Email Marketing brings order to what once was chaos. Sounds pretty heady, but let’s explore it shall we? In the past, email has been a great tool to communicate. It still is if you trust the person on the other end. SPAM has caused many people to simply not open emails they receive from a source they are not familiar with. Even when we email people we know, if we don’t evoke a response, we aren’t even sure it arrived.
Science or Art?
Email Marketing is the science of measuring the message you send. First, all major email campaign systems require a double opt-in by the user in order to be added to an email list. What does that mean? It means you enter your email on a form, then you receive an email to confirm that you meant to join that mailing list. This is great for the recipient because well-meaning friends might have entered the recipient’s email address. It’s great for the business because now you have a semi-qualified source for leads.
The next thing a good email marketing campaign does is measure how many emails were successfully delivered or bounced (invalid email address), how many were opened, and how many were shared with others. You also can measure who took the action of clicking a link in the email.
This all comes together to give the business owner important information about how their message is being perceived. If you get a low open rate, perhaps your subject line is not effective. If you get a high share rate, you know that people are enjoying the content and want to tell their friends about it. If you get a low conversion rate (someone clicks a link or comes to your store), perhaps you are overselling or simply not giving the information the buyer needs to convert.
What is a Campaign Really?
Running a campaign has several phases. Building your list is the first and most important step. Using social media, normal email or printed mailers, one can drive potential customers to join your list. 
Once there, you have a somewhat captive audience with which to work your magic. The next step in designing a campaign is to decide what you want to say. Will there be an offer? What do you expect the user to do? Be clear in this because you won’t get good measurement if you are vague. Often, A/B testing is used to determine the most effective message. A/B testing simply send one message to a group of recipients, while the others receive a different but similar message. It’s great for understanding your audience and finding out what information they are looking for.
Once the campaign is under way, the analysis phase starts. In order to get the most bang for your buck, you must review statistics about how your message was received. If you don’t adjust your future campaigns to fit the needs of your subscribers, they will simply stop opening the emails or worse, leave the list.
Email marketing is a very powerful tool for reaching and converting your audience into buyers. VS Productions can help you determine which marketing system is right for you and help in any phase of your campaigns. If you would like to get started, the consultation is free and we’d love to hear from you today!