Create a successful email campaign in minutes
An email campaign is a top digital marketing tool that surprises the e-commerce market with new technologies, retains existing customers, and brings higher profit to online businesses. The upcoming Holidays are an excellent occasion to prepare a great new promotional offer. It's time to get ready for the Big Sale.
So, where does the preparation begin? Probably the very first and most significant step is notifying customers about the upcoming freebies. An email campaign is the best method for that. Since the costs are minimal, and the effectiveness is maximum.
So, what to do if you want to create an email campaign for a specific promotion or holiday?
Look at the following steps: create a database, think over the letter content, create and test it, send an email at the right time, and expect great results.
The client base for the Holiday email campaign
Your customers are an essential part of this activity. They have already purchased in your store and are very familiar with your products. That is why they are potentially interested in receiving exciting content and notifications about discounts, sales, etc.
Of course, before adding people to the subscriber base, it is better to clarify whether they want this.
You can motivate users to subscribe with some gifts or discounts. For example, customers visit a website and see a great deal of value. And to use it, they must share an email address.
Or conduct contests and promotions, participants of which can only be your subscribers.
Preparing a template of the letter
Make sure that your emails are exciting and valuable for your customers. Try to offer some help to resolve their pain. Do not forget to write in clear phrases, and the target audience must understand the whole essence of the text. Conciseness, attraction, and humor in the subject of an email can be good motivators for opening a letter.
And one more piece of advice - don't forget about ethics in email marketing. There could be a situation when your newsletter loses relevance for a subscriber, and the client wants to unsubscribe from it but physically can't because you didn't add the option to do so. In this case, he could mark you as spam. It will hurt your website's reputation.
Therefore, don't forget to add an unsubscribe link to all your email templates, preferably in a footer with visually noticeable letters so it would be easy to find.
In addition, we recommend adding easily seen buttons with direct links to your website and specific product pages. Your email newsletter can become an additional sales channel and bring new purchases to the site.
Sending emails and mailing results
You need to take care about the frequency of sending letters, their format, and of course, the functional mailing service.
Mailing format
The newsletter can be in the form of a promotional review, digest, tips, articles on general topics, video tutorials, or even comics. Optionally, select multiple options and see how readers respond to different emails. If you come up with several formats, alternate them.
Periodicity
Once you have decided on the format, think about how often you send the newsletter. For example, it can be weekly, once or twice a month. Think about which frequency is right for you. First, experiment with frequency. If you send emails twice a month, start sending once a week and watch how often people unsubscribe. In the future, develop a system. If you decide to send a letter for a week, calculate your time to make it without compromising quality.
Best time to send emails:
- 9: 00-10: 00 - send letters on any topic;
- 15: 00-17: 00 - the best time to send promotional offers (Monday to Thursday);
- 17: 00-19: 00 - letters with a proposal for entertainment events work well;
- 19: 00-22: 00 - a convenient time for entertainment and shopping in online stores.
The mailing works most effectively on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Because this is the period when people are focused on tasks and correspondence in particular.
Although it is essential to consider the target audience, don't forget that B2B and B2C businesses have specifics.
Functional service
Depending on the number of customers, you may need to send hundreds or thousands of emails. Using a regular email account for sending emails to each customer individually is a long and complicated job. Therefore, a convenient way to organize the sending of letters to customers is using email services.
Mailing results
It is essential to see the effect of the letters. For example, you can measure the number of website visitors or purchases of goods.
Analysis of the results of mass mailing must be carried out not earlier than 7 days from the date of dispatch.
But some indicators need special attention. These include: percentage of spam complaints (should not exceed 0.5%) The number of complaints shows the percentage of people who marked your newsletter as spam. error rate (should not exceed 10%)
Evaluation of mailing efficiency is subjective. The main thing for you is to understand what goals you set and achieve them step by step before conducting the campaign.
Each client needs a unique approach. If your email marketing strategy is structured correctly, you will see successful sales results pretty quickly.
Sending emails is a rather laborious process, but technology does not standstill.
How to automate mailing?
Businesses can use unique extensions that will significantly simplify the process of sending emails.
Easy-made templates allow you not to bother with the design, coding, and customization of the appearance of your newsletters. If you don't have design and development skills, then templates will save you a lot of time.
That is why we propose to use the Magento 2 "Email to customers" module.
The extension allows the business to:
- develop an email sales channel;
- speed up customer notifications about offers, products, promotions;
- expand your customer base and make repeat sales;
- increase conversion and average check;
- increase Life-Time Value (LTV);
- conduct marketing research.
Let's install the "Email to customers" module. Step by step guide:
Step 1
First of all, download the archive.
Step 2
Then make sure to create the directory structure in your Magento - 'Magento_Root/app/code/Mageside/EmailToCustomers'.
Step 3
Then unzip the content of the archive to a directory 'Magento_Root/app/code/Mageside/EmailToCustomers' (use command 'unzip ArchiveName.zip -d path_to/app/code/Mageside/EmailToCustomers').
Step 4
The next stage put the command 'php bin/magento module:enable Mageside_EmailToCustomers' in Magento root.
In case If you need to clear static content use 'php bin/magento module:enable --clear-static-content Mageside_EmailToCustomers'.
Step 5
After that, use the command 'php bin/magento setup:upgrade' in Magento root.
Step 6
Executive the command 'php bin/magento setup:di:compile' if you have a single website and store, or 'php bin/magento setup:di:compile-multi-tenant' if you have multiple ones.
Step 7
And don't forget to clear the cache: 'php bin/magento cache:clean', 'php bin/magento cache:flush'
A few days after the email campaign, you can start to evaluate the following metrics: open email rate, delivery rate, click-through rate, conversion rate, unsubscription rate, subscriber growth, content share rate, and, of course, ROI.
percentage of opened letters
The average email open rate is 32%. Keep in mind that this data may not be entirely accurate since loading images calculate the opening level. The email will be unopened if the recipient's email client does not support image uploads.
delivery rate
This metric shows how many emails ended up in user inboxes.
As much as you would like it, a certain number of emails fall into the "spam" category. It is essential to keep in mind that emails that fall into the spam folder are also delivered.
number of clicks
The average email click-through rate is roughly 4%. If you consistently receive a lower percentage, it is worth considering the reasons.
conversion rate
It is a priority metric for evaluating the effectiveness of email campaigns. It shows how many subscribers have completed the target action. Let's say the goal of your mailing list is to convince subscribers to download an ebook, try a free trial, register for a webinar, or buy a tracksuit. Based on the purpose of a particular newsletter, you will count the conversion.
number of unsubscriptions
Even if your email looks perfect, there will always be unsubscriptions, and, usually, people unsubscribe for any reason. But note that a rate of 1% or more should be alerting.
growth in the number of subscribers
If the quantity of subscribers grows, you can get more loyal customers and even increase the percentage of people who share your content.
ROI
It would be your leading indicator if the original goal of your mailing were to increase profits.
Let's summarize:
Email marketing works as a separate sales funnel and complement the digital tools that attract and retain customers.
Before making a newsletter among subscribers, first think over the email subject and select the correct, relevant content (images, text, links) because it must look good on all devices.
There are many rules for sending marketing emails that we told you about earlier, but the key idea is to remember that your subscribers are people who want to hear you and communicate with you. Become a natural source of information for them, and they will look forward to letters from you, as from the best friend.