Planning is the Key Step in Designing an Effective Email Campaign

Email marketing is the direct mail vehicle of the new millennium. It has proven to be an effective and low-cost advertising medium for online and offline businesses, both large and small. Email marketing allows easy tracking and measuring of results. More importantly, it allows businesses to stay in front of their customers for a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising. The bad news, however, is that everyone is using email marketing. The question becomes, then, how do you stand out from crowd?

An effective email campaign must be strategically planned out in advance for optimal success. What is the purpose of your campaign? To sell, to inform, or to support are possibilities. What are your goals for the campaign? Do you want more orders, new customers, or backend product sales? The bottom line is you want to keep the customers that have already purchased from you!

Consider your list. Is it targeted? Can you segment your list for greater success? Segmenting is creating subgroups within your list that you can then target with specific information and offers. If one customer orders one service and another customer buys your widget, you would want to offer the two different customers different follow-up support and complementary products. Also consider where your list evolved from: did you buy it, did it come from your website, blog, or is it an affiliate list? This information is important to know when you plan your campaign.

Before you begin designing, consider the following metrics you will use to measure the success of your campaign:

• Read Rates: How many people open your emails is a good indication of the interest they have in your information. More importantly, is how many open your email more than once or keep opening it down the road.
• Click Throughs: Are your emails successful in driving traffic to your site? Do you have compelling content and calls to action that directs your prospects to act? What calls to action worked or didnt work?
• Sent to a Friend: Are you getting the word-of-mouth viral marketing from your campaign? Are you utilizing this important method?
• Unsubscribe Rate: What causes your prospect to want to unsubscribe? Is your information not compelling enough? Do you provide enough or too much content? Are you capturing what your prospects want to know?

Now when you are first starting out, these things will be a mystery. The only true way to know is to target your goals the best way you can to your list and of course, trial and error. The knowledge you have of each of these components will help you make adjustments along the way.

Again, consider the objective of your campaign. If you want your list to buy, a simple invitation to visit your site is okay. More effective, however, is to give them an incentive to buy now, not later and from you and not from your competitor, etc.

A call to action is giving specific instructions to be followed. You are pointing them to the infamous X marks the spot. But do not send your prospects on a treasure hunt. They will get fed up and go about their day. Every call to action should be accompanied by a direct link to your spot X.

Equally important as getting them to spot X quickly and easily is to not misinform them about where you want them to go. In short, do not tell them to go to spot X for more information and send them to spot Y which is the order page. Again, they will be miffed and go away.

Strategically place your call to actions throughout your email. Most people simply skim an email on average for only a few seconds. They will most likely not read word-for-word your entire message (unless you have killer content!) If you just put one link down at the end of the message, you will have a low click-through rate.

Email users have been studied extensively and results show they respond best to shorter, clearly designed messages. This means they will be looking for your call to action and the link to spot X. Make sure you provide clear instructions with a targeted message so that you take advantage of the few seconds you have. Attach specific call to actions in clearly visible spots in your email and you will see better results than if you didnt.

As you send more and more emails, look at what your prospects are responding to. Adapting to the specific nature of your list will help improve your click-through rate, decrease your unsubscribe rate and you will realize more viral referrals.

Ruth Harris is a real entrepreneur who has helped many others start and promote their online business. Visit http://www.iprofit.viral-business.com to get over 170 best-selling eBooks and software titles with Master Resell Rights and ready made profit-pulling minisites all for one low price.

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