People will tell you that email campaigns will give you a 10-15% open rate and a 2-5% click rate. This is considered to be good by most standards. While this looks closer to the industry standard, did you ever realise that 85-90% of people that you are trying to reach are not even opening your email? That is pretty bad, considering all the effort marketing is putting in to plan promotions, offers and putting together the email marketing program. How should one go about planning the perfect email campaign
What if I were to tell you, that with some simple and practical corrective steps, you can achieve upwards of 75-80% opens and a significant rise in your number of clicks and responses? You would not believe if, of course. Wouldn\’t this get close to being called as the perfect email campaign? But this is what we have been achieving for some of our recent campaigns.
What then is the secret sauce for the perfect email campaign?
Is it the offer, is it the timing, is it the subject lines or is it the message itself? Well it is a combination of all of that & more
1) Get your subject line right
The subject line is the only thing that a reader sees apart from the name of the sender. The moment the sender is unknown to the reader; the chances of the email being read reduce significantly. If the subject creates value for the reader, then you might still have a chance of the email being read. Create intrigue with your subject line, but don’t spam with words like FREE, offer, promotion etc. In your journey to the perfect email campaign, the subject line is very critical. Keep it very topical and talk about the value to the customer upfront. Relate to the challenges the customer is facing right now. If you would like to know how this works for you, feel free to get in touch and we will guide you how this can apply to your business. Download our marketing campaigns capabilities.
2) The message – Establish a reference
The first 2 lines in your message – It is important to establish reference and some credibility. If you do not have a reference point and this is a cold email, relate to challenges that the reader can relate to. Try smartly to see if you can include an event related reference (Most of the people do not remember all the people they met at an event). This section plays an important part in the email. It opens up the reader to a listening mode.
3) The messaging core – Bring in proof points
You may be delivering great value as a product/solution, but bring in elements of how the reader’s industry peers are benefiting from the product/solution. Bring in a bit of competitive fear. Relating to the industry and to some names will bring in the ‘inner circle’ feeling among your readers. You will start getting accepted as a player who knows what is happening in the industry and therefore able to help the reader better.
4) Define a clear expected action
If you are talking about the offer, be sure to take him to your landing page. If you want him to send you an email/phone, make sure that you bring those elements into the email. Keep the section short, yet crisp. You may want to tell a lot more details about the offer, but keep that agenda for the landing page. In the email keep an objective of getting the reader to the landing page.
5) Have a clear and documented follow-up plan
A single email seldom gets you result. Get into a conversational mode in your emails. Talk about the email that you send earlier and follow-up with the reader at a reasonable frequency. Based on the transactions people have done in the previous mail, plan follow-up emails that take into factor that intelligence. Finally, this is a conversation and if you take up topics where you left before, the conversation is bound to be a fruitful one.
6) The timing for the emails
What are best times to send emails – not Monday morning and Friday evening for sure. Mid-mornings are usually good, so you are sure that bulk of the overnight email volumes have been cleared. Sometimes if may be a good strategy to engage on weekends as well. Your email does not get lost in volumes of emails. Using EDM tools, you can also schedule your emails for different regions at different times. Analyse your results to find out when you have got some of the best response rates. What works for everyone may not work for you. It is for you to try this out yourself. Of course, if you need help, we are just a call away.
I hope you found this useful. Read more about our services in email campaigns
Comments welcome
Regards – Atul Dhakappa