How to Run a Successful E-mail Marketing Campaign

The Internet provides you a lot of marketing campaigns you can employ so easily and efficiently. One of these is e-mail marketing. Simply put, you send e-mails to your leads and existing customers with an offer to purchase a product or take advantage of your services. These may in a form of either a digital or physical product. It could be an announcement of freebies for those who can purchase the product within a specific period of time, or it can be expert tips, how-to article, insights, prospective on a certain subject that interest your customer base, or just simply company updates.

Based on studies, a successfully launched and managed e-mail marketing campaign can help generate at least $12 for every dollar spent. However, you will more likely spend 3 times the cost if it’s untargeted. It is therefore necessary that you follow this strategy to the letter.

Here are some of the steps you can follow:

1. Encourage them to opt in. You can’t just send e-mails randomly. Not only will this be a very bad move, but as the e-mails are untargeted, these may also cause you trouble for violating the Anti-Spam Act of 2003. What you can do is to encourage your leads to give you their e-mail addresses and opt-in in exchange for a free product or sample.
   Normally, you can do this by creating a squeeze page. It doesn’t compel your leads to buy your products, but it entices them to sign up if they are interested to purchase someday. From it, you can generate a mailing list.

2. Choose your CRM program. CRM stands for customer relationship management. It is software used to manage your leads and existing clients. It helps you build a database, as well as sort them out based on their demographics or preferences. You can also effectively keep track of your e-mail marketing campaigns. Who has opened your e-mail? Who unsubscribed?

3. Determine how often you should send e-mails. You cannot abuse your e-mail marketing campaign. Just because someone subscribes to you doesn’t really mean you’re free to flood his or her inbox. There’s no definite rule on how often you should send your e-mail blasts. The general consensus, however, is that the interval isn’t too long that your readers would forget about you and not too short that they get annoyed with all your e-mails and unsubscribe in distaste.  What I recommend is a minimum of one email a week through perhaps a newsletter or one email every three to four days.

4. Have a specific goal in your mind for every e-mail. Before you create your e-mail, ask yourself this question first: what do I want out of this? Should I be able to convince them to buy a product? Do I simply want to let them know what’s happening in the store? Your objective should guide in how you create your e-mail.