11 email campaign management tips to revolutionise your email performance

Whether your current email campaigns aren’t delivering the results you need, or you’re short for time and resources, follow these top tips for email campaign management success.

We all know how effective email marketing campaigns can be for our audiences. But how do you ensure that you’re getting the best possible results?

In short, it all comes down to effective email campaign management. The only problem is that finding the formula for success is no ‘gimme’ and can take a lot of time. 

The good news is that I’m here to shorten this process and help you take your first steps towards becoming a fully-fledged email campaign management master. (You can thank me later.) 

What is email campaign management?

Ultimately, email campaign management is made up of all the activities that bring you to delivering a full campaign, from the initial list building and lead generation processes right through to designing and writing your emails and pressing the send button. 

It can be a time-consuming process, which makes it even more frustrating when it’s not working. If your website traffic is flailing, you’re not making money, and you’re receiving any positive feedback, it’s time to make a change.

With a formula in place and some additional support, you’ll be well on your way to email marketing success. 

Email marketing campaign management tips

1. Determine your audience

The first port of call when you’re throwing any marketing campaign together is your audience. Do you know who your audience is? 

If you haven’t already, it’s worth taking some time to work out who your ideal audience is. Map every shred of information you know about them, including their age, gender, location and income. Heck, even their favourite TV show.

It may feel like it’s far too much detail, but this informs every decision we make in marketing. From the type of content we show them, and when, to how you can solve their problems and increase their opportunities. 

Not only this, but it allows you to segment and personalise emails more accurately. You’ll be able to tailor content to specific parts of your audience. Why should you do this? Here’s why: 

• 74% of marketers think that personalisation increases customer engagement. 
• You’ll receive 6x higher transactional rates
• Segmented and targeted emails make up 58% of all revenue

2. Know the rules

Are you aware of the rules and regulations surrounding email marketing? Before you hit send, it’s crucial that you’re clued up on the laws affecting email marketing activity. For example, GDPR and spam legislation. 

Simply put, these laws stipulate that you shouldn’t be sending any marketing activity to anyone that has opted out or unsubscribed. You should make it easy to unsubscribe too. 

But there’s more where that came from. 

Working with a well-respected email provider, such as MailChimp, will ensure you’re not doing anything illegal or immoral, as they often curtail their users’ actions in this regard to prevent them from damaging their reputation.

3. Define your goals and objectives

Before creating the campaign itself, you’ll need to set out your intentions. What is the purpose of this email campaign? What are you trying to achieve? Set out specific, measurable, attainable and timely (SMART) goals that align with the wider business. And then decide on how you’re going to measure the success of this.  

4. Clean your data

For the best results, you want your data lists as clean as possible. This doesn’t just mean culling those that have unsubscribed or opted out, but also those that haven’t engaged with your recent marketing efforts. 

Make your list as targeted as possible by sending your promotion, information or feedback to only those that will actually be interested in it. 

5. Increase your opt-ins

Feel like your list is lacking? While you want your list to be streamlined for those interested, that doesn’t mean it has to be running on empty.

You can encourage appropriate and relevant opt-ins through your website. Think pop-up forms, feature boxes and free downloadable content that is useful for your audience. 

6. Get creative with your email content

Now it’s time to write the emails themselves. Map out what you’re offering and where this will sit in the sequence. Always return to your audience here, ensuring that they remain the focus of the email that you create.

Entice your readers in with a killer subject line, and keep them there by creating white space on the email page. Always make it clear what you want them to be looking at.

It’s been proven that only 10-20% of people scroll to the bottom of the page they’re reading. So, always pack the punch at the beginning. 

If you can’t move your products, services or content near the top, make a point of highlighting these must-read/must-see elements in the opening few sentences of your email.

7. Create a good design

With your email copy in place, make sure you provide a winning design to complement it. 

Remember to keep it relatively simple in order to focus your audience on the main message. A beautiful design should help to highlight important elements and hold your reader’s attention, rather than distract. Don’t let it overpower! 

Make sure that each of your emails displays a clear logo to keep you fresh in their minds, as well as to indicate trust. 

8. Test email elements for higher performance

Once you’ve created your copy and design – create them again! Change elements of each of your emails to test what works better for your audience. Trial different subject lines, tweak copy, mix up your email format, and experiment with different CTA styles.  

Tools like Mailchimp let you do this really quickly. Create A/B tests for each of your emails, and let the tool do the rest. It will find the best version and best time of day to send so that your campaign reaches the best results. However, we often find that adjusting the optimised time by 15 minutes either before or after the recommended optimised time can ensure your amazing content isn’t sent at the same time as your industry competitors. 

9. Use email campaign management tools

Let’s face it, most of us are not time managers. Yet, with the power of email campaign management tools, we’re relieved of a lot of the grunt work. 

Use them to automate your processes and schedule content for you within your desired sending frequency. The beauty of doing this is that you can do all the forward planning without having to press the send button each time. You can even create complicated workflows to send follow up emails after purchases, or simply schedule in your weekly newsletter. 

The best email campaign management software, like MailChimp, will also allow you to automate emails depending on certain actions your users take on your site. So, you can nurture your leads as soon as they come in. 

This feature truly is email campaign management genius at its finest, as it allows you to spend more time on other elements of email marketing where you can add value. 

Aside from email campaign creation and management, these tools also provide more functionality, such as allowing customers to directly schedule appointments to your calendar for an even smoother process. 

10. Track and measure

The best way to improve on previous efforts is to measure its success. Make sure that you set up tracking on your emails to help you report on what worked well and what didn’t.

Measure email performance against the goals you’ve set. How do they match up? Some elements that you might want to focus on are open rate, clickthrough rate, conversion rate, and deliverability. 

Capitalise on the tools available across different platforms, such as click maps, so that you can see what content is driving the highest conversions. 

Understanding and learning from this analysis will guide you to greater email marketing campaign management success.  

11. Talk to an email marketing agency

In the words of Peter Drucker, “Do what you do best, and outsource the rest.” If you don’t have the time or resources to follow through with the above, you can always call on the help of email marketing experts. 

This way, you can focus on the rest of your marketing efforts and leave the email campaign management services to the experts. 

You’ll receive goal-driven campaigns that create real impact, turn subscribers into loyal customers, and drive more sales and maximise your email marketing – all without lifting a finger. 

Email marketing agencies can help you save time, money and hassle. Need more convincing? Here are 7 reasons why you should hire an email marketing agency. 

To learn more about how MailNinja can support you in your quest for email marketing campaign management greatness, get in touch today.