Email is one of the best marketing channels you can invest in. There are many compelling reasons why that’s the case. For starters, email is an owned media. That means it gives you more control over how you interact with your audience.
Email also happens to have one of the highest ROIs of any marketing channel. A good strategy can help you earn as much as $36 for every $1 spent.
That said, a lot goes into creating an effective email marketing campaign. In an inbox with tons of dull and overly-promotional emails, be the attractive and engaging one.
Don’t worry if that sounds like a challenge. This article will discuss the types of email marketing campaigns you can leverage and tips to create a robust campaign. You’ll also learn from the brands that are doing it the best.
So, without further ado, let’s jump in!
Types of Email Marketing Campaigns To Consider
You need to know what types of email campaigns you can leverage to create a robust marketing campaign strategy. Here are some common examples.
Welcome Email Campaigns
Welcome emails are equivalent to welcoming a guest in your home or greeting a customer in a brick-or-mortar store. These emails are also popularly known as onboarding emails.
They help build positive customer relationships, set the tone for future interactions, and introduce the company’s values.
For example, a welcome email from an e-commerce business could include a personalized subject line, greeting, an overview of the company’s return policy, links to its social media channels or blog, and a definitive CTA to explore its product offerings for repeat purchases.
A subscription-based service could contain a personalized greeting, an overview of the service, and links to resources such as tutorials, FAQs, support channels, and CTAs.
Here’s an example from Trello.
Newsletter Emails Campaigns
Newsletter campaigns are non-promotional emails sent out regularly. They can be sent on a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly basis. These emails usually contain industry news, educational content for readers, and product/service updates.
Because of their engaging nature, email newsletters are one of the most popular types of email marketing campaigns.
For example, here’s what Neil Patel’s newsletter email looks like:
You can, of course, make it even more engaging for your campaign strategy by using graphic elements like this:
*Note: Don’t forget to make your newsletter introductions engaging to grab potential customers’ attention instantly.
Promotional Email Campaigns
Promotional email campaigns are a big part of marketing strategy for businesses. They aim to drive sales for specific products/services and increase customer engagement with personalized offers.
For example, here’s how HubSpot does it for their buyer persona maker tool. Not only does it promote its products, but it also offers its gated and free resources to educate and engage potential customers.
Abandoned Cart Email Campaigns
Did you know that cart abandonment causes eCommerce brands to lose $18 Billion in yearly sales revenue?
Don’t go shaking in the boots yet. You can leverage cart abandonment emails, an effective email marketing tool to bring customers back to your website and motivate them to complete their purchases.
Cart abandonment emails enjoy a decent click-through rate of 21%. You can trigger cart abandonment emails to be deployed a customer abandons a cart. However, it’s best to wait 24 hours before shooting the first email.
You can also send follow-up emails if the customers are unresponsive to your previous emails.
Holiday/Seasonal Email Campaigns
Seasonal marketing email campaigns involve sending specialized emails on seasonal occasions, such as Black Friday, New Year, etc., to promote a company’s products and services.
For example, an e-Commerce brand may send emails for its Black Friday sale, Christmas sale, and other seasonal occasions.
These campaigns are short, crisp, and to the point. Businesses even encourage customers to subscribe to their newsletters to get future updates on their seasonal promotions and sales using seasonal campaigns.
Auxiliary Types:
Other types of email marketing campaigns include:
- Announcements: These email campaigns focus on sharing updates on products and services. It also includes event invitation email campaigns announcing upcoming sales, webinars, holidays, etc.
- Re-engagement: These email campaigns target inactive email subscribers. Typically, these emails have subject lines like “We miss you” or “Are you still there?”
- Post-purchase: These emails are sent to recommend services and products complementary to what customers have purchased. In a way, they are a great email strategy to up-sell and cross-sell.
- Survey/ customer feedback email campaigns: These emails ask customers to take a survey and share their feedback on products, services, or overall experience.
As you can see, your brand can take advantage of different email campaigns to maintain consistent communication with customers. Also, you can leverage email marketing tools to automate some of these campaigns. For example, you can set up cart abandonment and seasonal promotions like happy birthday emails to be deployed automatically.
5 Email Marketing Campaign Examples: How They Do It
Before we jump into the nitty-gritty of running a successful email marketing campaign, let’s admire these industry leaders and how they excel in their email campaign efforts.
1. Netflix
We’re guilty of binge-watching our favorite shows on the biggest video-streaming platform, Netflix.
Despite the harsh competition, Netflix keeps achieving new heights of success. One of the marketing strategies that it has truly mastered is its super-personalized email marketing campaigns.
The above image exemplifies how Netflix grabs its subscribers’ attention to its new content through personalized recommendations based on their watch history.
The marketing email has multiple CTAs (Play, My List, Play Trailer, etc.) to encourage the users to click and get taken to the app.
Netflix’s wholesome email marketing campaign strategy covers the entire user journey from signup to canceled memberships.
Here are a few examples of the rich email campaign Netflix enjoys:
- It sends promotional emails encouraging newsletter subscribers to sign up for subscriptions.
- It welcomes new subscribers and helps them onboard with CTAs like “Start Watching.”
- It sends emails encouraging users to buy subscriptions after the trial ends using FOMO-inducing CTAs.
Let’s look at the next brand doing impressive email campaigns.
2. Venmo
An online payment service, Venmo leverages email marketing campaigns to re-engage inactive users and those who have deleted the app or unsubscribed.
The email is benefits-focused and highlights all the positive changes and updates done in the absence of those users.
It’s an excellent strategy to motivate lost users to give the brand another chance. It uses a simple CTA, “Explore Venmo,” so users can read about all the updates in detail.
3. Starbucks
From opening an old-school brewery to selling Instagram-worthy iconic Starbucks cups, the brand is a front-runner in setting marketing trends. But it’s also a genius when it comes to email marketing campaigns.
Instead of static graphics in the email, it employs animation to capture customers’ attention and encourage them to click on the CTAs out of curiosity.
Starbucks offers exclusive discounts, deals, etc., as a part of its email campaign—a stroke of genius to boost memberships.
4. Loft
Loft is a women’s clothing online brand that values customers’ email experience and preferences.
The brand highlights how it knows promotional email campaigns can get too much. It asks users to manage their preferences while mentioning how they can benefit from their news on trendy styles.
This way, the brand offers a personalized experience, avoiding the risk of poor email deliverability.
5. Uncommon Goods
Uncommon Goods is an online and catalog retailer. The brand uses the “sense of urgency” as a strategy in its email campaigns. It’s a great way to encourage customers to take action now rather than later.
The brand sends emails before or during a sale to instill the fear of missing out on such incredible purchase opportunities.
It uses CTAs like “Now’s your chance” and “Order your holiday gifts NOW!” to push customers to act.
Tips to Run Your Email Marketing Campaign Successfully
We’re certain you feel inspired by these industry giants killing it with their astounding email marketing campaigns. Now, it’s time to get one for your business.
Here are a few tips for creating an email marketing strategy tailored to your business.
1. Use Lead Magnets To Build Your Email Lists
Of course, you can’t launch an email marketing campaign if you don’t have an email list to start with. Therefore, the first reasonable step is to build an email list of potential customers. One of the best ways to achieve that is through lead magnets.
Lead magnets are valuable resources potential customers are willing to trade for their email addresses. These resources can take many different forms. For example, they could be content-focused assets like ebooks, whitepapers, guides, or cheat sheets. They can also be helpful tools, templates, or gamified opt-ins like quizzes and Spin the Wheel.
Your objective is to identify a lead magnet your target audience will find valuable enough to give you their email addresses in order to access it. That means you must do extensive research to determine what your audience struggles with or is interested in. Then, create an asset that can help them resolve that issue or achieve their goal.
From there, you’ll need to promote that lead magnet extensively to capture as many email addresses as possible. You can do that through timed or exit intent popups. You may also want to build a landing page just for the lead magnet and drive traffic to the page through both organic and paid campaigns.
2. Don’t Forget to Segment Email Lists
Your marketing efforts will only translate into success if you target the right customers for your specific marketing campaigns.
The only way to make it work is by properly segmenting your leads into several email lists. You can segregate email lists based on:
- Demographics
- Age
- Gender
- Behavior, i.e., actions such as visiting websites, opening emails, etc
- Position of leads in the customer journey/sales funnel
- Purchase history, etc.
Segmenting email lists helps you create relevant and personalized email campaigns that hit the spot for leads.
3. Create Personalized and Engaging Emails
Do you prefer a handmade card with a personalized message or a generic card with random words?
The personalized card, of course!
Why?
Because it shows care.
That’s what personalized emails do for your customers. It shows them they are not just a number in your sales count. In fact, emails with personalized subject lines are known to increase the open rate by 26%.
Personalized emails are more relevant and engaging to your audience. They help you build stronger relationships with your subscribers. This boosts your campaign’s open and engagement rates.
Here are a few tips you can use to make your emails engaging:
- Make a personalized and catchy email subject line. Mention the recipient’s name or something they’re familiar with.
Add enough white space.
- Add relevant and engaging visual elements.
- Use your brand logo in the email.
This is another reason to invest in a good email autoresponder. Such a tool will help you leverage the data you have on your audience to create personalized and engaging email campaigns at scale. Bonus tip: use text messages alongside your emails to maximize engagement by sending an SMS link or other engaging content that complements your email efforts.
4. Follow up on Your Emails
You can’t just send a single email and expect it to work wonders for your campaign.
A successful email campaign doesn’t include just one email. You need a chain of well-thought-out emails to stay on top of your recipient’s mind. That means sending follow-up emails when necessary.
For example, besides the initial cart abandonment email, you’ll need one or two more follow-up emails—same thing with your seasonal promotion campaigns. Send multiple black friday emails to optimize your ROI.
5. Test Your Emails
Irrespective of how careful and vigilant you are in drafting your emails, some mistakes sneak in.
Whether it’s a typo or an unresponsive email design, it takes something away from your email campaign and will affect your results. So, it’s always best to test your email campaigns.
There are two layers of this.
First, you can test to ensure your email looks as it should before it goes out. You can do so by sharing your campaign internally with the team to get fresh sets of eyes on your copy and ensure no mistake goes unaddressed. Make sure all the links redirect successfully, all the CTA buttons work, there are no typos, all the media used are correct, etc.
The second layer involves A/B testing. This is where you test different elements of your emails to ensure they’re optimized for conversions. That means creating two versions of your email and sending them to your audience to see which one converts better.
You can test CTAs, email layouts, value propositions, subject lines, and even email list segmentation through A/B testing.
6. Adhere to Email or Spam Regulations
Familiarize yourself with spam regulations to ensure your emails don’t end up in the spam folder of your customers. You also don’t want to get fined for not adhering to the regulations.
Go through the CAN-SPAM Act guide and GDPR compliance to ensure you are not violating any rules.
Here’s a run-down of some of the guidelines:
- Avoid using misleading header information.
- Always mention if your email is an advertisement.
- Avoid using deceptive subject lines.
- Always provide an opt-out option to subscribers.
Here is a link discussing the rest of the CAN-SPAM Act guidelines.
7. Track the Right Metrics
Your job doesn’t end with simply sending out emails; you need to track the success of your email marketing campaign to find what you can do better and improve your strategy.
So, make sure to track these metrics:
- Open rate: The percentage of people who open your email.
- Click-through rate: The average of how many people click on the CTAs in your email.
- Bounce rate: Refers to the percentage of emails that could not be delivered to your recipients’ inboxes.
- Unsubscribes: It shows how many people unsubscribe to your email lists and newsletters.
These are only a few email marketing metrics. You should identify the specific metrics that matter the most to your business and monitor them regularly.
Create Your Email Marketing Campaign & Boost Engagement
There’s a reason brands are always trying to collect email addresses both online and during offline events. Email marketing is still super effective, even with the emergence of other channels like social media.
This article covered the different types of email campaigns you could run. We also hope you picked some inspiration from the five brands that are doing their best. Lastly, you saw the tips for creating an effective email campaign.
Hopefully, this comprehensive guide will help you create a winning email marketing campaign for your business. Happy emailing!
