Do emails still matter in the age of social media? The answer is a resounding yes. Email marketing campaigns have a median ROI over 122%, which is higher than any other popular marketing strategy.
You might be thinking, “My email outreach campaign is costing me more than it’s making me.” If you’re struggling to see positive results, it’s time to reevaluate your email outreach strategy.
Today, we’re going to talk about the steps every business, big or small, should take when preparing outreach emails. From researching your target audience to verifying email addresses to tracking results, we’ve got you covered.
Read on to learn everything you need to know to get your email outreach campaigns on track this year.
Table of Contents
What is an Email Outreach Campaign?
Email outreach is the process of “reaching out” to your consumers via email in order to fulfill a specific goal. Every time you generate a new email outreach campaign, you need to know your specific goal, which may include things like:
- Advertising a sale
- Encouraging a first-time purchase
- Encouraging a new customer to make a second purchase
- Getting back in touch with a cold lead
Beyond the goal of each email, you should know the goal of the campaign, as a whole, which will allow you to better track results. For example, if your email outreach campaign is advertising a sale, your goal might be to increase sales by 10%. To meet these goals, you’re going to need to put together a persuasive email that consumers actually open.
How to Build a Strong Email Outreach Campaign
So, how can you turn your email outreach goal into a successful campaign? Follow these simple steps every time to get through to your target audience and maximize your email marketing ROI.
Get to Know Your Target Audience
Chances are, your products don’t appeal unilaterally to every consumer out there. Instead, you have a target audience of consumers who would benefit from or enjoy using your products. Target audiences are typically defined by demographic categories (e.g., age or gender) or interests (e.g., hobbies or careers) and it’s up to you to learn more about them.
When is your target audience most active online? What do they like besides your products and what kinds of marketing do they tend to respond positively to? By knowing your target audience, you can put together emails that speak to them and pique their interest.
Keep Things Segmented
Because email outreach campaigns are useful for meeting a variety of goals, it’s important to keep your email list segmented. For example, the kind of email you’d send a cold lead (someone who has stopped engaging with your brand after a previous purchase) will differ from the kind of email you’d send a brand-new consumer.
Don’t send every single outreach email to your entire email list. Not only will it come across as spam but it will also skew your results if you’re reaching the wrong consumers with messaging that isn’t meant for them.
Verify Your Email List
Did you know that there are more email accounts than there are humans on the planet? This is because many people have multiple email accounts, some of which they’ve abandoned. There’s no point in sending your emails to an email account that a consumer no longer checks.
It’s also important to note that some consumers will provide fake email accounts to get through any pop-ups or walls that require a sign-up to access your content. Our email verifier is an affordable tool that will help you waste less time, effort, and money on inactive or fake email accounts.
Ace the Subject Line
Consumers are inundated with data and advertisements all day long, whether they’re scrolling social media or checking email. If you aren’t cutting through the noise, your emails will get overlooked-and may end up in the trash folder without being opened.
An attention-grabbing subject line can increase the chances that recipients will take a closer look. Let them know what you’re offering (like a discount, BOGO deal, or early access to a new product) using exciting, true-to-brand language.
Get Personal
When you’re collecting email addresses from interested or active consumers, it’s important that you get a bit of additional information-particularly the name they prefer to be called. While you can use an outreach email template to build your campaign, it’s crucial that you plug in some personalization.
Addressing a consumer by name will show them that their opinion, satisfaction, and patronage mean something to you. Even if consumers don’t take direct note of the personalization you’ve provided, it can still strengthen the subconscious trust and loyalty they have for your business, which can turn them into long-term consumers that keep your business going.
Provide Value
We live in the age of “mentor branding,” with an estimated 88% of consumers expecting brands to provide them with valuable information. No, consumers don’t expect you to know everything, but they do expect you to demonstrate expertise that is relevant to your niche. What does that mean?
Imagine that your business sells gardening supplies, starter plants, and seeds. Mentor branding would include things like gardening tips, problem-solving, and maybe even information about some unusual plants they should grow in their gardens. Yes, your emails should include the value of a good deal or incentive, but you should also point them in the direction to some intellectual value (e.g., your blog posts or social media videos).
Keep Your Emails Short
Remember, your consumers aren’t expecting a newsletter, and you shouldn’t send one. In fact, because you’re trying to hold their attention in a sea of noise, you want to keep things short and sweet somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 to 150 words. Even with such a short email, anything that matters most needs to stand out.
In other words, pack a punch with your opening line and make sure that between the subject line and the opening line, consumers know exactly what your email is about. Take advantage of different font sizes and colors to allow for quick scanning to get to the call-to-action.
Let That CTA Shine
Speaking of your call to action, it has a lot of heavy lifting to do. While everything else we’ve said so far is crucial for a successful email campaign, the CTA is the true star of the show. Not only does your CTA need to use clear and direct language that tells consumers what action you want from them, but it also needs to make that action easy to complete.
Use at least a few keywords in your CTA to hyperlink to the page you want consumers to visit. For example, if you’re encouraging them to use a discount code on a specific product, link to that product. If possible, auto-populate the discount code when consumers use that CTA link to reduce the number of steps (and the amount of time they have to reconsider) to complete the action.
Send a Follow-Up
As we’ve mentioned already, you should anticipate that all of your email recipients are getting bombarded with ads and offers all day long. Even when you create the perfect email outreach campaign, you can still end up with a high rate of unopened emails. Some consumers who do open your email may mean to follow through later but forget as their busy week continues on.
If the consumer doesn’t act in response to the first email, send a follow-up to remind them that the offer is still on the table. Never send a follow-up more than a week after the first round of emails go out. In fact, it’s best to wait at least two weeks (some businesses wait as long as 30 days before sending a follow-up) so that your emails don’t end up in the spam folder.
Track Your Results
The best way to improve your long-term results is to keep track of how each email campaign went and learn more about your target audience’s behavior. With the right tools, you can track the number of emails that were opened and who opened them. You can also track how many consumers responded to the CTA in part and in full to get a sense of what might be standing in the way between an email and a purchase.
The more you learn from your email outreach campaigns, the more your business can grow as a direct result of your email marketing efforts.
Build a Valuable Email List with MailVerifier
If you haven’t seen promising results from your email outreach strategy in the past, it’s time to start fresh. Use this guide to put together an email campaign that works.
Make sure that you’re working with a valuable email list with MailVerifier. Sign up for your own MailVerifier account to get started.
Dewang Goyal is a seasoned expert in the expansive field of email marketing, boasting a track record that spans over a decade of transformative digital communication strategies. As a regular contributor to the MailVerifier.io blog, he offers deep insights and practical advice, helping businesses navigate the challenges and opportunities of digital communication. His articles range from the art of creating compelling email campaigns to the strategies needed for maximum audience engagement.
With a solid foundation in Computer Science, Dewang merges the worlds of technology and marketing seamlessly. This unique perspective allows him to approach email marketing from both a technical and a strategic angle, ensuring that his readers and clients benefit from comprehensive guidance.