Essential practices for sending an email campaign

If you've decided to run an email campaign to inform your customers or subscribers about a new product or an exceptional event, it's essential to apply good practices**. We'll take you step-by-step through an email campaign, giving you the keys to success.

Define an email campaign objective

Before sending an email to its customers, a company needs to define a clear objective. You can't send an email without knowing what you're going to share with your customers. Perhaps you want to :

• promote a loyalty program ;
• share the development of a new product;
• share exclusive behind-the-scenes information about your company, etc.

The objectives can be diverse, but once this one is set, it will be your common thread throughout the creation of the campaign.

Once this objective has been defined, it's time to think about the framework of the campaign. This framework is a sort of schedule to be followed throughout the strategy. If, for example, you decide to run a campaign following the arrival of a new customer, you'll start by sending a welcome email. Then you could send a welcome offer and propose a wish list.

Targeting recipients

At the same time, you shouldn't overlook the importance of targeting. The more accurately you target recipients, the more you'll be able to create personalized content that's relevant and therefore has an impact on readers.

So start by segmenting your contact list. Sort your prospects' or customers' data according to their gender, age, professional situation, geographical location, etc. The more information you have about their habits, the more opportunity you'll have to create a persona (typical profile) with maximum detail.

This is essential, because according to some figures, recipients are at least 70% more likely to open an e-mail from a segmented campaign. It's thanks to this step that you have every chance of offering a targeted campaign in which readers will be more interested.

E-mail creation

Once your objective and persona have been defined, you can get down to the more creative part of the email campaign. However, just because you need to be creative doesn't mean you don't have to follow certain rules to suscitate reader interest.

The importance of the subject line

One of the most crucial practices in mailing is the subject line. As you know, the subject line is the first thing the recipient sees. As such, it must be perfectly written to make the recipient want to open the e-mail, and thus increase your open rate. Propose a readable and engaging subject line. For example, this could be personalized with the recipient's first name.

Selecting information to share

Build the content around your objective to share useful information. Don't spread yourself too thin, and stay focused on your objective. Sharing too much information can lead to reader disengagement. This will be counterproductive for your email campaign.

Work on the e-mail template

The layout and design of your emails are essential. You'll need to choose a template that's as aesthetically pleasing as it is readable for your subscribers. This template must respect your company's graphic charter and make them want to be read.

It's essential to choose the right fonts and colors, as well as the placement of text, images and links.

The importance of A/B testing before the final send

Before you officially launch your email campaign, you need to carry out a few tests! A/B testing means testing several objects with a very small part of your database.

In concrete terms, you'll need to send a professional e-mail to some of your subscribers, changing the subject line. This is an effective way of testing the open rate on two or three mail subjects. These tests will help you determine which subject line works best with your recipients. This is a key step in fine-tuning your campaign.

You can also perform these tests on other elements of the e-mail, such as the illustration image or the location of a link. Note that you only need to modify one element on the complete e-mail to target the best option.

Scheduling mailings

You can't send emails to your contact list without thinking about the period, the frequency, the day and the time.

It's essential to think about the best time to launch the campaign. If you want to promote a spring collection, for example, you wouldn't send out these e-mails in the middle of October.

By the same token, the company needs to think about the length of the campaign, and therefore the number of days between each mailing. Avoid sending too often, as you risk ending up in your recipients' spam folders.

You need to determine the best day of the week to target your readers. Find out the habits of your target audience. Mondays and Tuesdays are often the best days. But, if you've run campaigns before, perhaps you've analyzed the habits of your readers yourself? In addition to the day, you also need to determine a time of day with the highest possible open rate.

Statistics to know if the campaign has fulfilled its objectives!

A few days after sending out your campaign, it's time to see if it worked! In this way, among the indispensable practices there's the analysis of KPIs also called performance indicators.

Several figures are important:

• opening rate ;
• click-through rate ;
• bounce rate ;
• reactivity rate;
• unsubscribe rate, etc.

Our tool allows you to measure the impact of an e-mail campaign in real time.

Each of these percentages tells you how many of your readers opened the e-mail, clicked on the link, took action by buying, unsubscribed, etc.

These indicators give you a clear picture of your campaign's performance and, above all, points for improvement for future campaigns.

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