5 + 1 ways to make your Email Campaigns succeed

Creating and sending an Email Campaign sounds simple. It needs a subject line, some text, a few images and the list of email addresses it will be sent to. Broadly speaking, these are indeed the parts it is made of. But what will you write? How will you write it? How will you present it? How will you set it up? How will you back it up? Who will you address? Why will you address them? How will you approach someone you rarely talk to, or are talking to for the first time? These are just some of the questions every Campaign has to answer.

Email Marketing is a lot like the job of a Tupperware salesperson. Roughly, anyway. Both are based on the same principles. In one case you need experience, training and often charisma to succeed. In the other, once you have the training, you need to find the right mix of Marketing theories so that, with the help of tried and tested tools and techniques, you communicate with greater success, reach and therefore results.

What if you are not the experts? How will you know which theories to apply? So we have put together a list of 5 + 1 points for you that will help you build successful Email Campaigns.

Avoid sending emails with subject lines like “Update” or “Latest News”

Well begun is half done, as they say (partly rightly). A bad start is one of the worst choices you can make. The average internet user is bombarded every day with dozens of news items, ads and offers. Information overload plagues the internet, which makes it hard to remember all the information we receive every day. We now remember only what is useful to us or makes an impression. So if it is hard to hold on to information that is otherwise important to us, how hard is it to remember an “Announcement” or “Update” that barely interests us? Efforts like this are bound to fall flat.

So try to offer something that is worthwhile for your readers (like the article you are reading).

Give your message a subject line that will grab the reader's attention. That interest will in turn focus their attention on the message, which is the desired result if the Email Campaign is to make an impact.

Do not send Newsletters too often

Contacting your customers too often can lead many of them to unsubscribe from your email lists or stop following you online. We want as much contact with our readers as possible. But “overexposure”, so to speak, through frequent contact cannot only have good results. According to a 2011 “cmb” survey, almost 7 out of 10 consumers would unsubscribe from an email list if they received messages from a sender too often.

Find the right day and time to send

This is where research is needed, by you or by the person promoting your Email Campaign. There are many hours and days in a week to choose from, and finding the best combination is critical to getting the results you want. In general, the best choice depends on the audience we are addressing. One social or professional group prefers messages that arrive at specific times and days, while another cares more about the content of the message, so the time the Email Campaign is sent does not matter.

Send short, tidy emails

Like us, you have probably received many emails hiding a message that goes on and on. “Just looking at it made me tired”, you will (probably) say, and quite rightly too. We cannot hope that readers will spend more than 5 minutes studying our “words of wisdom”. From the text and headings to the images, the email must give the impression of a tidy package, carefully and neatly laid out.

On the other hand, the email should not be thin on content either. Apart from a clear structure, it must also have the minimum size it needs so that the reader does not discard it almost immediately. Images also need to be of a specific size and number. More images either make our email look sloppy or lead the reader to focus only on the images of products that interest them and to dismiss without a second thought the images of products that interest them little or not at all, even if those products have a bigger discount. If the latter is done on purpose (because that logic exists too), fine. But if it happens without the Email campaign creator realizing it, then we are heading for failure.

Stand out!

In the internet age, when billions of emails are sent every day, your Email campaign has to be able to stand out from the rest if you want to make sales. Competition is fierce, the same patterns are promoted again and again, and the time each recipient will give you is minimal. So you need to stand out at first glance. And this is where research comes in. Research to find the right formula that both appeals to your audience and delivers the highest conversion rates, or at least meets the goals set for the campaign. Since the internet knows no borders and is full of businesses like yours, the one that succeeds is the one that also stands out in the field of Newsletters.

Bonus Point. No SPAM!

It is very sad to see businesses trying to promote their sales through Spam at a time when the name and reputation of a brand matter so much. Especially when there are tools that recognize Spam and stop it before it even reaches the recipient, all you can achieve is to get your email address blacklisted as a sender, along with your IP and the server's IP, with everything that implies, while damaging your brand name at the same time. Consumers know that Spam is an unfair practice, illegal under Greek law, and that is why they reject it outright. You would have more financial success going door to door to people who might be interested in your product than sending Spam messages.

What you can do

Just 5 years ago we might have said that Email Marketing changes from year to year and that it is important for a business to invest in developing it. The results have since proved us wrong. We were understating it! Email Marketing has taken a particular turn in the last five years, to the point where it changes every few months. New research, new approaches and new views keep appearing. It is no longer just important but essential for a business to invest in this area in order to reach its customers.

Make the most of Email Marketing!

Email was the first communication and promotion tool that businesses used on the internet. Almost 30 years after it was created, it still firmly holds first place as the most widely used online communication tool worldwide.

Make the most of this momentum. Konet has its own email marketing platform for bulk sending, and you can ask our support team about it. You can also contact sales@konet.gr to find out how you can use our incoming and outgoing mail filters so that Spam stops bothering you.