Whether that is to get a new lead, a new customer or cross-sell a current customer this should be the main focus of how you create your email. Again, look over past campaigns and see what call to actions have been most effective and which have not been and determine why.

If you take the time to create engaging and action provoking email marketing campaigns then you earn the attention of your email recipients. With so many emails hitting the inbox, you have to be ahead of the race. You can do this by focusing on the above elements: effectiveness, engagement and action.

What is one of your most effective campaigns?

Source:http://community.act.com/t5/The-Sage-ACT-Journal/What-really-matters-in-an-email-marketing-campaign-Guest-Blog-by/ba-p/89028