How to Build a Great Email Marketing Campaign

A successful email marketing campaign takes more than just writing a great message and sending it out. Here are some important steps to consider to help increase your open and click-through rates.

Craft a Great Header

The header of your email describes everything your readers will see before they open your email – the From Name, Subject Line, and Preheader. It’s important to carefully craft a header that will make your audience want to open and read your email.

From Name
This is the email address that your email is sent from. Use a familiar sender name – readers are more likely to trust an email from a recognizable source.
Subject Line
Your subject line should be catchy, short, and include a call to action. We recommend using subject lines with fewer than 50 characters. Try to tell your readers what’s inside, and pique their interest.
Preheader
The preheader text is a short preview of the contents of your email. Most email clients will automatically pull in the first few lines of your email unless you specify it yourself. We recommend customizing your preheader – use six to eleven words that describe the value of your message.

Give ‘em What They Want

It’s important to send people content they will find useful and actually want to receive. This includes crafting high-quality content for your readers, as well as segmenting your mailing lists so you can send specific groups content that is tailored just for them.

Timing is Everything

Sending an email at the right time can make a huge difference in open and clickthrough rate. In general, scheduling email campaigns during Mondays and weekends is considered a bad idea – these are times that your audience is likely to be busy or not checking their email. Traditionally, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are considered good days to send emails. According to most experts, emails that are sent between 9am-11am and 1pm-2pm tend to be opened more frequently.

Make it Easy to Unsubscribe

Always include an unsubscribe link and make it easy for your audience to find. This one might seem counter intuitive, but if your users get frustrated trying to unsubscribe from your mailing list, they will eventually flag your email as spam. Every time this happens, it hurts your reputation with email providers – making it even harder to get your email past the junk folder.

Test and Analyze

Be sure to always carefully test your email before sending it to make sure it will work on a variety of devices and email platforms. After you’ve sent out campaigns, utilize the free reports that are included in most email campaign software to review your open and click through rates. This will help you identify patterns that help or hurt your campaigns and will allow you to tweak your next email accordingly.