It’s time to get creative in our win an iPad competition in cooperation with iContact.
If you have already followed steps one and two you should already have signed up to your free trail account and uploaded you list. Now it’s time to build your campaign and hit send.
Don’t worry if you have not registered to enter yet – there is still plenty of time. Full details of the competition have already been published on TameBay.
Building a winning email campaign
iContact provide a number of tools to help you build your first email marketing campaign including MessageBuilder which allows you to customise iContact’s library of email marketing templates with easy to use drag and drop tools. It is also possible to design your own creative using MessageCoder which allows you to use your own HTML in a fully featured WYSIWYG editor.
As well as HTML emails you should also give thought to how you want to display your campaign in plain text. This is particularly important for people accessing their emails through mobile devices and some online email browsers.
5 Tips to build a successful first campaign
Tip #1 – Be relevant
A monthly email to your entire list is not a strategy – it’s an afterthought. You need to build a strategy based on relevancy to your target market and the quality of your message. If you’ve got nothing to say, don’t say it.
Tip #2 – Less is more
Select just one offer per email and segment your list accordingly. If you have a range of complementary products, choose a hero product to focus on and add simple links to promote the additional items. Think of your email like a menu in a restaurant – too many dishes to choose from and nothing looks appetizing.
Tip #3 – Headline news (subject lines)
Your subject line should scream benefits. Think of it in the same way a newspaper editor writes a headline. It should tell the full story and entice the subscriber to read more. Give your subject line as much thought as your body text. Your subject line is your first line of defence between your subscribers and the delete button.
Tip #4 – Take time for text
Make good use of real text (not graphics) at the top of your email. A graphic-heavy email will appear blank until the subscriber has selected to download the graphics. Real text in the message will remain visible even in HTML emails and entice subscribers to open the complete email.
Tip #5 – Check twice, send once
Wherever possible get a colleague or friend to look over your text, check links, spelling etc. Simple mistakes can damage your reputation and encourage unsubscribes, spam complaints and may prevent people from opening future email campaigns.
For more great tips check out A Crash Course in Email Marketing on the iContact Blog.
