How to Run a Successful Email Marketing Campaign

 Email campaigns are a great way to connect with your audience and promote your company’s content and products. In order to run an effective email campaign, you'll need to develop a strategy beforehand to ensure its success.

Before launching a campaign, you'll want to define your goal and ensure each element of the campaign aligns with what you want to achieve. Whether you're looking to build your brand or increase user engagement, here are four best practices to follow when running a successful data-driven email campaign.

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Choose the Right Type of Email 

Knowing which type of email to send will help to choose its content and audience. There are three main types of email:

• Promotional emails: These emails keep your users in the know about your brand and encourage customer engagement. These can take the form of promotinoal content, a white paper or webinar, a brand announcement, a produce release, and more. 
  
• Relational emails: These emails are designed to foster a relationship with your subsribers by delivering desired and expected content, such as a newletter, a blog article, or a social update
• Trigger emails: These emails are sent in relation to a specific user behavior on your site. These most commonly take the form of a welcome email, a thank you email, or a transactional email, such as an order confirmation or a receipt.

Know Your Audience

Who you send your email to is just as important as what you send. Segmenting your audience allows you to be more specific and personal emails, and build trust.

Understanding who will be receiving your email will help you tailor the content, tone, and offer of the email. Tools such as Google Analytics and Mailchimp can be used to collect user geographics, demographiocs, locations, and interests. 

Getting to know your audience will allow you to provide them with the content they need in a way that resonates with each subscriber.

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Create an engaging email

From the subject line to the call to action, you'll want to take your time creating your email. When it comes to email marketing, every detail matters.

What's the point of writing a great email if it doesn't get opened? That's where subject line comes in. A short, action-oriented statement indicating what your audience will get out of your email makes a great subject line. If possible, add personalization. Subject lines featuring a first name have a 26% higher open rate.

Once you've persuaded subscribers your email is worth opening, it's time to get your message across. Pulling in the reader's first name wherever possible will make the mail feel more personal. Start with an attention-grabbing hook, and keep the rest of the copy conscise and to the point. Focus on why you're reaching out and the value you're providing.

The most important part of your email is the call to action. Ask yourself: what is the goal of this email? To close a deal? Download content? Whatever you decide, keep your CTA short and sweet to avoid confusion. Make use of buttons and hyperlinks to push the reader through to your desired goal.

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Track the right data

Data will help you determine what did and didn't work with your email campaign. Collect, track, and test everything possible. You'll want to track the basics, delivery and open rates, to determine the best send time and the effectiveness of your subject line.

Click rates will tell you how effective your copy was at engaging your reader and convincing them to click your CTA.

You can also track what devices were used to view you email and average reading time. These metrics will allow you to better gauge your audience and how they choose to engage with your brand.

Make data-informed decisions to A/B test email designs, subject lines, send times, and more. Any time you make a change to your email strategy, consider how level of engagement changes. Use your findings to dictate future email campaigns. Happy emailing!