In terms of boosting sales, generating leads, increasing website traffic and building brand loyalty, savvy marketers get that email marketing is one of the best ways to reach customers. Compared to marketing that utilizes only social media platforms, email marketing actually converts more people to paying customers. In terms of ROI, email marketing crushes social media.

Creating a successful email campaign requires creativity and strategic planning. Simply Business produced a small business guide to email marketing that covers every aspect of producing an effective email campaign from the legalities (Can-Spam Act of 2003) to tools that analyze your campaign’s success, such as bounce rates and subscriber retention.

Getting Started

Creating a successful email marketing campaign is not as simple as writing an enthusiastic message in Gmail and hitting send. In order to prevent spam, an ordinary ESP (email service provider) – like Gmail – permits users to send a limited number of free emails per day, generally 500.

Email marketing services like MailChimp and Vertical Response offer a variety of different email campaign formats so you can send out almost any type of correspondence. Here are a few:

• Sale announcements
• Newsletters (you can insert hyperlinks to your blog and industry news)
• Traditional email formats (for introducing a new product or explain changes in service)

Staying Relevant

In order to stay relevant to your audience, you need to define your strengths and capitalize on your competitors’ weaknesses. By consistently evaluating your marketing efforts, you can hone in on problems with your campaign.
An email marketing campaign that’s crushing it could include these characteristics:

• Hyperlinks with high CTRs (click through rates)
• Personalized subject line
• Successful CTA (call to action)
• Delivery at a specific time and day when users tend to read unsolicited emails

A well thought out email marketing campaign is an amazing tool for connecting with your customers. Combining a few key elements — a strong message with visually pleasing design and sufficient implementation of social media — can ensure lead generation, increased web traffic and higher sales.