5 Parts of an Effective Email Marketing Campaign
It takes time to earn email subscribers. When a user trusts your company enough to give over their contact information in exchange for useful information from you, it’s important to deliver what you promised. A good email marketing campaign contains the same 5 basic parts, no matter what the purpose of the campaign may be.
Pay special attention to optimizing each of these 5 parts when you create your next email marketing campaign to get the best results.
5 Parts of an Effective Email Marketing Campaign
Subject line
An effective email marketing campaign has to be opened by a lot of people in order to be effective (i.e., result in clicks, downloads, or other action from the email). The subject line is the only part listed here that can affect open rates, or the number of people who open the email, is the subject line. The remaining 4 parts can affect click rates, but not open rates. Read this post about writing compelling email subject lines to have the best chance at boosting your open rates.
Appealing visuals
Once users click on your email subject and are taken to the body of the email, the first thing they notice are the images and visuals. Having too-small, outdated, slow-loading, or poorly designed images and visuals tips the user off immediately that the content here is not of value. They will leave the email without even noticing the rest of your content or calls to action.
Interesting content
If your visuals “pass the test,” users may stay on the email long enough to read through your message. If the content isn’t interesting, there’s simply no more reason for them to spend any more time with it. They leave the message and again, don’t notice your calls to action.
Find out what interests your audience the most, whether through surveys and questionnaires (offer incentives to increase participation rates), market research, Google Analytics, and any requests or questions you get from customers. Don’t have high hopes for an email marketing campaign unless the user, as an unbiased individual with their own best interests at heart, will truly find the content interesting. Uninteresting content kills many email marketing campaigns.
Clear CTAs
If your subject line, visuals, and content have all passed muster for the reader and they’ve reached the email’s call to action, you’ve done a wonderful job. At this point, it should be clear that only with the purposeful inclusion of quality images, interesting information, and an alluring subject line can a user even have the chance to read the email’s call to action. In order to retain the interest of as many of the users that have reached this point as you can, it’s important to write clear, concise, bold calls to action.
For example, which CTA inspires you to take action more?
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The perceived urgency and the boldness of a claim can help indecisive users make the decision to click and sign up, learn more, make a purchase, etc. Don’t be afraid to directly tell your readers what you want them to do as a result of seeing the email.
A real benefit for subscribers
Finally, an effective email marketing campaign has a real benefit for subscribers. Without a perceived benefit from reading an email, people simply won’t take the time to do it. Not every benefit has to be a gift, download, or discount – sometimes, well-written, interesting information can provide enough value to be considered a benefit by readers. A tip or trick that is applicable in readers’ lives can be a benefit.
Be creative when you come up with ways to entice your readers to check out your message and you’ll find out what works best.