How to Create a Great Email Marketing Campaign

Learn how email marketing works and how to create an effective newsletter, with strategy and marketing director Nestor Tejero

A decade ago, you might have thought that emails were going out of fashion: everyone has a phone with WhatsApp or Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat or any one of the many messaging applications designed to suit your needs and tastes.

However, emails have managed to grow with the cellphone. In 2017, 55% of all emails were read on a mobile device, up from 29% in 2012. Email’s ability to get your message directly into the pockets of your customers is unparalleled and, with the number of people with email addresses set to rise to 4.3 billion by 2023, there aren’t many people who you won’t be able to reach.

Today, emails are bigger than ever and strategy and marketing director at the email marketing agency Agencia Reinicia, Nestor Tejero, who teaches the Domestika course, Introduction to E-Mail Marketing With Mailchimp, has shared these simple tips and tricks to creating your own email marketing campaign.

What is email marketing?

Email marketing isn’t just newsletters: a campaign can include everything from welcome messages, purchase notifications, reminders, and other automated responses.

Emails, in themselves, are limited as to what they can achieve. This means Nestor’s most common objective when sending one is to lead the reader to another location, whether that’s the company website, their nearest store, or the local neighborhood fun run.

The results speak for themselves: according to the Direct Marketing Campaign, every dollar invested into email marketing brings an average return of $42. One of the most effective types of email, in fact, are “abandoned cart” messages that remind anyone who leaves a website halfway through the purchasing process that their order remains incomplete: sending three abandoned cart emails can result in 69% more sales than the average email.

An email can also simply open up a dialogue between you and your customers. 82% of welcome emails are read. Therefore, not having an automated message set up means your company misses a perfect opportunity to establish the brand at point of entry.

When it comes to newsletters, subscribers have given you permission to send information about your brand directly to them. It’s easier to underestimate how much a customer wants to hear from you but, according to Statista, 49% of people are keen to receive emails from their favorite brands. So it’s worth making sure what you send them is of a high quality and useful to them.

What tools do I need to set up a campaign?

It might seem like a complicated process from the outside but setting up a campaign is now as easy as setting up any other type of social media account. After 16 years in the business, Nestor hasn’t found anything that beats Mailchimp for ease and effectiveness.

For those with a tighter budget, the free service has more than enough features to get you started, including statistics, design advice, and their own excellent newsletter content.

Where do I start?

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail: every marketing campaign needs a plan and emails are no different. Nestor says that a lot of people think they can fire off emails whenever they feel like it. This is a sure fire way to lose a lot of time and plenty of money too.

You may want to get going straight away but the planning stage–which can last as long as a few months for larger campaigns–will have a direct effect on how successful you are.

The first thing to establish are your objectives. Knowing why you’re doing this will make the whole process simpler, better, and easier.

Agencia Reinicia ask their clients three main questions to find out their "Why":

- Who are you targeting?
- What are your marketing objectives?
- Can you describe in two sentences what the newsletter must contain to attain this objective?

Being able to summarize your goals is crucial: clarity will mean you’re understood and brevity will mean people will actually read what you have to say.

Now you can start building

It’s time to choose your content. If you already have your brand or have established your objectives, this shouldn’t be too complicated.

Keep your text short and punchy. Nestor also warns against seeking sales alone. There are very few products that people want to be reminded about purchasing every day, beyond food and water, so find other ways to engage your reader.

Ask yourself what you can offer a potential customer, beyond your product, that they actually want: it could be knowledge about the area you work in that they won’t have or even just something that will entertain them.

People often disregard the importance of how an email looks, says Nestor. Mailchimp offers a plethora of templates to ensure you get the design you want. You can also add animations or videos to complement your mission–videos can boost click through rates by 300% and just personalizing a subject header makes people 50% more likely to open an email.

These simple tips will help you get your email marketing on the right path. If you want to learn more about how to create a really successful campaign that could take your business to the next level, you can learn more from Nestor on his online course Introduction to E-Mail Marketing With Mailchimp.

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