The key to a good email campaign is understanding what they are for
We recently received an informative and fascinating marketing email from a client. It sparked an interesting conversation on how to get maximum benefits from Mailchimp email campaigns. Although here we refer to Mailchimp, these principles apply to all email campaign platforms. The email was jam-packed with some very useful facts and tips that my family have been implementing ever since. But I realised that the emailer was missing some integral components for gaining the maximum benefits from Mailchimp emailers.
There are in fact 3 keys: purpose, value and engagement. The purpose of your emailer should be clear. It should offer useful, valuable content and create engagement. Plus, it should have obvious intent, showing the recipient what to do next. At Woodswork Web our focus is on how your email campaign can benefit your website.
Missing crucial components
Mailchimp is perfect for sending out bulk emails to clients about your services, resources and offerings, but you have to make it work for you otherwise it’s a lot of work for little or no gain.
I noticed while reading the emailer that everything the sender was offering readers was wrapped up in that single email, what a gift!
What an emailer must always do is direct the reader to your website.
The issue here is that the purpose of an emailer to create engagement and provide some kind of call to action or CTA had been overlooked.
The CTA could be to sell products, make bookings or create general lead generations. A CTA is the beginning of the sales funnel, but that action should benefit your own site, not somebody else’s.
Why do we want the reader to head to your website?
We want visits to your site because we are, in effect, working on your linking strategy. We want the links from your campaigns to go to your site, not some other site, it doesn’t matter how useful that 3rd party content is.
Every time someone reads an email and clicks a link to head somewhere else, that site then registers the entry to the site as a backlink whereas that backlink should have been yours.
Backlinking and internal linking are all techniques we use to create link juice that makes your website healthy and attractive and worthy of interest from a search engine’s point of view.
When I noticed that all of this was missing in our client’s emailer, I sent the following email…
Here’s a tip for you…
Instead of adding all the information in your emailer, add a teaser and a button to read more about it.
That button should link to the content in a blog post on your website.
The ‘XXX’ button is a nice thing to do. However, you are effectively moving the focus from your business, and what you can do for your clients, to another business!
Instead, the ‘XXX’ could link to info in a paragraph in your blog post, which is a big tick.
Ultimately you are offering wonderful content in a resource area that people will come to for credible information.
You want to drive traffic to your site to support your site health!
Visits to your website to create traction in your business and covert your tribe to customers is the purpose of email campaigns.
Blogs are so good for SEO! This explains more… Why blogging is important for your business
I hope this makes sense.
If you want a chat about it, I’m here all day.
Warm regards
Clare Woods
Our client was happy and that makes us happy…
Thank you very much for your tip, I appreciate it.
I read your blog post & clicked on a few more (proving you right!).
Mailchimp is a great lead generation tool. More than ever, it is important to share as much information as we can with our existing and possible clients. Linking to a blog on your website to is a great way to do this.
Why? It shows that you are an expert in your field, giving you that extra level of credibility, and it drives traffic to your site which in turn enhances your site health – double bonus!
Mailchimp makes it all so easy
Mailchimp has a free version and several paid options. The free version includes a monthly email send limit of 10,000 sends (daily limit of 2,000) emails to your email list, so it’s super cost effective to get maximum benefits from Mailchimp email campaigns.
Mailchimp can be easily integrated into your website so your visitors can opt in on the subscription box and their emails are sent straight into your Mailchimp account.
If you haven’t started your email list, go through your existing emails, and set up a Mailchimp account; you will already have plenty of contacts to send your informative email campaigns too.
If you feel it’s too hard or you don’t have time, we offer affordable Blogging and Mailchimp Newsletter Campaign options.