How to make a Successful and Effective E-mail marketing campaign.

The Internet is a pretty great place. Millions of dollars are made by effectively marketing a business through a website, email campaigns and e-commerce. But unfortunately this "black-gold" won't give you the overnight success much akin to the Beverly Hillbillies. It takes time and most importantly it takes strategy.

1st Step: Ready. (Identify your target Audience)

One of the most important decisions a person can make about their business is to truly identify who will be buying the product or service. Is your target audience home owners, corporate accounts, brick and mortar, or small businesses? Once successfully identifying your target, you can then create a more relevant email campaigns. Once in a while it's possible that you will be targeting multiple audiences. That's totally okay, because in this world of business there's not usually a 'one-size-fits-all' marketing campaign. So its a great practice to have multiple campaigns for different targeted audiences.

Once the audience is officially targeted its important to know about "spam" or unsolicited commercial email. Since email marketing is relatively cheap, "spammers" have taken over email with unwanted junk mail. Here are a few steps you can take to stay clear of the problem

Use a recognizable domain name that displays your company, product name and/or service.
Avoid using all CAPITAL letters, BomBaSTIC wording or unnecessary exclamation points in the subject line.
Provide a way your recipient may "opt-out" of your email marketing campaign.

2nd Step: Aim. (What are your objectives?)

Goals

What is the end result of the campaign? Do you want to raise sales, raise awareness, generate leads or get feedback of your current business practices? Without these goals it's hard to measure a successful campaign.

Content

Generally, you should craft a message that describes your products or services, reinforces your brand and provide a form of contact so that your customers can get a hold of you. A good practice is to create the body of the email first and then come back to the subject line. The subject line could be the most important part of an email message. Creating a unique and dynamic subject line by combining action phrases and a response-boosting incentive.

Format

Lastly, it is important to know what format you would like to send your email in, plain text or HTML. Plain text is simply just as it sounds and HTML would be similar to making your email message look like a web site. This is perfect for cross-referencing the branding you may already have on your website.

3rd Step: Fire. (Getting the message out)

Scheduling

It's very important for your email to be sent out when people are most likely to check their email. Statistically it seems that business personnel will check their email during normal business hours (9am - 5pm) Tuesday through Thursday. Try avoiding overflowing Monday inboxes and apathetic Friday employees. Home users seems to recreationally check their email on the weekend.

Tracking

What's really great and quite cool about email marketing is its ability to be tracked. You can track to see who opened it, how many times it has been opened, if it has bounced, if anyone has clicked on the links inside of the email or to see who opted out of your subscriber list. This is all in real time. Tracking your campaign will give you a detailed few and a great way to measure the success of a campaign. (Examples: Constant Contact).

Incentives

To increase your customers opting into your list, consider offering deals that non-subscribers cannot receive.

4th: You missed your mark! (Here's what NOT to do)

Make it hard to opt-out of your subscriber list. That wastes their time and in turn ruins your credibility.
Send large attachments to your subscribers that may clog up their inboxes.
Rely on spell check. Always proofread all of your emails so they look and read professional.
Rent or sell your customer subscriber list, unless you have permission to do so.
Send ridiculous and irrelevant discounts or deals to your customers. For example, if you're a clothing store there's no reason to send out a coupon for pizza.

Rewind:

Identify your Target Audience?
- Multiple Audiences are okay
- Know the national spam laws
- Provide a way to op out
- Don't use all CAPITAL LETTERS or BomBAsTic text.
What are your objectives
- Goals
- Content, Content and CONTENT!
Getting the message out.
- Scheduling
- Tracking
- Incentives
What not to do
- Make it hard to opt out
- Spam your customers
- Rent or sell your subscriber database