Email Campaign Delivery In Email Marketing

Email Campaign Delivery In Email Marketing

 

 

Now that we have had a look at the components of an effective email and the main elements to consider in your email strategy, we can apply these to creating an email campaign. Starting from scratch can seem a little daunting, but following a few basic steps can help you on your way to hitting that send button.

Here are the steps for creating an email campaign:

1. Identify the need for an email:

Here you need to decide why you are sending the email and who you are sending it to. Is it a welcome email to new subscribers who have just signed up to your mailing list? Are you running a special advertising campaign to existing customers or do you want to offer sharable content to your product evangelists? Here is where you define the goals of your email campaign. What do you want to achieve?

2. Define campaign requirements

This is the plan or strategy for your email campaign. It should include your campaign goals, the tone of your email, how you are going to personalize the email, what segment or list you are sending it to, what the subject line and preview text will be, how you will layout and design the email, what your message is and how you are going to test the email. This campaign requirements document keeps you and your team on the same page regarding the scope of the email campaign.

3. Write email copy and imagery

Using the campaign requirements document as a guide, you can draft your email copy, CTAs and imagery. As you have just seen in the section on email design, your email should provide value, be engaging, stick to the point, be relevant and personalized for the recipient and have powerful CTAs and imagery that drive action and conversions.

4. Add copy and imagery to an email template:

Now that you have your email drafted, you can copy your text and design into an email template. You can use ESPs such as Mail Chimp, Get Response and AWeber to access ready-made and themed email templates.

5.Set up tracking and add to email: As we have seen in email design, you can add pixel tracking just before the closing body tag of an email to generate analytics and data on open rates and click-throughs. Most email marketing ESPs will have tracking settings that can be applied to your email campaigns. 

6. Test your email:

This step is critical to the success of your email. Your email might look amazing in the ESP you created it in, but its delivery may vary across different email clients. Carry out the email tests you decided on in your campaign requirements document and tweak your email accordingly.

7. Email checklist

It is important to double-check all requirements have been met before you send your email campaign. This will help you to avoid those panic moments when you realize you have just sent an email to the wrong list or with typos, without a CTA or all of the above.

8. Send your email:

After you have created, designed, tested, revised and double-checked everything, you are now ready to send your email!

9. Analyze your results

Use your ESP reporting features to see how your email campaign has performed. Wait a few days for data to accumulate and then explore who engaged with your email, how many readers are using mobile devices, how successful your CTA and subject line was and which email clients are most popular with your readers.

email campaign delivery

Here in this article,  you will see a video with a walkthrough of how to create a simple email campaign in Mail Chimp covering steps 2, 3, 4 and 8. Mail Chimp offers free accounts that are very easy to set up. Click on the link in the References section to sign up to a forever free Mail Chip account. You will need an email domain that can be verified by Mail Chimp.

After setting up your Mail Chimp account, before starting your email campaign you will need to import your subscriber list/contacts. Click on this link for more information: Import a subscribers list.

 

Steps for creating an email campaign in Mail Chimp:

  1. Click Create Campaign. 

2. Click Create an Email. 

3. Enter a campaign name and click Begin. 

4. Click setup and design to choose your settings and design your content.

5. Add your recipients in the To section:

  • In the List drop-down menu, choose the list you want to send to
  • In the Segment drop-down menu, choose All subscribers on list, Group or new segment, or one of the available saved or pre-built options.
  • Click Save
  • .Add From Name and From Email Address.
  • Click on Verify, Mail Chimp will send a verification code to your email address, copy and paste the code as instructed

8. Add your subject line in the Subject section and then add your preview text in the preview text area (optional and allows for 150 characters)

9.Design the content for your campaign:

  • In the Content section of the Campaign Builder, click Design Email. 
  • Choose a template to start with: You’ll see five categories of templates: Layouts, Themes, Saved, Campaigns, and Code your own.
  • After you complete your design, click Save and Continue.

10. Preview and Test your email: Click on the drop-down menu to Enter preview mode, Send a test email, Push to mobile, Open Link Checker, or customize Social Cards. 

If you want to enable tracking:

  1. Navigate to the Setup step of the Campaign Builder.

2. Scroll to the Tracking section.

3. Check or uncheck the Track clicks box to activate or deactivate click tracking.

4. To manage click tracking in the plain-text version of your campaign, check or uncheck Track plain-text clicks.

5. As each task is completed, a green checkmark will appear next to the corresponding section. 

To send your campaign you can click on send or schedule when you want to send it.

When creating your email campaign, it is important to track email engagement. Mail Chimp allows you to see if subscribers have clicked links in your campaign by clicking on Track clicks in the ‘Settings and Tracking’ section. Your campaign report will show which subscribers clicked your links and how many times each link was clicked.

Enabling the setting for Track opens will allow you to see who opened your emails. Mail chimp embeds an invisible graphic at the bottom of the HTML email and is unique to each campaign you send. When a recipient’s email client has view images setting enabled and opens your email, the graphic is downloaded from Mail Chimps server and is counted as an open in your campaign reports. 

 

We will explore email testing in more detail in the next section, but for now, here is a quick look at testing features available within Mail Chimp. 

You can preview and test your email in the design section of the campaign builder to give you an idea of how your campaign will look in your subscribers’ inbox. As you can see from the Preview and Test dropdown menu on the screenshot, you can preview the email, send a test email, push the email to mobile, open the link checker and customize social cards.

MailChimp automatically includes both a HTML version and a plain-text alternative version for each of your subscribers. This ensures your subscribers view your content as expected, regardless of the email client or program they use.

MailChimp works best with HTML and plain-text. For example, Flash and JavaScript are not supported.

 

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