How to Plan an Email Marketing Campaign

 

Introduction

We are going to look at the best way to plan and implement a solid email marketing campaign. We will be focusing on the planning, implementation and analysis processes involved in building a successful email campaign.

In this case we are going to create a fictional campaign from start to finish. The business is a bar/pub and we will be using our email campaign to try and bring in more people to watch live sporting matches.

While the campaign will focus on one aspect, it could easily be used used for anything from promoting live music, beverage promotions, shows or events. The key is to have a highly segmented and targeted mailing list.

 

Planning:

The planning of your email campaign is a vitally important part of the overall success of your campaign. For this example, our target is the RBS Six Nation Rugby held every spring, but it can and will be used for any sporting events in between.

We will be targeting people who come into the bar to watch matches, for their email addresses. In order to entice them to give us their email address, we tell them that they will be entered into a competition to win Vouchers for the bar worth €25. Special Signup forms with simply a 'Name' and 'Email' field are left on all tables along with a clear communication of the prizes on offer. Also throughout the evening the bar manager will be going around to customers reminding them of the competition on offer.

After a couple of weeks you should have a highly segmented email list, in our case males between the ages of 25-40 interested in watching sport in a social setting.

Now it is time to sit down and plan out all the sporting events that would appeal to this group throughout the year, with the obvious being the Six Nations Rugby Competition starting in February. For each one we are going to do beverage promotions that would appeal to our target audience.

 

Implementation

Ok now is the time to start putting your Email Marketing Campaign together. It is advisable to start putting this together at least a week before the event. This gives you plenty of time to test copy, make sure it goes out smoothly and is not rushed.

A good idea at this stage would be to look over some of the other tips we have on Subject Lines, Time of delivery,Call to Action and Special Offers.

So at this stage our Email Campaign would look something like this:

 

We will now send this email to our targeted list of Newsletter Signups 1-2 days before the event.

 

Analysis:

As you can see our email has a very clear message. It also has only one link that we are looking for customers to click through to. More information about having a clear message can be found on our 'Make Your Links Count' page.

As you send out these emails, over the course of your Campaign, you can review past reports to see what offers, topics or subject lines drive the most response. Lots of other factors play a role, too. For example, the call-to-action (CTA), number of competing CTAs, link position in the email, link position relative to other links, time of send, weekday of send, day of month of send, copy, copy length, copy structure, link colour...the list goes on!

Once you have sent the Campaign review your reports. Give about a day to allow the email to be viewed by the majority of your list. Then have a good in depth look at your Reports - Unique Opens, Who Clicked a Link, Who Forwarded it to a Friend etc.

For example in our case we would be looking at the position of the offer. In our next campaign we would perhaps put the offer where the introductory paragraph is and see how this influences Click Thru Rates, Forwarders etc.

 

Summary

So there you have it, a simple example of how to get the most out of your Email Marketing. As you can see there are any amount of factors that you could look at when analysing and sending your campaigns. However, the best idea is not to get bogged down in any one factor but rather to take a holistic view - look at each result and combine the insights with those from other factor analyses to build an overall picture.