The Five Ws of Effective Email Marketing

Author: Mike Connolly

The rise of social media created a wave that social is going to take over all the other marketing channels, even to an extent of declaring email is dead.  However, email has proven over the years that it is still the best strategy for consumer engagement. Though newer technologies have created innovative communication challenges, email has been the pillar of effective marketing channel of all. With greater opportunities comes along greater challenges. Here are some fundamental questions that marketers need to answer before they plan their email marketing campaigns to yield better results.

1. Who?

Knowing your audience is the key to developing an effective email campaign. This is one question that tempts all the marketers to say “to everyone on my list”. It is not the right approach for a meaningful engagement with your customers. Send right people the right message rather than sending one message to your entire list. Segment your master list into multiple lists and create relevant message to every list at hand. You can fragment the list based on various criteria, blog subscribers, repeat website visitors, newsletter respondents and more. This gives a better view of who your customers are and what are their interests.

2. What?

Once you have identified who you are targeting, it is easier to arrive at what to be sent to them. Each segment should receive emails that are tailored. For instance, the first time receivers might want to know more about you than the ones that repeatedly engage. For the latter, there is a deeper view of their preferences and hence more specific content.

3. Where?

One of the important factors of an engaging email is clarity in where the users should be directed to. The recipients should receive clear direction on where they should head to after reading your email. Give out clear calls-to-action and strategize what content goes on the landing page. If your newsletter subscribers are receiving this email, the main call to action might direct them to one of your blog posts, while for repeat users, a useful research report or whitepaper based on their interest.

4. When?

There is no “one-size-fits-all” answer to “when to send an email?” This insight is derived over a period of sending campaigns and understanding your respondents’ behavior. For some emails weekends work best but for others, weekdays are. This not only depends on what time your audience are active, but also on what type of emails you are sending. A regular business email has a different best time than a holiday campaign.

5. Why?

A definite objective for an email campaign drives it all. Effective marketers consider this as the most important questions before sending a campaign. They answer each question with specific answer that makes their campaigns work better every time.

With Lake B2B enjoy a better experience with email marketing and get the maximum returns. Give yourself the highest level of personalization based on real-time responses describing leads’ requirements promptly. Contact us at 800-710-5516 or write to [email protected] for more.