Email marketing is estimated to provide an average ROI of $44. But to achieve such an impressive generation of sales from your email campaign, it’s important to have a great structure in place.

So what are the hallmarks of an effective email marketing campaign? And how can you optimize ROI thanks to your campaign strategy?

Keep reading to find out!

Segment Your Audience

When developing your email marketing strategy, you’ll need to make sure you segment your audience list. This allows businesses to send relevant content to different groups within their mailing list. You might divide these groups according to their gender, age, location, or interaction history.

Segmented email campaigns perform better because they provide a targeted marketing approach. For example, when releasing a new line of products, this news could be shared only with customers who have bought a similar item before. Or, if you want to publicize an in-person event, you can make sure that customers in the local area alone receive this content.

To segment your audience accurately, it will be important to collect some basic information about them. This can be done during an online checkout process or via a newsletter sign-up form.

It’s also important to allow your recipients to set their own subscription preferences. This means they can choose the content they want to receive and will make it more likely that they stay subscribed to your mailing list.

Consider User Timelines

An email marketing strategy can be divided into two overarching categories. These are emails related to the user timeline and other promotional messages. We’ll take a closer look at the additional email promotion later on. But first, let’s explore how a user timeline forms part of your email campaign structure.

The user timeline will start when the customer either signs up to your mailing list or makes a sale. From this point on, most email campaign software can trigger automations based on specific actions or time elapsing.

For example, you might want to set up an email that is triggered when a potential customer adds an item to their shopping cart but doesn’t buy anything. You could send them an email 3 hours later, and then a final reminder 2 days later offering a discount code.

Depending on your business model, it might also be relevant to send emails marking the anniversary since a user subscribed. You could also share happy birthday messages or other personalized content.

Review Campaign Metrics

Another crucial element of developing your email campaign strategy is to check your campaign metrics often. These are important indicators of how well your general strategy is working, as well as indicating a more immediate issue.

There are several important email marketing metrics to follow closely. These include the open rate, click-through rate, conversion rate, list-growth rate, and more.

Email marketing campaigns are a continual source of measurable data. After the launch of a new campaign, or follow the promotion of a new product or service, the metrics must be analyzed. This is how businesses can determine what needs work, what they’re doing well, and how to make continual improvements.

For example, let’s say your business has a high open rate, but a low click-through rate. This would suggest your email subject is great, but the content might need some attention. In this scenario, you’d want to focus on making your calls to action clear and persuasive.

Incorporate Emails Into Your Wider Marketing Strategy

The other major part of an email marketing campaign, as well as following the user journey, is general promotional content. This is where segmentation and your wider online presence come into play.

An email marketing campaign is a great way to direct customers and potential customers to your other social media platforms. It helps to create a sense of brand community and increases the likelihood of your customer base expanding.

In your email marketing strategy, you can direct recipients to check out your social media pages. Try including regular calls to action to encourage them to like and follow you across your different platforms.

You should also be including links to new content that is published in your blog. Content marketing is valuable for many reasons besides providing content for your email campaigns. It improves your SEO performance and helps your brand reputation.

Focus On Testing

Finally, an element of creating your email marketing campaign that cannot be overlooked is testing. Testing is crucial for figuring out which wording, content, images, and strategies perform best.

There are several email marketing tools available that help businesses test ideas and compare the results.

Testing can also be used to determine the best times of day, and days of the week when emails are most likely to be opened, or clicked on. A/B testing is a particularly useful method that compares like for like when trying out new campaign strategies.

It sends your new email campaign to just a part of your email list. Thus, you can make the necessary improvements before hitting ‘send’ to your entire list of recipients.

It’s a great way to see how more creative content is received by your customers. You can also measure which performs better when tracking your campaign metrics.

Now You Can Launch a Successful Email Campaign

By introducing these guidelines into your email campaign structure, you can ensure your business generates plenty of leads. You can also build a community around your brand. Don’t forget that you can leave your email marketing campaign to our expert team if you’d rather focus on blue-sky thinking.

Our experienced digital marketers hit the ground running. We can help you to establish an effective email marketing strategy, alongside your other needs, including web design, SEO, and PPC. Get in touch with our team to find out how we can take your online presence to the next level.