Email marketing is a powerful tool that can help ecommerce stores nurture, convert & convert potential customers. In fact, email marketing should be generating 20-30% of the total revenue for your ecommerce store.
However, creating an effective campaign that converts customers & generates revenue requires more than just adding images & copy to an email template.
In this guide, we will walk you through the step-by-step process of building & launching an email marketing campaign from idea to launch. This email workflow will help you build an email marketing strategy for your campaign, write engaging copy, design an email that converts, and send it to the right audience.
You'll also learn actionable tips to help you create campaigns that drive engagement and revenue for your business. Whether you're new to email marketing or a seasoned pro, this guide will give you the tools and knowledge you need to create successful campaigns that drive results.
Step 1 // Email Brief: Building Your Strategy
The first step in creating a successful email marketing campaign is to develop an email brief. This is typically done by the Email Marketing Manager or the Head of Marketing. An email brief is a document that outlines the key information for your campaign, including the purpose, audience, content, and goals.
The email brief is a critical first step to ensure that the email campaign is on brand, on message, and on target. It also serves as a guide to ensure that the team is on the same page in terms of what the campaign should achieve and how it should be executed. This will help streamline the process of creating the campaign, making it more effective and efficient.
Here are the key sections of an email brief:
- Email Campaign Overview: A high-level description of the type of email it is to determine the overall email layout, structure & content of the email. Common types of emails include newsletters, promotional emails, product launch emails, abandoned cart flows etc.
- What Success Looks Like: A clear definition of success helps inform creative teams on the strategy and ensures that success is measurable. This section should include both a specific, measurable goal (eg. drive a 5% click rate) and also a qualitative goal (eg. educate customers on a new product)
- Audience: Share the target audience or customer segment that this email is being sent to to ensure that the email content, tone, and voice is relevant and interesting to them.
- Email content: Share the key message & value proposition that you want to communicate within the email, any specific information (ie. product features, testimonials) that you want to make sure is included, as well as any specific calls-to-action, such as making a purchase or reading a blog.
- Products to feature: List out any specific products that you want to include in the email
- Email layout & design examples: Include examples other emails that have a similar layout to the email you want to build. Also include examples of designs to guide copywriters and designers toward the email layout, tone, voice & design that aligns with your brand.
Step 2 // Creative: Designing Your Email Marketing Campaign
Once you have developed your email brief, the next step in creating a successful email marketing campaign is the creative process. This is where the ideas & concepts for your campaign are brought to life through design and copy.
The creative process is an incredibly important part to get right in an effective email marketing strategy because it ultimately executes on the goals & strategy.
The creative process begins with a conversion-optimized email layout. This is where the structure & content of the email is developed, before starting on copy & design, to ensure it is aligned with the email strategy.
It's important to keep the email content and objectives of the campaign in mind during this stage to ensure that the email layout aligns with the overall campaign objectives.
The email layout also helps guide the amount of copy & structure of the design for the creative team.
Once the email layout has been developed, the copywriter & designer can work in parallel. write copy & design the email.
The copywriter works from the email layout to write the email subject lines, headlines, body copy, and call to actions. They're responsible for ensuring the message is clear, compelling, and consistent with the brand's tone of voice, as well as aligned with the strategy outlined in the email brief.
The designer works from the email layout to create a visually engaging email with product imagery, brand elements & more.
The creative process is an essential step in executing effective email marketing strategy & creating winning email campaigns, as it allows businesses to create visually appealing, easy to understand and brand consistent emails that grab the attention of the recipient, create a sense of urgency and drive conversions.
Step 3 // Deployment: Building & Launching Your Email
Once the creative process is complete, the next step in creating a successful email marketing campaign is the deployment phase. This is where the email is built in your email service provider (ESP) and send to your target audience.
The first step in the deployment phase is to build the email. This includes creating the email template, coding the HTML, and inserting the design and content elements. Most ecommerce brands opt to slice their email design into multiple images and upload these images into a drag-and-drop email designer to preserve the design quality.
This also includes setting up any A/B testing in the email such as subject line testing or email content testing.
If you're using Klaviyo as your email service provider, read our How To Use Klaviyo Like A Pro - 2024 Complete Guide to learn how to build an email campaign in Klaviyo.
It's important to test your email by sending out test emails using platforms such as Litmus to preview the email in various devices. This ensures that the email is optimized for different email clients and devices, and that it is tested for any potential technical issues.
The next step is to segment your email list based on the audience defined in the email brief. This ensures that the email is only sent to the relevant audience and increases the chances of engagement and conversions.
Once the email is built and the list is segmented, it's time to launch the campaign. This includes scheduling the email to be sent out at the optimal time and monitoring the campaign's performance.
Step 4 // Analytics: Track, Measure & Optimize
Once your email campaign is launched, the next step is to track, measure and optimize its performance. This is where the analytics and data collected during the deployment phase come into play.
The first step in this phase is to track the performance of the campaign. This includes monitoring key metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversions. These metrics provide a general overview of how well the campaign is performing and can help identify any issues or areas for improvement.
These are some important email metrics you should be measuring to track the success of your email marketing campaigns:
- Campaign revenue
- Open rate
- Click through rate
- Purchase rate
- Average order value
- Bounce rate
- Spam rate
- Unsubscribe rate
Once the performance metrics have been collected, it's important to analyze the data and determine if the campaign met its specific, measurable goals, such as increasing website traffic or driving sales. You should also analyze whether each campaign performed above or below average in each of the key metrics above. This will help you determine the overall effectiveness of the campaign and identify areas for improvement.
Finally, it's important to optimize your email marketing strategy & future campaigns based on the data collected. This includes making recommendations to copywriters & designers on the email content, design, and targeting to improve performance. You may also want to A/B test different elements of the email, such as subject lines, types of products recommended, or send time to improve performance.
Analytics and data play a crucial role in creating a successful email marketing campaign. Tracking, measuring and optimizing the campaign's performance allows you to identify issues, determine the overall effectiveness of the campaign, and make adjustments to improve performance. Continuously monitoring, measuring and optimizing will help you to improve the performance of your email campaigns over time.
When you're just getting started, you can easily see the performance of all your email marketing campaigns within Klaviyo (or your selected ESP). However, as your email marketing strategy becomes more sophisticated, you'll need an Email Performance Dashboard to keep track of all of your email marketing performance, allow you to see monthly & yearly trends, and compare performance across campaigns.
Ready to start creating successful email marketing campaigns?
Creating a successful email marketing campaign requires a well thought out strategy and a solid execution plan. From developing an email brief to deploying and optimizing the campaign, it is essential to keep in mind your audience, goals, and conversion-optimization best practices.
It is important to note that creating a successful email campaign can be a complex process, especially for small e-commerce brands. There are tools available to help streamline the process, such as Backbone, an email strategy automation tool that helps brands create more high-performing email campaigns by recommending email topics, building email briefs, and providing optimized email layouts for copywriters & designers.
However, it's essential to remember that no matter how advanced the tools you use, success in email marketing ultimately comes down to understanding your audience, setting clear goals, and creating compelling and consistent content that aligns with your brand. By following these steps, you can create an email campaign that effectively communicates your message, resonates with your audience, and drives conversions, and ultimately help your business grow.