Email Marketing Campaigns: How to get it right in 7 steps

You’ve heard it before when the topic of email marketing campaigns arises…

“4 billion people use emails on a regular basis!”

“Emails marketing helps drive sales!”

“You NEED to nurture your email leads”

Emails have been around for decades in some form or another, and if they’re so important for business… Why are so many marketing emails spammy and terrible?

Because the truth is, while lots of businesses do email marketing, very few of them do it the RIGHT way. 

This is exactly why we wrote this epic guide to email marketing now and beyond (the RIGHT way). 

Here at First Page, we have over 10,000 email subscribers, and we’ve learned a lot about what it takes to do an effective email marketing campaign throughout the years. 

Some of those lessons were quite painful, but eventually, we were able to master our email marketing to create an engaged community (that also drives sales!)  

In this insider guide, we will show you exactly WHY you need to be doing email marketing, and then we’ll give you a behind-the-scenes look into HOW we craft our email campaigns here at First Page. 

But before we jump right into it…

Here are 5 reasons why you need email marketing:

1. How important is email marketing?

Name a marketing channel that has an audience greater than 4 billion – not easily done, is it? You could say that everyone is using email right?

Use the huge audience at your fingertips to craft your own database of contacts in your local area, or branch out overseas to a more international audience.

The choice is yours. 

The choice is yours if you want to build your customer loyalty. 

2. How well does email marketing perform?

When done well, EDMs help generates more than enough leads to make them worth your time. Data from Mailchimp shows that, on average across all industries, marketing emails get just under a 22% open rate and a 3% click-through rate. 

This would be better than your recent blog post. Likely! Even CTRs from search engine optimization are rarely this high.

3. Is there room for creativity with email campaigns?

Yes, there is plenty of room for creativity! Nobody’s going to tell you what to include in your emails. As long as they’re compelling and add value to your recipients, feel free to be as creative as you like. 

4. How scalable are emails?

Email marketing is very scalable! Emails are great for smaller businesses that want to target a well-groomed contact list of local customers.

They’re also great for multinational businesses that want to blast out information about their new product or web pages to hundreds of thousands of people. 

5. Do email campaigns allow you to own your own audience?

Yes, it does, especially when compared to social media. Platforms like YouTube, Facebook and more control the platforms which your audience is on.

If your account gets suspended, banned or compromised, you can wave goodbye to your audience. Your email list is yours and yours only – no matter what platform you send them through. 

So, how do you craft compelling emails for your email marketing?

1. Include headlines that drive curiosity 

Your headline has one goal – to get people to click on your email. Think about what you can offer your audience or what you can promise them.

Doing this naturally piques the interest of your viewers and makes clicking in almost irresistible. Just be sure that you follow up with whatever you promise inside the email!

In addition to this, remember to be clear and concise. Using interesting language that doesn’t bore your audience is a far too often forgotten basic.

Try using Google Search Console to find trendy themes that you can add to your headline.

If you want to get this down to an art, come up with several variants until you’ve got a memorable and compelling combination of words. 

2. Write copy that evokes emotion

Your copy must include information about the product, service or topic itself in order to be valuable – but we all know this. So how do we do it better?

Include specific details

This includes anything from relevant statistics to personal stories.

Whenever you make a statement, back it up with evidence. Don’t just say lots of people have used your product to make money.

Say exactly how many people and exactly how much return on their investment they were able to get. 

Speak with energy and conviction 

Building on the previous point, if you want to be viewed as a figure of authority, it’s important you start writing like one.

Be specific, confident and sure of yourself when talking about the positives of your product, service or topic.

In essence, tell people what they want to hear, what your product can do for them and why it’s the best. 

Add twists in the copy

When reading your email, your readers should feel engaged.

One way to do so is to take them on a journey with you: tell a story, including twists, keep them interested and get them to keep reading the next sentence.

This way, you can much more effectively convey the message you’re trying to get across and keep people waiting for the next email. 

Invoke emotions of desire

This tip carries through with most types of copy, but especially so in email marketing. If you want to sell something or pique someone’s interest, you’ll need to evoke their emotions.

This could mean hitting a pain-point, offering a solution, pandering to their craves and materialistic impulses or anything else.

Pick the most appropriate angle for the topic of your email and mould your copy around it. 

3. Have a clear purpose & provide value to your readers

This is one avenue you can prove faithful to your headline. If you’ve promised them a free trial, a small guide booklet or a set number of tips, you will need to address it in the copy.

By providing some form of value, whether it be educational, humorous or simply just interesting, you’ll grow your subscriber list and keep loyal customers waiting for more emails. 

By contrast, emails sent out with no clear purpose or written in a way that turns off potential customers to your product or service means you’ll get far more unsubscribes, much lower open rates and less conversions from your email marketing.

4. Send it out at the right time

Much like social media posting, email marketing requires some forethought and planning.

Research has shown that the best time to send out emails is during work hours from 9 am to 5 pm.

There is a defined peak before and after lunch. Use email marketing software to help with scheduling.

If you’ve spent ages crafting the perfect email, don’t let it down at this stage.

Sending it out at the right time can prevent your email from getting lost in a pile of unread emails and give it the best chance of being opened and actually read. 

5. Have a clear opt-in form and CTAs

A bigger audience is key when it comes to email marketing. One of the primary goals of EDMs is to grow your email list and get conversions.

If you don’t have a proper opt-in form, you’re missing out on valuable opportunities to grow your audience. 

Not to mention, clear call-to-actions (CTAs) are vital in helping you guide your potential clients through the user journey.

A well-placed CTA can be all the persuasion you need to tip someone over the edge into buying your product or signing up for your service.

6. A/B test different formulas for your audience

Copywriting is extremely subjective. Skilled copywriters will be able to target their audience effectively and know how to properly engage with them.

Just because you want to run a successful email marketing campaign doesn’t mean you have to be a copywriting genius – all it takes is some trial and error to find out which types of copy are working, and which aren’t. 

Since this will also vary based on your audience, it’s hard to provide objective pointers.

Some audiences may prefer a more educational and serious tone, while others will love a bit of playfulness and humour. 

Keep trying different tones, styles and layouts and simply go with the best until you have a well-tested and proven formula. 

7. Add complementary visual elements

Nobody likes to see a wall of text when they open an email. People are busy and don’t have the time or effort to spend a significant portion of their time reading your marketing email. Keep it short, and snappy and include plenty of visuals. 

Visuals are great as they serve to separate chunks of necessary text but also speak volumes. 

Final thoughts

A big factor contributing to the success of your email marketing campaign is how good both your product and landing pages actually are.

If you’ve got a fantastic email but it leads to a landing page that offers poor user experience and little information, the opportunity is likely wasted.

In short, it’s about optimizing the whole user journey. 

If you want to curate a better online presence for your business and capture all the leads possible, think about hiring an SEO expert, like First Page, to optimize your website for both users and search engines. Apart from awesome emails, search engines discover your pages easily for your customers.

Learn more about how our premium content writing, email marketing and SEO services can drive growth and success in your business starting today.