If you’re like me (and the 90% of adults who regularly use email), you wake up every morning to a plethora of emails from your favorite companies calling for you to read, click, and share their latest work. Though it may seem like your brand’s email campaign will be just another piece of advertising lost in the sea of 281 billion emails that are sent each day, there are steps that can be taken to ensure people will actually want to click on your work rather than simply mark it as read without even looking at the headline. Read on to see what makes an effective strategic email marketing campaign and start increasing your engagements today!

Personalization is key.

No one wants to click an email that doesn’t appeal feel personal; making sure that your emails address their receivers by name is a great first step into making your subscribers feel less like they’re just a number on your subscribers list. Starting an email off with “Dear Sir or Madam” may be more detrimental to your success than not including a greeting at all!

Create a universal design.

Making sure that your email campaign can be accessed on all devices- desktop, tablet, and smart phone- is an easy way to increase your click-though count. Designing mobile-friendly campaigns are essential to creating a “responsive design” as 67% of emails are now read on portable devices rather than desktop computers.

Encourage subscribers to whitelist emails.

Many companies are faced with a huge problem surrounding their email marketing campaigns: their work goes straight to their subscribers’ spam or promotional folders, causing low open rates. Only 79% of business emails actually make it to one’s main inbox, leaving the rest to be filtered out and defeating their purpose entirely. The best way to work around this is by instructing your subscribers to whitelist your emails, ensuring that they will be receiving the important content that they signed up for. How exactly do you do this, you ask? Here is a great template created by Optionmonster that can be copied and pasted right into your campaign!

How to Whitelist an Email Address with Gmail

  1. Open the email
  2. Click on the drop down arrow next to the “Reply” button
  3. Select “Add to Contacts List”
  4. Click on the “More” button above the email header
  5. Select “Filter messages like these”
  6. At the bottom of the search window, click “Create filter with this search”
  7. Check the box that says “Never send it to Spam”

How to Whitelist an Email Address with Outlook

  1. Open the email
  2. Right-click on the sender’s name, and click “Add to Outlook Contacts”
  3. Click “Save”
  4. On the Tools menu, click “Options”
  5. On the Preferences tab, under E-mail, click “Junk E-mail”
  6. Click the Safe Senders tab
  7. Select the “Also trust e-mail from my Contacts” check box

Include appropriate calls to action.

One of the biggest goals of an email marketing campaign is to get your subscribers to engage with your content. If you are not providing meaningful CTA’s, you are not giving your readers a reason to care about what you are showing them. Making that connection and offering an external link will allow you to direct traffic, while also giving insight into what email content your readers are most interesting in learning more about.

If you’ve implemented all of these practices and are still struggling to increase email campaign engagement, check out these great examples to help inspire new designs!

Creative Spot is a full-service marketing and advertising agency in Columbus, Ohio. If you would like to learn more about how we can help your organization create a strategic marketing campaign, please contact us.