Anyone can do an email marketing campaign, but not all can boast with performance in the field. The same as in any other field, preparation and constant study make the difference between amateurs and professionals. And today we’re going to talk about those small things that make the difference. I won’t email them to you, you can find them right here.
We’ve already covered the basics in a previous article, where we presented 5 easy steps in order to create a more efficient email. It’s quite relevant to check that one out too, to learn the basic concepts first, before getting to more advanced things. Meanwhile, we get to work and we address email marketing professionals.
1. Planning and managing the expectations
First of all, you don’t begin your journey without a plan. A site has to be seriously analyzed, just as the target audience, before planning such an email campaign. That’s why it all begins with analyzing the site and its audience, after which we can approximately measure the results and the timeframe required until the first results show. There are no overnight results in this industry, unless in very exceptional cases. And these exceptional cases are those when you know how to promote yourself in a field or a niche where there’s no competition or the possible competitors don’t deal with marketing as they should. To talk from our practical experience, if you Google now “Copywriting Services Cluj” you might have a surprise. We don’t reveal who’s on the first place. But this means you play on a field where you got there first. In most of the cases, however, you’re going to have to wait a while before seeing some actual results.
2. The adaptation of the email campaign for all the devices
Even if this doesn’t sounds as rocket science, you’d be surprised to see how many people create promotions only for the desktop version or just for the mobile phone version. Some do it because they know their audience very well, but most of them simply forget that people can access their website both from a desktop and a smartphone or tablet. And out of these some will access it from Google Chrome and other using Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera and so forth.
There will always be discrepancies in the display between browsers and devices, that’s why we have to pay attention to each environment. That’s why each platform has to be constantly studied.
3. A/B testing.
You have a great idea for the title of your email but you want to make sure your users would find it just as brilliant? Then you’re going to cover the A/B testing. It’s like all of a sudden email marketing is not so easy, is it? Through A/B testing test emails are sent, having various titles that represent variations of the title you came up with, to a restricted number of users (a percentage selected by you out of the total number of subscribers). Let’s assume you send three title versions to 15% of your subscribers: each version will get to 5% of them. It’s automatically tested which version had the highest opening rate, it’s selected and sent to the rest of 85% of the subscribers. Or better yet, rather than wasting time with A/B testing, you can consult professionals for this, but at least now you’re aware of the concept behind A/B testing.
4. The conversion rate
Obviously, we all want the conversion rate to be 100%, all of the people to open the email, all of them to truly appreciate it and follow the action you suggested (for instance to purchase from the website). But the reality isn’t really like that, and a professional will never promise a 100% conversion rate.
What’s considered to be a good conversion rate? 30-40% is quite a good conversion rate. Anything above that is either exceptional or from a fairytale.
5. Monitoring.
Do you know the difference between an investment and an expense? An investment has measurable results. In case you invested money in an email marketing campaign but you can’t see the results, it’s basically an expense. However, if you see results, both positive and negative, then you have an investment. That’s why the monitoring part is so essential, in order to understand the tendencies of your readers and in order to be able to adjust the future campaigns.
The development of an email marketing campaign is a professional activity that requires a lot more work than a simple “Send”. Each of the presented points deserves a separate article, since it’s a lot to talk about.
Until then, we are waiting in the comments’ section your opinion regarding professionally made email marketing, as well as possible questions and queries.