Tips for Launching a Successful Email Marketing Campaign

Today, the Insights team launched a new marketing initiative. As part of our 2013 marketing strategy, we decided to launch two email marketing campaigns. Some of you may have ended up here on our blog from those very emails, so welcome! Here are some tips for launching a successful email marketing campaign.

1. Know your audience - We know we write about this a lot, but we can't stress it enough. You have to know your audience in order to see success with your marketing campaigns. It's no different with email marketing. We launched two email campaigns today - one designed to retain clients and one designed to reach new customers. Both of our emails were very different from content and design, to call to action and the click-thru URLs. Our email designed to retain clients linked directly to this blog. We wanted that audience to know that we're offering content they can use to get more out of their Insights partnerships, by bettering their blogs and social media marketing with our tips and tricks. The email we sent out designed to gain new customers had a strong value proposition from the subject line, "Feature your Blog on Boston.com to Reach New Customers," to the content and design. That email clicked through to boston.com/insights where our informational video lives. We recognized that these two audiences and what we want from these two audiences are very different and we tailored each of the two campaigns to the two distinct groups.

2. Develop compelling content for your emails - Make sure your content and calls to action within your emails are compelling and recognizable to your audience. You want your target audience to know what you want them to do. For example, for the email we sent to our potential client base, we used language that encouraged business bloggers to click through our email with a strong call to action that tells that audience that they can gain new customers through the blog they spend so much time demonstrating their expertise, by using this new offering. We know our headlines, and short and to the point paragraph were successful because within minutes of sending out the email we had gained leads through the contact form on the video. Additionally, remember to use enticing subject lines to increase your open rates. Of course, a subject line targeted to your audience with a strong call to action and value proposition is more likely to be opened.

3. Remember that design is important for your emails - In addition to strong content, a nice, clean, familiar design is inviting to readers. Since some of our readers are small business owners and don't necessarily have access to a full service creative services team, here are a couple of things to remember when designing an email template:

• Keep your template consistent - use the same color scheme for your background and font, so people recognize your emails each week, or month
• Include your logo - this also helps with identifying and recognizing email marketing campaigns and adds a sense of familiarity for your audience
• Use compelling images that speak to your brand identity

Do you have any other email marketing tips to add? Let us know in the comments below!

*Offer ends 1/15/13