How to optimise your email campaigns

Emails are one of our best marketing tools.

We recently told you how to optimise your email flows to make the most of them. This time, we’re tackling how best to test and perfect your email campaigns.

Sarah and Kristen, CRM and email marketing extraordinaires on our Brand Hackers team, gave us the lowdown. Read more to find out how to make your email campaigns work harder.

Building your email list

You need some readers to send your beautiful, engaging emails out to. So first, you need to entice some people to sign up.

Offering a discount is often a fallback to get people on the list, but what else could you do? Think about ways to add value to potential customers that don’t cost you money. For example, you could offer anyone who signs up some exclusive content. Make it feel super valuable and people are more likely to opt-in.

Shake up the way you’re asking people to join your newsletter. Instead of going with something like “sign up” or “subscribe,” try some copy that makes it feel more exciting. Tap into customer benefits to make it sound like something they’ll want to be involved in.

Know your flow

We can use four different types of emails to communicate with our customers. They are:

Editorial campaigns (another word for newsletters)
Commercial campaigns (nurturing and encouraging customers to buy)
Automated flows (watch the full talk to find out more about these)
Transactional emails (the logistical stuff like “we’ve got your order” or “it’s dispatched”)
You’ll likely need to send all of the above at some point in the customer journey. But to begin with, pick one type to optimise and test so you’re not doing too much at once.

Designing your emails

There are a few key things to remember when designing new emails.

First off, avoid fully image-based emails. These are more likely to end up in spam folders and/or show up as unreadable in your customers’ inboxes — lots of email software blocks images.

Lean into plain text. Mix it up with text and images, but don’t forget the power of a completely text-based email. It can seem more personal so it’s great if you’re sending something from your founder. Plus, text-based emails are less likely to end up in spam.

Make sure each email has one goal. Don’t try and cram too much in. Instead, focus on one thing per email.

Don’t stress about design — it doesn’t cost the earth to create a decent-looking email. Basic templates with great copy are just as effective too.

Testing your flows

Be methodical when it comes to your testing.

Start by working out which metrics are letting your emails down. Then, write a list of hypotheses that could improve these metrics. Choose your top 3 to get started with (but remember to only test one thing at a time).

There are lots of different things you can test. If you’re struggling with open rates, you could try changing up when you send emails, adding/removing emojis in the subject line, and different length subject lines.

If it’s click rates getting you down, vary the number of buttons you use, the colour of them, and the copy you use for your CTAs.

For conversion rate, test different landing pages to send readers to, test the products you suggest, and change whether you include the price or not.

Make sure you test across multiple emails to get a good number of results. Track everything in a spreadsheet to keep an eye on your learnings. And once you’ve proven or disproven your hypothesis, move on to the next.

Want more juicy email content? Sign up to Copy Club to watch the full talk.

Our Brand Hackers are an outsourced, in-house marketing team. We work with marketing teams and founders of exciting start-ups to help their businesses thrive. Think you could use Sarah or Kristen's help improving your email flow game? Drop Lizzie a note at lizzie@thecopyclub.co.uk.