Email is most certainly not dead, in fact, I would argue that in many start-ups it is one of the most under-utilized resources. This is because good email campaigns still work. They are measurable, they are cost-effective and most importantly they still get results. In this blog, I will be detailing exactly how to set up a great outbound email campaign, from beginning to end.
Building Your Own Targeted Email List
Scrape profiles of targeted buyer personas
The first step to creating a great email campaign is to make sure that it reaches the right people. By building your own email list you can ensure that your emails are specific to your ideal customer profile. A great outbound campaign needs to be highly specific, and not adopt a “spray and pray” approach. That means you need to deliver the right messages, at the right time, with the right calls to action.
Collect their emails
Building your email list can be done in multiple ways. From collecting inbound emails through lead magnets and content marketing, building out your newsletter or lead lists. There are a few options on the market for getting outbound lead lists including, AI lead list generators, purchasing lists, or building your own lists.
Personally, I would avoid the first two options, as they can be too expensive for start-ups and the validity of the contacts can be in question. It’s also likely anyone on these lists may have been over contacted by others who have purchased the same list. Therefore, building your own list becomes the best option. Some tools on the market for doing so are LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Phantombuster, and Hunter.io.
Verify your emails
This is a simple step but an important one. You want to make sure that you double-check these emails are valid and ensure deliverability. There are many. tools on the market to do this, one example being hunter.io. Once you have verified your emails, it’s time to start setting up your campaign.
Building Your Email Campaign Messaging
Create an enticing headline
When designing your email the first thing you need to do is create an attention-grabbing headline. There are many different variations that can work well, listed here:
The key is to be unique and attention-grabbing, try to make it clear what the value of the email will be, and how you will solve a user problem. Identifying a key feature that your solution solves for your target market is perhaps the best way to do this.
Give the reader a valuable offering
Offering the reader of the email something valuable is the key way that you will get them to engage with your brand. Don’t launch straight into a sales pitch. Remember it is a human you are contacting, and with a cold email, you will need to show that you have targeted them with a valuable offering.
Targeting your persona with the right message at the right time is the key to creating a valuable email campaign that drives brand engagement. These sequences will be discussed in more depth in Part 2.
Create a clear call to action
A clear call to action is vital for any email campaign. You need to make it clear what you want the reader to do, where you are directing them to, and what the result could be. A good rule of thumb is to have one clear call-to-action per email, as this makes all the text and .. guided towards a specific aim. Subsequent emails can give the reader more value, content, and information leading them along the buyer journey (AIDA) to the end result (purchase).
Delivering Your emails
Set up an email to send from
Setting up a new email can be beneficial if you are just beginning this process, and make sure it is not an info@company. You want these emails to seem personable to the receiver, and you want a dedicated email to do this.
Drip feed the campaign (5, 10, 30, etc.)
Drip feeding your campaign is vital as you want to monitor deliverability closely. Sometimes, the inclination can be to send your email straight away to your entire contact base. Whilst this is tempting, drip-feeding your campaign slowly will have multiple benefits; you are able to increase your deliverability, and more closely monitor the engagement of your campaign.
Monitor for responses
Make sure that the email you use for sending out the campaigns is regularly monitored for responses. Having a ‘no-reply' email is not good practice, especially in a start-up environment. You want to be engaging with your customers, listening to their responses, and iterating based on the results. So the feedback and conversations you can have are key to creating better more targeted campaigns.
Measuring the results
Set up your main KPI’s for the email
Main KPIs are a way to measure the effectiveness of your campaign. You need to be very clear about what actions you are hoping the reader to take once they receive the email. It is not good enough to just be a reminder that you exist, you want to drive actions and create value. Therefore, being very clear about the purpose of the email and what action you want them to take is vital. Email inboxes’ are cluttered places, so don’t just add to the noise.
Track open rates and click-through rates.
This may seem more obvious, but it’s vital to monitor the open rates and click-through rates to measure the success of your email campaign. Poor results in these areas can weaken your deliverability, but also may indicate that the messaging is off. This could also be an indication that you have not targeted your audience correctly. Therefore, monitoring these metrics closely will allow help you to adjust your campaigns, making sure they are targeted and engaging for your audience.
Make sure your campaign is purpose-driven.
Sometimes, it can be easy to get lost in the creation of an email campaign and forget what the intended purpose of that campaign is. If you are trying to drive more free-trial sign-ups, for example, you should be taking your target audience on a journey with this aim in mind.
Try tweaking the email for better results
Based on the results of your initial emails, you can tweak the language to try and iterate better results. Don’t be afraid to alter the look of the emails, headlines, and body text to test different variations. If you are closely monitoring the results of your campaigns, you will begin to see which combinations have the best effects. Then double down once it works.
Segmenting your audiences
Begin to segment your prospect lists into different persona’s.
Once you have begun to build out your list of prospects, you may begin to have different buyer personas or notice small demographic changes or job roles. By getting more granular with your prospect lists, you may begin to see that different messages to different audiences may be more effective.
Create new offerings and different languages for new personas.
If you have multiple persona’s, you don’t want them all to receive the same message. This will not give as good value and may lead to irrelevant messaging, damaging brand reputation. You want to ensure you have created lists of similarly minded prospects, at similar stages of the buyer journey so that more specific messages can be given.
Make sure to add personalization
Personalization is the cornerstone of a well-thought-out email campaign, and this goes beyond using their first name in the email! By building segmented prospect lists and truly understanding the audience, emails can be tailored to provide real value to the receiver.
Good luck setting up your email campaigns! Part 2: Structuring your email campaign messaging coming soon.
Comments