Email marketing is a crucial part of any business, regardless of whether you’re a manufacturer, a service provider, or a retailer. No matter what you do, you’ll always need to reach out to customers via email to stay in touch and to keep them interested in your products.
For B2B companies, particularly manufacturers who sell directly to end users, email is a proven way to generate quality leads. If you use email effectively, you’ll be able to see significant growth in your account base and ultimately be able to expand into adjacent markets.
Email is also a fantastic tool for nurturing and engaging with existing customers, particularly when you’re able to personalize the experience. By understanding how to use email to its fullest potential, you’ll be able to form meaningful connections with your audience and ultimately enjoy the fruitful relationship that comes with a loyal customer base.
However, as good as email is, it can be a difficult tool to manage. There are so many moving parts and so much to consider when crafting an effective email strategy. That’s why we’ve compiled this comprehensive guide, which covers everything from designing an email template to analyzing the effectiveness of your campaign.
The Basics of an Email Marketing Campaign Are Still Relevant
If you’re reading this article, it’s likely that you’ve already built or are in the process of building an email marketing campaign. Perhaps you used a tool like HubSpot to organize the various elements of your digital marketing strategy and to create a single, cohesive message that you can craft and send to potential customers.
At this point, you might be wondering what relevance this article has to you. After all, email isn’t a marketing strategy that was made obsolete by the rise of social media. The underlying concepts behind effective email marketing are as relevant today as they ever were.
From a simple welcome email to checking in with customers on a regular basis, the basics of an email campaign haven’t changed. What has changed is how you execute those basics. With the rise of digital marketing, it’s become easier to reach your audience where they are rather than hoping they’ll come to you.
Personalized, Long-Form Content Is the Key to Effective Campaigns
Let’s take a quick trip back to those early days of email marketing, when crafting an effective email campaign was a whole lot harder. Back then, your goal was to capture the attention of the email reader and to keep them engaged with your message. You couldn’t rely on any old email template to do this; you needed to craft a unique and engaging message for each individual you wanted to reach out to.
One of the keys to a successful email marketing campaign is to ensure that your copy is long and engaging. Despite the rise of automated emails, people still prefer to read a well-written and thoughtful message, especially when receiving an email from a business that they know and respect. When done well, long-form content can provide the reader with a clear sense of what the message is and why they’re being approached in this way. This not only helps build trust but also allows you to introduce new ideas and topics without disrupting the flow of the email.
Make Sure That You Include Calls to Action
Another important factor in the success of an email campaign is the call to action that you include at the end. Essentially, this is the final sentence or two of your email, which encourages the reader to take some sort of action. Usually, this is some form of a call to action to visit the website or to pick up the phone and call a specific number.
These are crucial few words that will help determine the success of your email marketing campaign. Make sure that you include relevant and effective calls to action in your messages. Be careful not to overuse these words or to fall into the “chicken or egg” trap where you include them simply to promote an action but don’t have enough new and relevant content to continue engaging your audience. In these situations, your calls to action become more of a formality and can even come off sounding salesy.
Always Measure the Results of Your Campaigns
Last but not least, we want to discuss the importance of measuring the results of your email marketing campaign. The primary purpose of measuring the results of your digital marketing campaign is to determine the effectiveness of your strategy and to make any necessary adjustments. If you don’t have clear benchmarks to measure your progress, it’s nearly impossible to know if you’re on the right track or if you need to make changes to achieve your goals.
As with any new strategy or initiative, you’re going to need to experiment with different approaches and benchmarks to determine which one works best for you. But, as long as you have clear goals in mind and you’re consistently tracking your results, you’ll be able to identify areas for improvement and make the necessary changes to continue on the right foot.
An Email Marketing Campaign Is A Team Effort
An important point to make is that even though you may be in full control of your email marketing campaign, it never feels completely personal. Instead, it feels more like a collaboration between you and the company you work for. This may be a manufacturing company, a service provider, or a retail brand.
When you work with a brand that has an email marketing program in place, you’re instantly put into a position of intermediary. You’ll be copied on all communication regarding the campaign, and you’ll be expected to provide assistance as needed. This includes gathering and providing feedback on test emails as well as on the content of the overall campaign. Even if you’ve never done so, imagine feeling included in the process as you help the brand you respect so much achieve greater success.
Make Sure That You Include All of the Basics
Apart from the above guidelines, make sure that you include all of the necessary details in your email. These include the full email address, the name of the person or company you’re writing to, the subject line, and a brief message. With modern email clients like Gmail, it’s easy to include these elements in a simple fill-in-the-blank email template, but doing so guarantees that you won’t appeal to anyone. For the sake of your own credibility, it’s important that you show that you’ve taken the time to craft a unique message for each individual you contact.
As we mentioned above, the basics of an email marketing campaign haven’t changed, but the way you execute them has shifted. Back in the day, you needed to ensure that each individual email that you sent was personalized and that you included calls to action. Now, with the rise of digital marketing, you don’t necessarily need to send individual emails. Instead, you can use various platforms like Facebook and Twitter to reach your audience in a more streamlined manner.
Thanks for reading! We hope this article has helped you in your quest to become a more effective marketer. As with any new strategy or initiative, always remember to measure your progress and to determine which changes work best for you. Good luck out there.