With a growing client base, email is a fantastic way to stay in touch and keep contacts abreast of your professional successes. However, unless you’re sending a direct mail to one person (or a small group) in particular, you should avoid relying on plain text messaging. Instead, you should utilize services like MailChimp and AWeber to create engaging email marketing campaigns. These platforms add a level of professionalism, as they’re more visually arresting and can be branded in your company’s look and feel.

So what do you need to consider when creating an email campaign?

Use the subject line to draw readers in

If you think about when you receive a new email, the first thing you notice is the sender and the subject line. As such, this is your first chance to capture your reader and make them pay attention to your campaign.

Where possible, you should make use of this copy to appeal to the reader personally, even if you are sending the message out to a wide audience of contacts. For instance, if you’re looking to sell a new service with this email campaign, consider a subject line that refers to the client need your service will answer: “Do you need help with your…?”, etc.

You should keep the subject line to as few words as possible. Send test emails to yourself and other team members to trial how much of the line is readable as the email comes in — does the notification bubble cut off your subject line before the key details? If so, you should revisit.

Details like this can make all the difference for an effective email campaign.

Display your branding proudly

Once your reader has clicked open the email message, it should be immediately clear who the sender is. You may choose not to put your logo in the top center of the email grid (although many companies do opt for this), but ensure you’ve used your corporate colors and brand identity so that the email feels sufficiently representative of your brand esthetic.

Doing so is important for a number of reasons. Namely, you want your client to associate your company with the key message instantly, and by creating this link, you’ll strengthen their perceptions of you. Secondly, you want to dispel any confusion relating to your competitors, as it’s likely many other businesses are vying for your clients’ attention.

Set the email purpose clearly

Beyond being able to see who the campaign comes from, your reader should also be able to tell quickly (within the first five seconds) what the purpose and main message of the email is. Perhaps you’re looking to share industry news, promote a service, exhibit a triumph: no matter what you’re trying to achieve, state it clearly.

Readers shouldn’t be left confused or searching for information to help them make sense of the message you’ve sent. If it’s not clear as soon as they open the email, your campaign has failed. Think of this email like a piece of packaging design sat on the grocery store shelf, if it doesn’t convey the crucial information required to engage the customer, it will simply be ignored.

You can also support this communication via the graphic design of your mailer. Many online email marketing services will have a variety of template campaigns to work with — if you’re new, or inexperienced, in this realm, it’s recommended you follow this direction.

You can also assess newsletters and email campaigns that you yourself receive. Analyze their design: how clearly do they communicate the purpose of the campaign? How does it make you feel as a reader? Indeed, you can mimic their successes and learn from their failures.

Use your email to link back to your website and social media

You’ll want to close the loop between this email marketing campaign and your company’s digital presence. Throughout the body of the email, look for places to build hyperlinks into text and imagery, creating pathways for visitors to access relevant parts of your website. Remember to set these hyperlinks to ‘open in a new background window’ so that you don’t entirely redirect readers away from the information in your mailer campaign.

Your website should also feature tailored and considered copy, that mirrors the language you use in your mailer. Invest in Local Website SEO to guarantee that, should they search online for you in response to the mailer you sent out, your audience will find you quickly and easily.

The last details to place in your mailer template will be links to your social media platforms. Most pre-designed templates already have a placeholder for this content; all you need to do is paste in the links. Services also offer ‘click map’ analysis, so you can see which parts of the mailer your readers have actively clicked on and which they’ve not. This provides great learnings for your next campaign design.

Be visual

Returning to the packaging design analogy, you want your emailer campaign to be visual and striking — if not, you’ll over burden your audience with written information and neglect to engage them emotionally.

Large, arresting images can lift the design of an email campaign: piquing readers’ interest. Yet, you should approach imagery with a certain caution. If using high resolution pictures in your campaign, ensure you’ve reduced their file size as much as you can, without damaging the quality. If you don’t it’s possible that the email will bounce into ‘junk’ or ‘spam’ boxes, as filters look for messages too laden in data. Furthermore, if your images take too long to load once a reader has opened the message, they’ll tire of waiting and delete your correspondence.

Be purposeful with your mailer

When approaching the design of an email marketing campaign, it’s important you consider all the fine details to reach maximum success. Use the power of your copy and proofread as a team. Send at least one trial of the campaign internally, to double check that content is displaying and links lead to the right destinations. Being purposeful with your mailer will see conversion of readers into customers.