Creating Effective Email Marketing Campaigns

One of the most powerful assets for any business, either online or offline, is to have an email list of targeted subscribers. Email marketing campaigns provide the unique opportunity to communicate with an audience that are interested in your niche, your products and your services.

Yes, social media marketing works, but email marketing still has a higher ROI (return on investment) than any other marketing strategy. Research shows that commercial email marketing offers a ROI of $40.56 for each dollar that’s invested.

Setting up email marketing campaigns can be confusing at first, but with a little practice and with the right tools and strategies it becomes very easy. And very effective.

FREE Checklist: Create An Effective Sales Funnel

5 Steps To Effective Email Marketing Campaigns

1. Email Marketing Campaign Software

Autoresponder software manage email marketing campaigns for you. They provide a streamlined solution to collect, send, track and analyze unlimited marketing lists. The type of data it provides allows you to tweak your campaign to improve performance and ROI. This is something that would be impossible to do manually with day-to-day email software like Outlook, Gmail, Webmail,etc.

Autoresponders provide simple email opt-in form codes that you can place on your website and landing pages to collect email addresses. You can also import an existing subscriber list into the software. There are free autoresponder services available but these often carry intrusive advertising that will distract your readers. More importantly, you want to ensure that your emails actually land in the inboxes of your audience. Top autoresponder services, like AWeber, guarantee that your emails are optimized to get delivered to the inbox.

2. Plan Your Marketing Emails

Design a plan of action before starting to send out email marketing campaigns. Consider your niche, your offers and most important, the action that you want your readers to take. Each email should focus on one or two topics at most. Don’t complicate your message by overwhelming readers with a bunch of different offers and topics in the same email.

Once you have an email opt-in form on your website, it’s crucial to test and actually run through the process of signing up. Plan how you will send your emails. You’ll need a  series of pre-written emails to be sent out on autopilot by your autoresponder once a prospect joins your list. This is the start of your sales funnel (see point #5 below).  Don’t let your subscribers get errors, find them first

3. Quality 

Promote only those products you believe in. Credibility is your most important asset in email marketing. If you’re an affiliate marketer, ask product owners for review copies of offers you want to promote. Check out the products and their online reputations. Your subscribers will look to you because you’re the one that promoted the product to them.

Don’t be a marketing drone that only sends swipe emails provided by product sellers for products you will promote. Your own voice and personality can be your biggest asset in email marketing conversions. Keep in mind that people are more than one list, and when there’s crossover, they may see that your email message is just a direct repeat of another affiliate  marketer.

If you’re producing your own products, make sure that they are error free, high quality and work. Check links, grammar and spelling carefully before sending any emails to your list. And remember not to just send constant offers to your list. Send useful free data and other freebies too. The more value you send to your subscribers, the more that they will want to open your emails when they land in their inbox.

Email addresses are special and personal. People often check their emails several times during the day, if not more.  Short, catchy, and concise emails convert better than long drawn out newsletters, people are busy, and most will not read long blocks of text.

4. Subject Line 

Almost one third of email recipients open emails based on the subject line text alone. Sensational and exciting subject lines in email marketing increase open rates, but can be dangerous if they don’t reflect what’s offered inside. You may fool them once, but you’re not likely to fool them again, and you might fool yourself into losing subscribers. If you wouldn’t send an email to your best friend, don’t send it to your subscriber list.

• Terms like, “Alert,” “News,” “Limited Time Offer” and “Last Chance” in subject lines greatly increases open and click through rates.
• Terms such as, “Daily” or “Weekly” used in email marketing subject lines increase open rates. versus the term “Monthly” that actually hurts click through rates and open rates.
• “Sale” and “Video” words in email marketing subject lines significantly increase open and click through rates.

5. The Sales Funnel 

It’s been shown that on average, across all markets and niches, it takes approximately 7 communications with a prospect to build a relationship before they make a buying decision. Email is the perfect way to build this relationship. Your autoresponder software can be set up to automatically send out a series of emails once a prospect has joined your list. This is your sales funnel. It’s basically a set of steps where you move a prospect through a series of communications that ultimately results in them buying from you.

To start the sales funnel process, and to get somebody to join your email list, you need to offer something of value for free in exchange for their email address. The incentive that you offer for subscribing should be something visitors can really use. Offer the most high quality gift you can that is related to your niche to entice the most subscribers for your list.

How To Create A Sales Funnel For Your Email Marketing Campaigns

Email marketing is effective, but like race car driving, it’s only as effective as the person behind the wheel. It’s important to know how to use email correctly to get the kind of results that are often reported and talked about. Whether you’re just getting started or want better results from your email marketing campaigns download my free Email Sales Funnel Checklist which outlines the best practices for turning your prospects into customers.