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The email has been one of the oldest technologies in the digital world, ever since the invention of the internet. Yet, even with all the new platforms and technologies like social media, AI-driven chatbots, and automation tools, email marketing is still one of the most effective strategies with higher results than average.

Contrary to popular belief, the click-through rate from email marketing is six times higher than Facebook or Twitter engagements. Pair that with the fact that we have almost 5.6 billion active email accounts in 2020, and if you are not doing email marketing, you are missing out.

Projections show that by the end of 2020, we expect to see 4 billion worldwide email users (which is more than one-third of the global population). In regard to email sends per day worldwide, we know that about 293 billion emails were sent and received each day in 2019. That figure is expected to grow to almost 320 billion daily emails in 2021, according to Statista.

According to the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), email click-through rate is the most important email marketing metric as 70% of marketers’ track click-through rates as a way to measure the success of their email marketing campaigns.

In this guide, we will discuss the necessary steps to start an email marketing campaign. While email marketing might seem simple on the surface, the keys to success lie in the details.

Let us begin with the first step.

Step 1: Set-Up Clear, Realistic Goals

This might seem like a cliche, but having clear goals is the most important thing in ensuring the success of an email marketing campaign. Without having clear objectives, you won’t know what to measure and what to adjust when things went amiss.

Also, your goals should be realistic. If your goals are too far-fetched, they might demoralize you and your team when you don’t see any accomplishment. If you have a very big goal (it’s not a bad thing at all), break it down into smaller, more realistic milestones.

The goals of your email marketing campaign should always be aligned with the overall KPI and objectives of your company. Your company might just launch a new product and will need more awareness. You might need more leads or more traffic. You might need to boost your online presence.

The good news is, email marketing is versatile. You can pretty much accomplish any marketing-related goals with email marketing, which can’t be said with other platforms.

Step 2: Capturing Email Addresses and Building Your List

Arguably, this is the most difficult step you must overcome. After you’ve set up clear and realistic goals, you should target the right audiences that fit your objectives.

Here, our main focus is to capture their email addresses and build an email list. There can be many different approaches to building an email list.

Yet, here are some effective ideas:

2.1 Capturing New Email Addresses

Creating a new email database from scratch can be a really daunting task. Thankfully, there are many tools available you can use to capture new email addresses. For example, you can use the handy Hunter.io.

Another option is to use Outreach.Buzz, select blogs from your niche and add the bloggers’ contacts into an email list.

Listing Existing Customers’ Emails

If your email marketing campaign will be focused on nurturing existing relationships, simply import existing customer emails into your email list tool.

In general, however, we should combine both options to get the most results. Check out this guide by Campaign Monitor that might help you in building an email database.

Make full use of your existing website, landing pages, social media accounts, and all of your arsenals to capture more email addresses. Offer valuable contents or promotions in exchange for new email addresses.

For instance, here on Outreach.Buzz there are several optin-boxes where users can add their email address and download resources in exchange. Check the exit intent pop-up:

Step 3: Determining The Proper Campaign

There are several different types of marketing campaigns that are more effective for a certain objective over the other. So, make sure to choose the right campaign that can contribute the most results to your objectives.

Let’s discuss some different email campaign types:

Email Newsletter

An email newsletter is the most common email campaign type. Here, we distribute emails covering stories about specific topics related to your product, brand, or industry.

Generally, one email newsletter will only focus on one topic or theme. For example, a newsletter about holiday destinations, a newsletter discussing some tips in using your products, and so on.

The email newsletter is especially used to nurture relationships with existing customers.

Event Invitation

If you have offline activation campaigns, you can broadcast an invitation email to increase awareness of your event and get more people to attend.

Marketing Offer

A marketing offer campaign can be identified from the inclusion of a call-to-action button or feature. So, here we encourage our audience for an immediate response.

The most common example of this type is an email offering discounts, special promotions, valuable contents, or an offer to join the free trial. This campaign type is especially useful if your campaign goals are primarily revenue and sales.

Announcement

As the name suggests, the purpose of this campaign is simply giving an announcement to increase awareness. A common practice is to announce new products or new features of your existing products.

You can also include announcements in other campaign types if necessary.

Step 4: Setting Up Your Campaign

Now that you’ve set up the proper goals, built the proper email database and chosen the proper campaign type according to your objectives, it’s finally time to set up your email marketing campaign.

There are many different email marketing tools you can use in your email marketing campaign. Yet, choosing between those options can be difficult, so here we will share some of the key principles in choosing the right tool and ensuring the success of your campaign.

Comprehension and Proper Structure

With so many information coming into our lap every single day, it is hard to capture the attention of your audience. So, keeping your emails well-structured, interesting, and comprehensive is a must.

There are several different approaches to effective content writing tactics you can follow. Check out this guide by Neil Patel that might help you further in this aspect.

Easy Conversion

Maximizing conversion is a really tough job. Yet, many marketers made the same mistake by not optimizing the customer’s path to conversion as easy as possible.

Most of us open our emails on a mobile device, so make sure your email newsletter is properly formatted for mobile.

Proper Segmentation

According to HubSpot, segmenting your lists (or targeting your emails) results in higher open rates, revenue, leads, transactions, and more customers.

Segment your database, and send the right content to the right target at exactly the right time. To do this effectively, you can start a drip email campaign.

Monitoring

Most email marketing tools will provide their own monitoring tools, and you can also use the handy Google Analytics for this purpose.

Conclusions

Email marketing is one of the most effective marketing strategies with the most ROI even in 2018. So, if you haven’t put enough focus on your email marketing campaign, it is definitely the time.

The steps we have shared above will help you start an effective email marketing campaign, and the key to success here is to constantly monitor your progress and adjust your strategy whenever necessary.