What is the best way to start an email marketing campaign?

Hi Mark.

I'd suggest beginning by answering the fundamental question, "What is your goal for the email marketing campaign?"

Depending on your answer, you'll have a clear understanding of the content to provide. If you are promoting a special offer, maybe feature that prominently. If you're promoting company news and information, it might make sense to start a quarterly newsletter.

That step will help you shape your campaign and goals - next is ensuring you are sending the email to a quality, opt-in database. There isn't an easy way to grow such a list but be sure you promote subscribing to your email list on your website, email signature, social media campaigns, etc. While buying an email list isn't advisable, you can try renting one or co-sponsoring a newsletter that has an established and reputable list.

Once you've nailed down these considerations (whew!), you'll need to think about an email service provider (I like Mail Chimp & Vertical Response) to actually send the email plus the design of your actual email. The importance of a professional appearance really can't be overstated because it is your first impression on a potential prospect.

Finally, don't forget to triple-check every link, proof the spelling and write a compelling subject line. Good luck - happy marketing!

This is a very broad question but I will outline a few things that we have seen working well for our customers at Nurture (http://www.nurturehq.com).

High Quality List
1. Quality of contacts in your list is a core foundational aspect that drives the response rates you can get from your email marketing campaigns.
2. To make sure you scale the best list source, I would recommend you test lists from a range if sources like Jigsaw, Netprospex, Hoovers, ZoomInfo, ReadyContacts and others, which provide contacts at various levels of accuracy. Based on the results of a small campaign scale your list acquisition accordingly.
3. Focus on converting your website visitors into subscribers as those are very good prospects to focus on.
4. Identify companies visiting your website and find contacts at those companies to add to your list to improve results.

Build a relationship:
This is the next important aspect where I think every marketer ought to move from thinking about sending newsletters to thinking about connecting with and educating their prospects with data and insight that helps build credibility and trust. This is really core to successful email marketing / nurturing.
1. Think of who your prospects are, what they are struggling with everyday.
2. Segment your users so you can personalize your messages rather than sending them all the same message.
3. Focus on educating your prospects with new data / research / insights / tricks that may helps them with the problems they are struggling with.
4. Stay away from pure play marketing and trying to sell your newest solution, as most people get turned off by that.
5. Keep a schedule so your prospects get used to getting an useful email from you every once in a while.
6. Develop a content strategy that you can keep up with based on your resources and use that to power your email campaigns.

Feedback loop:
I highly recommend using a lead nurturing / marketing automation application to help you manage the campaigns, track responses and send personalized follow-ups to keep the messages very conversational.

Hope this helps.

This is a very broad question but I will outline a few things that we have seen working well for our customers at Nurture (http://www.nurturehq.com).

High Quality List
1. Quality of contacts in your list is a core foundational aspect that drives the response rates you can get from your email marketing campaigns.
2. To make sure you scale the best list source, I would recommend you test lists from a range if sources like Jigsaw, Netprospex, Hoovers, ZoomInfo, ReadyContacts and others, which provide contacts at various levels of accuracy. Based on the results of a small campaign scale your list acquisition accordingly.
3. Focus on converting your website visitors into subscribers as those are very good prospects to focus on.
4. Identify companies visiting your website and find contacts at those companies to add to your list to improve results.

Build a relationship:
This is the next important aspect where I think every marketer ought to move from thinking about sending newsletters to thinking about connecting with and educating their prospects with data and insight that helps build credibility and trust. This is really core to successful email marketing / nurturing.
1. Think of who your prospects are, what they are struggling with everyday.
2. Segment your users so you can personalize your messages rather than sending them all the same message.
3. Focus on educating your prospects with new data / research / insights / tricks that may helps them with the problems they are struggling with.
4. Stay away from pure play marketing and trying to sell your newest solution, as most people get turned off by that.
5. Keep a schedule so your prospects get used to getting an useful email from you every once in a while.
6. Develop a content strategy that you can keep up with based on your resources and use that to power your email campaigns.

Feedback loop:
I highly recommend using a lead nurturing / marketing automation application to help you manage the campaigns, track responses and send personalized follow-ups to keep the messages very conversational.

Hope this helps.

When constructing effective email marketing campaigns, there are certainly the basic fundamentals such as defining the exact benefit/solutions you plan to provide this niche group...never do one size fits all emails. We all know the Five W's, I'm sure.

1. Build very targeted email lists...D&B, Hoovers, Jigsaw etc, will give you a good base but are not very accurate in their algorithms. Your list of 10,000 will result in a 30 to 40% hard bounce rate; Preserve the reputation of your domain.

There are sources that provide very targeted and mostly up-to-date lists. For example, if you are targeting cardiovascular physicians, contact the AHA, American Heart Association. Many times these groups will rent or sale lists of their members.

2. Adopt a very insightful Marketing Automation/Emailing Agent and analyze derived data after every mailing. Several key metrics are:

Open Rate - Was your subject line and initial sentence enticing or stimulating?

Clicks/Page Visits - Who read your content and showed continued interest?

Specific Page Visits - Which pages did they visit? Did they hit your home page and leave? Did they visit your homepage and navigate further..maybe even to the e-commerce or registration page (very good sign of interest).

Opt Outs - How much value did you deliver? When dealing with large email campaigns, make sure to gauge the percentage of opt-outs per email. This can provide great insight to the effectiveness of your messaging.

Hard Bounces(550+ Bounce Codes) - Normally, this needs to be done once and every so often after. Once you receive this list, make sure to opt out every one of these through either your CRM or your mailing agent(they're all equipped to do so by law). If mailings result in these rates over and over, Spam agents will eventually block your IP..Not fun cleaning that mess up.

Regarding effective messaging, it ultimately depends on your goal as an organization. In this question, I will be assuming that you have a revenue goal in mind.

1. There is always time for drip marketing later, so if you want to receive instant gratification(appointments,revenues,etc.) from an non-opted in crowd, always introduce your first communication to your audience with a very personalized email(merge name, company name, etc)inserting this data in the content multiple times, even in the Subject Lines.

2. Provide the human element, don't make your first communication an e-newsletter. Assign a representative and give the email a very sincere feel with a human sender, email and closing. People love attention and appreciation so never give signs that they are receiving yet another mass mail.

3. Keep the email short and clean. It should be a very concise introduction to your company and value, but not a sale sheet. Spark their curiosity, not their optical fatigue. Also, avoid excessive html with graphics, bulky headers, and colored borders all over. Being non safe sender and sending bulky emails will many times result in a direct designation to spam boxes.

4. Subject Line - Change the receptient in a personalized way, "FIRST NAME, what is your current initiative," "Strategic direction for COMPANY NAME." Avoid all newspaper headers with all caps with 100 characters.."New Proven Service in the Intellectual Property Industry." Your open rates will not be desirable.

5. Call to Action - don't direct sell a service. Indicate that you have done some initial homework on the person or their company and feel that there is synergy in their goal or current initiatives and your methodology. Tell them you wish to speak with them briefly to gain understanding and LEARN MORE ABOUT THEM...NOT YOU.

6. Establish credibility/necessity and compliment them, by expressing that several of their industry(leader) peers including Company A, B, C are currently gaining value from your solutions. This is assuming that they truly are. If you fluff this, it can come back to haunt you.

Ask for an appointment and provide them possible times and dates. Always end this type of email with a question..."When could work best for you. If you don't provide direction, you will rarely see it.

This is the initial step, down the road and once opted in by your audience, you have more room to be flexible. If you are providing potential non-paying subscibers a free service or data, send them a white paper and require registration. This is a completely seperate method though.