Design a Better Email Marketing Campaign

Email marketing should be about more than just product promotions or discounts. So how do you create an email marketing campaign that’ll keep your audience interested?

Break from the mold. Try to be more than just another brand that concentrates all your email marketing efforts on offering discounts. Subscribers have started to expect the same old discount messages in their inbox, which leads them to ignore, delete, or otherwise dismiss your emails.

Making memorable emails stand out isn’t easy, and it can be challenging to get creative enough to manage a unique email marketing program.  Here are the three key components to help you design a better email marketing program:

Goals

Make sure to tie everything into your brand’s main goal. This will let you focus on the kinds of messages you should consider, and help you to figure out where to find missed opportunities.

Branding Guidelines

Most companies have guidelines for visual design as well as voice. These guidelines include important aspects of a brand such as look, feel, and word choices to guarantee logos aren’t abused, and branded terminology is spelled correctly. Branding guidelines should be flexible, yet serve as the go-to for any questions that may arise during the creative process. You can take a look at some example guidelines from brands such as Mailchimp, and Mozilla.

Customer Research

Be sure to know what your customers want, what they are looking for, and what they may enjoy. There are plenty of ways to conduct audience research, and most companies already have a pretty decent amount of data at their disposal. The use of basic website analytics makes it easy to gauge popular content. This type of data is extremely valuable. Try surveying your audience with tools such as Typeform (it’s free) or SurveyMonkey, or take it a step further and check out Qualtrics or Forsee.

Keeping these 3 key components in mind, it’s time to get to work. Make sure to test each new email idea, iterate on it, and then get ready to test some more. Creating fresh, new, and relevant email campaigns isn’t a one-time task that can be checked off of your to-do list; it is a fluid, ever-changing piece of your marketing arsenal.

Brands change. Customer needs change. Keep up with the evolution of email marketing by continuing to find inspiration to generate new ideas, and make your campaigns better and better.