The Fundamentals of a Successful Email Campaign

If you’re like many industrial marketers, you’ve been using email marketing for many years. Email remains the number one marketing tactic in the industrial space. But at this point, you may not be getting the same level of audience engagement that you have in the past.

The issue could be that email marketing has become so familiar that you might not see simple opportunities to improve performance. Sometimes the answer is to go back to the fundamentals that made you successful in the first place, and to make sure you’re doing everything right that you can control—from subject line to sign off.

Always keep the number one rule of email in mind: Relevancy drives engagement. Each of these fundamentals forces you to think about relevancy, with the ultimate goal of increasing engagement.

Choose a Template to Fit Your Purpose

Consider the typical emails you might send:

• Offer to download gated content
• Invitation to a webinar or other event
• Link to watch a video
• Share a case study
• Promote a new product
• Provide a collection of links to curated content

Each of these emails has a different purpose and a different call to action. If you consider your purpose first, choosing an appropriate template becomes an easy decision.

For an email with an offer you would use a template that has bold and highly visible buttons for the user to take action. A product promotion would use a template with room for product photos. A video email would use a template that allows the video to play within the email itself, or at least highlights the video prominently. A collection of links might use a simple list-format template.

Most email marketing platforms offer a variety of useful templates. Whatever template you use, remember that busy professionals tend to scan through emails quickly. Use layout elements that make it easy to quickly absorb content: bold headlines, a strong image, bullet points, short paragraphs, and a highly visible call to action in both text and button formats.

Get Your List Right

Rarely should you send the same email to your entire list. What’s important and relevant to a field engineer may not be to a product director, so they shouldn’t get the same email.

A sure way to increase engagement is to send the right email to the right audience. This requires list segmentation. The lists you create depend on the data available to you and your marketing objectives. New customers get welcoming emails. Current customers get upgrade emails. Hot prospects get purchase offers. Users of Product A get promotions for Product C.

Teamwork: From Line and Subject Line

This is what your audience sees first in their inbox, and it’s your first opportunity to be relevant and engaging.  Your email must be from a person’s name or a company name that your customers and prospects recognize. Otherwise, there’s no relevancy, and your email will likely be discarded unopened.

Subject lines are worthy of a long discussion, but the most important thing to keep in mind is that a subject line’s singular function is to motivate the recipient to open and read your email. Subject lines should be benefit oriented and convey a sense of urgency so that recipients open your email immediately rather than save it for later or pass it by completely. Here are several subject line examples:

• Just published: Top ten reasons why hydraulic pumps fail
• Registration closes Friday for Webinar on lasers
• June 12, Orlando: Solar cell expert to speak at conference

Include a Strong Call to Action

‘Action’ is the key word here: download, read, view, register, get. These are all action verbs. That’s just the start. Relevancy comes in with the rest of the call. It can be longer when you use text: ‘Download five ways to boost battery power.’ Or: ‘Watch how to install an oscillating pump.’ On a button: ‘Download now.’ Or: ‘Register now.’ Use both text and graphics for the call-to-action—they lead to the same place.

Focus on Conversion

If you’re offering a download or video, conversion takes place when your recipient clicks through. Other times, you will direct your audience to a landing page form. Use similar graphics and messages in the email as in the landing page, to provide continuity and to let people know they’ve come to the right place.

If you’re using a registration form, keep it simple and easy, asking only for the minimum information you need to begin a dialog with customers and prospects. In other words, make it easy for them to engage.