With more than ninety five percent of consumers checking their emails every day, come-of-age businesses are betting on email marketing to make it rain. 

However, creating a functional email marketing campaign can be a hard ballgame. Especially, when you are new and building on assumptions and speculations. 

Also, these days, consumers are smart and prefer more of a white glove service across each offering, where the key focus is on personalization. 

Fret not! 

This post is dedicated to take the guesswork out of the equation and help you get started with a solid email marketing strategy that delivers on your objectives. 

From aligning your efforts to meet stakeholder goals, designing, writing email copies, the optimal time to send out mailers, and measuring your ROI – we’ve got you covered!

Let’s get started!

Keeping up with the stakeholder goals

Start by determining the points of ownership to avoid any unseen turns and twists midway through your email campaigning journey. And even before you do that, start by answering a handful of basic questions, like: 

• Who is going to write the email body copy? 
• Will there be a designer to help you with the template and other creative inputs?
• What about reviewing the test emails? 

Invest a considerable amount of time to address such queries upfront so that your email campaigning process doesn’t have to work on back gear when you are aiming to lure in prospects.

Deciding on the template 

While a lot of newbie marketers would ignore this, picking the right email template is as important as everything else. 

This makes even more sense when you are a startup and do not have adequate resources to design an email template from scratch. In that case, you will have to choose from several pre-built ones. That’s where things can get a tad bit tricky. 

Remember, emails are being shot for a purpose. So, avoid fancy or cluttered templates. Instead, settle for something which has a sober, uniform appeal, and not so confusing framework. 

Here are a couple of pointers to make your life easy:

• The breathing spaces  – As the name suggests, breathing spaces or white spaces refer to any area besides images and content in your email. In essence, it cuts down on the monotony to retain audience focus for extended hours.
• The header and footer – Email headers and footers are two strong points that can work towards establishing your brand presence right. While choosing an email template, simplicity is the key to design your header. It can be pretty basic, like only having your company logo while the footer can hold links to your official website, social media pages, and subscription link. 

Writing functional email copy 

Email copies are meant to be tricky and call for a good amount of time to focus and frame your wordings. 

Starting with the subject line; the most dominating factor that convinces the reader to open the email, followed by the preview text, you will need to optimize every single component to ensure maximum engagement. Here are a few things to take into account: 

• Do not make it a no-reply email – Not many are aware of this, but deliberately optimizing your emailer to fall in the “no-reply” category makes way for an unfriendly experience dissuading recipients from reading. Also, try incorporating your brand name at places if possible.
  
• Don’t ignore the subject line – The subject line of an email is rather the most significant touchpoint and reportedly convinces no less than sixty-seven percent of consumers to read an email. A good, functional subject line always informs the recipients what to expect within limited characters. While one can be sincerely pressed for space to express the entirety of a message, you can at least highlight the key point. In other words, follow the adage, and keep it “short and sweet.”
• The imperative preview text – In case you couldn’t fit in the central idea of your email in the subject line, the preview text is the next best option. It gives you a window to express your thoughts, and you can pull out the best USPs for direct impact.
• Headline, body copy, and CTA – After a recipient decides to click open an email, the next point of attention should be your email body copy, which is followed by the headline and then comes the CTA. And while there is no rulebook here, one should aim at keeping the tone of the copy as conversational as possible.
  
  As a matter of fact, one should tune the tone of the content keeping in mind the subject and the audience. For instance, if it’s a scientific newsletter, you are allowed to use more technical terms catering to a niche audience, whereas for an e-commerce campaign, it is recommended you keep it simple for maximum people to connect. 

Subscribers like it when they are heard and valued. Thus, you will need to hit the right chord with your email copy to address the needs, wants, and pain points. Above all, focus on the benefits they can get from your products or services and always frame your content as if you are offering a solution to problems. 

Using the right images 

Images are a great way to convey a particular message. However, when used wrongly, they can do just the opposite. So, be wise in selecting your images. The idea is to keep your images as simple, bold, and non-distracting as possible. 

While buying images or creating one is always an option, when working on a budget, you can resort to sites like Pixabay and Unsplash for free stock photos.

Be wary of running spammy 

No matter how beautifully you have crafted your marketing email, there are times when it lands up in the “Spam” folder for some recipients. Hence, always comply with email regulations and check twice. 

You will need to clearly include a link that reads “Click here to unsubscribe” preferably at the bottom of every for the sake of sender reputation. 

Review, test, and measure for success

Before you hit that “Send” button, always review your emails to check for any glaring mistakes. Also, shoot a test mail to check how it would appear when a recipient opens it at the other end.

The obvious things that you need to check includes: 

• Grammar, typos, and spellings 
• Broken or misplaced links 
• Browser compatibility, and 
• Content alignment 

Once the review is done, you will need to schedule it. This usually depends on certain things like the time zone of your recipients and the peak and low hours of the day to maximize engagement. If you aré not sure about things, consider A/B testing. 

Lastly, you will need to put things to measure, and this is one area where you have tons of metrics to factor in, like unique open rates, click-through rates, conversion, bounce, and unsubscribe rates. Once you run the math on them, you can get the perfect ally on your marketing email campaign performance.

Wrap up 

So, you see, getting started with email marketing doesn’t have to be a difficult task. All you need to do is get the basics right, fall into a schedule, factor in the positives, and voila! You’re all set. 

For one and all beginners, this guide will surely help you chalk out the right strategy.

Happy emailing, folks!