How to Run Effective Email Campaigns

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Aug 23 2017

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Whatever business you may be in, the importance of email marketing cannot be understated. This is due to the fact that whatever brings money into your pocket can never be termed as a failure. Statistics state that an email campaign provides the highest ROI out of all available marketing channels.

When we compare email marketing with social media, numbers suggest that the organic reach of Facebook has been trimmed down by the advent of upgraded algorithms to only 2-6% of your page’s followers. The scenario is even worse for Twitter where only 2% of your followers may see your tweets.

On the other hand, emails have an average open rate of 21.73% with an average CTR of 3.57%. Hence, marketers who understand the potential of email marketing often reap huge benefits.

If you have been planning to run an email campaign but are lacking the required direction, here are some steps that will guide you along the way:

1) Dynamic Universe - What is it and How to Build a List for an Email campaign?

The Dynamic Universe of your company are the prospective customers in your industry that you can reach out to and try to convert. These are the ones that can be provided direct value through your products and services.

You can build an extensive list with the help of the following methods. It goes without saying that since we are explicitly talking about the dynamic universe, you will only entertain prospects that fall under its purview. Expending time on companies that do not fit the bill will only end up putting further strain on your operations.

a) Analyze Competitors: You can begin by analyzing your competitors and noting the kind of clients that they are tapping. Similar clients can be approached to explore synergies.

b) Leverage Web Analytics: Take a long look at the visitors that your website attracts and try to answer the following questions:

  • Where do these visitors come from?
  • What organic searches are they making on search engines to reach you?
  • How are they interacting with your website? This will show you how serious they are about their prospects to find solutions.
  • What kind of content are they consuming?
  • Etc.

c) Use Social Media: Social media is indeed a powerful tool that can be used to find new prospects, especially on professional networks such as LinkedIn and Quora. Industry-specific networks on these websites are a great source of information about the pain points of your prospects and the kind of solutions that they are searching for. Thus, this gives relevant insights about the companies that can be approached in the process.

d) Attend Meetings/Seminars/Events: There is no better way to learn about your clientele than meeting them face to face. The bottom line is to have a hearty one on one session with prospects, pitch your services and get feedback. This forms another level of trust that can quickly fill your sales pipeline with leads.

2) Hot Leads: How to Find Companies that are Hot?

Once you have a list in place, the next step is to find the hot leads that have the most chance of converting. This can be done through BANT Analysis, which is a popular method of scoring leads based on insights like their budget, decision making the authority of your point of contact, the pain points of the company that is making it pursue a solution, and the timeline over which they are expecting a solution.

These insights help you better understand your prospects and rate them accordingly as cold, warm or hot. To do this, simply connect with companies in your dynamic universe and analyze their situation with the help of relevant questions.

For example, if you offer customized software solutions in the IT industry and your prospects are looking for the same, you can score the leads by asking the following questions:

  1. What is your Budget for the required technology?
  2. What is the priority of this project compared to other ongoing projects in your organization?
  3. Who has the authority to make the purchase? Are multiple people involved?
  4. Have you implemented any other tech/software in the past?
  5. What technological challenges does your organization face usually?
  6. What are your expectations from this project when it comes to ROI?
  7. How soon do you want to see the solution in your office?
  8. What is your expected timeline?

3) Decision Makers: Why is it Crucial to Find Emails of Decision Makers?

While it is important to maintain the quantity of your email list, the quality of the list is what matters most. It proves extremely difficult to convert a prospect if you cannot connect directly with the decision-maker.

Though, email addresses of other company contacts are just as useful. The best practice is to find as many emails as possible of your target company and try to connect with all of them. This will turn multiple eyeballs on you and increase your chances of connecting with the decision-maker.

So to sum it up, here is the usual algorithm that needs to be followed -

  1. Research about the prospective company and identify the decision-maker
  2. Try to find his/her email address. This can be done by surfing through their company website, Linkedin accounts, and other social media accounts.
  3. If you are unable to do so, find emails of other employees and ask them to point you in the right direction.
  4. Understand their requirements and pitch your services accordingly

4) Tracking Emails: How to Measure the Performance of your Email Campaign?

Thinking that your job ends as soon as you click the send button can kill your campaign. Sending out the emails is just the beginning. The real challenge lies in analyzing their performance and shifting gears accordingly.

You can begin this by tracking your emails. Insights like Open Rate and Click-through-Rate (CTR) should be looked into to understand what works and what doesn’t. Here are some of the main performance metrics that should be measured for every email campaign -

  1. Open Rate - The percentage of prospects who actually click on your emails and read them. Thus, this tells you about the importance of email headlines.
  2. Click-through-Rate (CTR) - The number of readers that click on the CTAs has given in the email.
  3. Delivery Rate - This tells you about the number of prospects who are actually receiving your emails. Thus, tells you about the quality of your email list.
  4. Forward Rate - As the name suggests, it measures how often your readers send your emails to someone else.

While it is important to keep an eye on these metrics, it is also crucial that you do it the right way. Using simple marketing tools may not be the best bet here since they often end up adding their info at the footer of the emails. This indicates to your readers that their moves are being tracked and this may have a negative effect on your engagement. Hence, email automation tools can be the best bet here.

On the other hand, it is also crucial to bypass the spam filters of email providers so as to maximize the reach of your email campaign. Here are some tips that will help you do so:

  • Maintain the quality of the email content
  • Design professional emails
  • Avoid using too many Sales oriented language. For Example - “Buy Now”, “Click here to get a discount”, etc.
  • Craft relevant subject lines
  • Never use URLs as Link text
  • Use a corporate email account to send the emails
  • Use minimal and high-quality images
  • Use a reputable email service provider
  • Include a text version of your email

Email Marketing is truly a powerhouse when it comes to landing new customers. It can easily have long-lasting effects on your revenue if executed in the right sense.


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