When used correctly, emails can be one of the communication channels with the highest ROI, according to small businesses surveyed. Yet, so many people still don't see impressive results from their email campaigns, which may discourage them from sending emails to their audience.
It's not time to give up on email marketing yet! In this article, we've gathered the best tips for email campaign management to help you optimize your campaigns and increase engagement, conversion rates and revenue. Keep reading to learn more.
Email campaign management: 9 actionable tips
Identify your goals and target audience
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Before creating any email campaign, you should define what you want to achieve with it, which may change depending on the phase of the customer journey.
Some of the most common email campaign goals include:
- Trust building
- Lead nurturing
- Direct sales
- Upsells and cross-sells
- Customer retention
Now, it's time to identify your target audience. You can have multiple target audiences, as we'll explain below in the section about segmentation. You should collect demographic information about your ideal customers (age, location, job title) and their interests and identify their pain points that your content can help them solve.
Plan your content
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The most successful email campaigns usually aren't created one by one, and they often come in email sequences consisting of 3-6 emails, such as:
- Welcome emails
- Lead nurturing sequence
- Product launch sequence
- Educational series
- Re-engagement emails etc.
Identify those that apply to you, then plan drip (automated) campaigns for that particular situation.
Of course, you should also consider creating an email marketing calendar that should include holidays and all the important days in your industry. You can create themed content around those days and schedule it in your email campaign calendar.
Lacking inspiration? You can check out our email campaign ideas or develop your own content ideas based on the questions you frequently get, the biggest misconceptions about your industry and helpful tips for solving a particular problem.
On the other hand, if you run an online store, here are some transactional email examples that can help you create your email templates.
Segment your email list
To get the most out of your email marketing efforts, you should send the right content to the right audience at the right moment.
Therefore, you should categorize your audience into segments based on the characteristics they have in common, such as demographics, interests and behavior, to make sure everyone receives relevant messages that speak directly to them.
Most email campaign management services offer this option, but SEINō goes the extra mile and uses dynamic real-time segmentation to label subscribers according to their engagement and activity level.
For example, suppose someone regularly engages with your content and clicks your offers but hasn't purchased yet. In that case, we'll label them as "Promising", so you can send them a special custom-made offer that may convert them into customers.
On the other hand, if a previously active customer stops engaging with your content, our software automatically puts them into the "At risk" segment – so that you can pay special attention to those customers, send them re-engagement campaigns or discounts and gift cards, to win them back and reduce your unsubscribe rate.
List segmentation is a necessary pre-requisite for email personalization, which was a top priority last year among email marketing professionals.
Clean your email list
Regularly cleaning your email list has many benefits. Not only will you increase your open rates and CTRs, but you're also improving your overall email deliverability and the accuracy of your email analytics.
Email service providers often use engagement metrics to determine where they should place your emails in the recipient's inbox (e.g., primary inbox or spam and promotions folders). Removing unengaged subscribers and invalid email addresses reduces the likelihood that your emails will be marked as spam and signals to your email service provider that your content is relevant and welcomed by subscribers.
Now, the question is, how often should you clean your subscriber list?
It depends on the number of subscribers and how they opted into your list.
However, doing it every quarter or at least twice a year is recommended. A person who hasn't opened any of your emails in the last six months can be considered an inactive subscriber.
Of course, you can win them back with a re-engagement campaign, but it might be time to remove them from your list if they still don't react. Think of it as clearing up the space to welcome new subscribers!
Work on your CTAs
Although they seem like small details, CTAs can determine the success of your email and affect your email conversion rates profoundly. Here are a few tips on how to optimize them:
- Use active verbs such as discover, unlock, explore, grab, claim, start, learn etc.
- Create a sense of urgency or scarcity (Act fast – Only a few spots left; Last chance to save; Grab your discount before it ends).
- Make sure they visually stand out from the rest of your email by choosing attractive colors for CTA buttons.
- Use A/B testing to test different variations of CTA in terms of button design, color, position and text.
Optimize for mobile
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Every day, more and more people check their emails from their mobile devices. That's why one of the first things to do to improve user experience is to make your email marketing campaigns mobile-optimized and accessible through all devices.
What does it mean?
- Responsive design: Always choose responsive email templates that can easily adapt to various screen sizes, including mobile phones and tablets.
- Single-column layout: This layout might be simple, but it improves user experience as they won't have to zoom and scroll to read the full text, which can be frustrating.
- Skimmable text: The email should be clear, concise and easy to read. Use short, bite-sized paragraphs, add a lot of headings and subheadings and ensure there's enough white space so the screen doesn't seem cluttered.
- Simple font: Avoid cursive and use print letters and a simple font that's easy to read. Make sure the font size is large enough for reading on the small screens. You can also bold or underline key information to make them more visible.
- Optimized images: You should compress images to reduce loading time. Also, do not overdo it with the number of images per email, as users sometimes don't want to wait until all images are loaded, which leads to an increased bounce rate and activating spam filters.
For more inspiration, check out this article on transactional email best practices because transactional emails are known for their simple and clear design.
Align your email strategy with other channels
Your email marketing strategy doesn't exist in a vacuum, and it's an integral part of your overall marketing and communication strategy.
First, think about where your email campaigns fit into your sales funnel: whether it's promotional emails, lead nurturing or post-purchase experience.
It's essential to synchronize different channels and touchpoints across the buyer's journey to provide a consistent customer experience.
Here are a few tips:
- Visual identity: Keep a consistent visual identity (brand colors, fonts, logos) across all the platforms and channels to make your brand easily recognizable and boost trust.
- Brand voice: Create a unique brand voice that could be friendly, authoritative, funny etc. and stick to it. Of course, you can adjust it according to the platform and situation (you'll be more formal in your emails than on social media).
- Personalization: You can use customer data gathered via email marketing campaigns to personalize communication on other channels and vice versa. That's why it's essential to have a unique database where you keep all the data about your customers and interactions with them.
Analyze your email performance
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If you want to optimize your email campaigns, you need to know what's your starting point. First, decide which email marketing KPIs you want to track according to your current goals. Here are some suggestions:
- Open rates
- Click-through rates
- Conversion rate
- Delivery rate
- Bounce rate
- Unsubscribe rate
- Engagement rate
You can track all the above with almost any email marketing platform (more or less accurately, depending on the platform). Yet, if you want to go one step beyond your competition, we suggest opting for a dedicated email analytics tool like SEINō.
Here are three less common things you can do with our software:
- Benchmarking campaigns: Unlike most tools that let you analyze only one campaign at a time, SEINō allows you to compare multiple email campaigns in the same campaign report to spot patterns and see what elements work better.
- Analyzing transactional metrics: Apart from standard metrics mentioned above, you can also analyze revenue-related metrics such as average order, total revenue, revenue per email campaign etc.
- Monitoring list growth: You can monitor how your contact list and customer base grow and develop over time and spot trends and actions that may have caused rapid growth or stagnation.
And the best part is that you don't have to switch from your email service provider to use SEINō. Our software integrates with most marketing automation tools and transactional email services such as Deployteq, Klaviyo and Salesforce Marketing Cloud as well as with Google Analytics to get even more insights!
Do A/B testing
There's no better way to predict what type of campaign would work better than to do a split test or A/B test. It means testing multiple versions of the same campaign to see which one performs better.
With A/B testing, you can test all elements of an email campaign, from subject lines to design and CTA.
While some email marketing tools take a lot of time to analyze data and develop email marketing reports, with SEINō, you get results instantly so you can optimize your email campaigns in real time.
Apart from standard A/B testing (as described above), you can also send the same campaign to two different audience segments to see who resonates with it more.
See also: B2B email marketing best practices
Conclusion
If you want to optimize your email campaigns but don't want to spend hours analyzing data, we've got you covered.
SEINō is an email analytics tool of the new generation designed to increase your productivity by up to 90% and free up your time while providing you with valuable insights for campaign optimization. It stands out for its accurate metrics, advanced segmentation and A/B testing.
Book a free demo and see why so many companies choose SEINō as their preferred campaign management and analytics tool.
Email campaign management: FAQ
What is an email campaign strategy? An email marketing campaign strategy is a plan that includes goals, target audience, content and timing for a series of marketing emails. It's a necessary step before creating and sending emails.
How do I manage an email campaign? To manage email campaigns, choose an effective email campaign management tool that lets you automate many tasks and use an email analytics tool to track metrics and optimize your email campaigns.
How do I monitor an email campaign? You can monitor your email campaigns in your email marketing tool or by using specialized analytics software with more detailed reporting. Determine your key metrics and goals and then observe campaign performance and user behavior.
How do I track email campaign success? First, you need to define what a successful email campaign is for you, in other words, what you want to achieve, whether it's engagement, conversions or revenue generated. Based on that, you can choose metrics and KPIs to focus on. Some tools even allow you to set milestones and track your progress.
