KROSSing the line with E-mail Marketing

by Erick Ovalle

When you are working on the development of an e-mail marketing campaign one of the things that comes to mind is: “How can I make my campaign successful when there are so many e-mails flying around the internet?” or “How can my campaign catch customers’ attention and not go unnoticed like many others?”

Based on our experience we can say that a successful strategy for na e-mail marketing campaign is kross the line; no, that’s not a typo: kross the line that separate a good e-mail marketing campaign from the rest of the pack.

It’s sometimes hard to put these tips into practice because in this industry results are king; and when you don’t get results quickly these practices are soon dropped. However, you need to be consistent and faithful to your strategy. Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

So, without more ado, these are the steps to follow in order to kross the line with your e-mail marketing campaign:

Knowledge of the Database

Have you ever polled or surveyed your database? If you haven’t, you should. It’s very important to know how your customers think, what they like, what they would change, how they feel about the frequency of your campaigns, the kind of promotions they find attractive, etc. This will give you an excellent idea of what your customers really want and is the the best marketing study you could have.

Reporting

It’s extremely important when planning your campaigns to know which strategies are working and which are not, to understand the deliverability of your campaigns, and to be able to show metrics beyond Open Rate and Click Through. This will give you the big picture for the planning of future campaigns.

Offers

Even though not all campaigns are oriented to offer something to customers, everyone knows that putting a good offer or promotion in your Campaign will help you improve its performance. If your e-mail strategy is only about branding, perhaps you should think every once in a while about offering a sweepstake of something attractive for your customers in order to spark their interest.

Segmentation

A very popular phrase in this business emphasizes “The right message to the right people at the right time”; and I would add to that “in the right way”. Segmentations are very important because they allow you to send the right message to a clearly targeted group, which will improve the performance of your campaign. Knowing the gender, age, country or city of your customers, their preference of PC or mobile to read e-mails, whether they prefer red or green, etc. are big advantages that e-mail marketing offers but few people use.

Subject lines

Finally, you should always present an attractive subject line for your customers, because this is the key to them to explore your campaign further. Let’s put it this way: even if your campaign is to announce that you are giving your house away for free, if the customers don’t see an attractive subject line in your e-mail they will simply erase it and no one will know what an amazing offer you were making. Test your subject lines with small segments of your database, see which words work better, and avoid those that can sound offensive or negative.

If you can keep these practices in mind, you’re very likely to reach the success you’re looking for in your campaigns, and your business will get a boost as a result.