How To Set-Up Your First Email Campaign [Guide 2023]

With over 4.2 billion email users worldwide and the worldwide email marketing sector expected to be worth $17.9 billion by 2027 – email can be considered the number one communication channel for businesses.

In fact, people check their emails multiple times during a day and around 59% of users say that marketing emails have an impact on their purchase decisions.

And the best part is that this medium is just as useful for non-digital businesses like cafés, restaurants, hotels, etc. as it is for digital ones.

So if you’re not yet using email marketing to market your business, then you’re missing out on the chance to engage your leads and nurture your customers – at scale.

To help guide you through your first email campaign, we’ve compiled a comprehensive list of the steps you can follow.  

Set Up Your Email Campaign In 6 Simple Steps

Before you start writing and sending emails, here is what you need to know. 

Email marketing is extremely cost-effective and affordable. In other words, even small businesses with a limited budget can set up and run successful campaigns.

But simply sending multiple emails to your subscribers is not enough. You need to send meaningful, personalised emails in order to connect with your audience and avoid spam filters.

Here are six steps to creating your first email campaign:

1 – Chalk Out Your Objective 

Before you design your campaign, ask yourself:

• What is the purpose of this email? Education? Promotion? 
• What is my target audience? 
• Will the content of this email appeal to my audience? 
• What’s my CTA? Go to my website? Find me on social media?
• How will I measure the success of this campaign?

You will find the foundation of your marketing campaign in all the questions mentioned above. Once you have the answers, your objective will become clear automatically. 

2 – Choose A Reliable Service Provider 

Picking a service provider that meets your requirements is an extremely crucial step.

Gmail, Outlook or Hotmail aren’t recommended for sending emails at scale as they have limited to no template libraries, contact segmentation or reporting. All of which play an important role in meeting your KPIs.

Use platforms like Mailchimp or Campaign Monitor as these are specifically designed to meet your email marketing needs and give you maximum mileage out of your campaign. 

With these providers, you can enjoy a range of features such as:

• Templates customized to your brand
• High deliverability rate
• Comprehensive performance reports
• Scheduling options
• Options to set up trigger-based emails (e.g. welcome emails)
• Extensive library of resource etc.

3 – Build A List Of Subscribers 

You should be able to plug in a signup form on your website – or landing pages – with the help of your email service provider mentioned above. 

Other ways of capturing customer information for building a list is through branded Wifi portals, a brief section on your feedback forms (physical or digital) etc.

An important thing to remember here is: keep your database as organic as possible. Update your list regularly to add in customers who’ve filled in physical opt-in forms and only email subscribers who have given you the green signal to approach them. 

Remember, permission-based campaigns have 30-40% open rates and around 20% click-through rates on average. Comparatively, if you email people who haven’t given you permission (as in the case of paid emails lists), your open and click-through rates could drop to 2% and 0.2% respectively. 

4 – Structure Your Email

Once you have done all the prep, it’s time to start writing your email. Below is a checklist of the key elements that your message should have. 

• Strong Subject Line

Your subject line should be powerful enough to compel the recipient to open your email. It’s a good idea to highlight the benefit of your email here such as; 50% discount, Christmas offers etc.

• Captivating Headline

Now that they’ve clicked on the email, grab and keep their attention with a captivating headline that makes them want to scroll further and read the rest of your content. 

The online audience has an attention span of less than 11 seconds, so make it count.

• Business Offering

Typically, B2B businesses can get straight to their offering and how it can benefit the other party. As a B2C company, you’ll need to create a little hype around your business.

Add emotional/relatable undertones to your email to encourage impulse purchases and attract customers back to your establishment. For example, if you’re running a café, then send across coupons for a free coffee with a bagel or other such offers.

• Text To Image Ratio

Keeping a balance between images and ratio contributes to the visual appeal of your message. You don’t want your email to look like a catalogue nor do you want to bore your customers with chunky text paragraphs. 

• Your Brand Assets (Logo, Address, Website Link)

Logo, address and website link all add to the legitimacy of the email.

• Clear And Interactive CTA

Okay, now that they’ve read your email, what do you want your reader to do? Whether your call-to-action is a button or a link, make sure it’s clear enough for the recipient to notice and interact with. 

Your CTA should also be actionable; state what you want the reader to do. Examples include Book Now, Claim Your Coupon etc.

• Unsubscribe 

All businesses should provide an Unsubscribe link or button in their email as part of GDPR compliance. 

This is a permission-based campaign and anyone who doesn’t want to read or engage with your emails is not your prospective client anyway. 

5 – Send Your Email

This stage involves a couple of tests you can carry out to see what day and time gets you the highest CTR. 

According to research, many B2C emails have better open and click-through rates over the weekend (Saturday) around 12 am. 

6 – Measure Your Success Rate 

Tracking your emails through different metrics is a crucial step for understanding what works and what doesn’t. 

While you may have different ways of defining success depending on the objective of your campaign, some common metrics include:

• Open rate
• Click-through-rate
• Number of downloads
• Registrations to an event, online course etc.
• Spam score
• Return on investment 

So there you go! Make sure you keep measuring the success of your campaign and use the insights you collect for your future campaigns. 

Most importantly, only email people who have subscribed to your list for optimum results. Not sure how you can do so? Stampede is an easy way to collect customer information to build your list of contacts. We offer a simple tool for offline businesses that can help you connect with your guests and turn them into returning clients.