5 Simple Tips for Managing Large Email Marketing Campaigns
There’s little room for error in today’s world of email marketing. Users are bombarded with more pitches and pleas via email than ever before, making it all too easy for shoppers, subscribers, and others to tune out of poorly-written copy or hastily-designed marketing campaigns.
Generally, the larger the email campaign, the more complexity is required to manage it properly. From tracking CTRs to conducting comprehensive quality control and testing, there’s much to consider.
As such, let’s touch on 5 tips that can help brands more effectively manage large-scale email marketing campaigns.
Embrace Email Marketing Services
As a brand’s subscriber list grows, so too can the strain on marketers, campaigns, and brands themselves. Small enterprises may begin their forays into email marketing via the use of standard email clients such as Gmail and Outlook, but as the number of subscribers increases, the versatility and effectiveness of these services can decline (for example, to send mass email in Outlook, a variety of restrictions exist).
Professional email marketing services are available that unlock the potential for brands to contact thousands or even millions of subscribers on a regular basis. If your email marketing efforts are increasing in size, then embracing one of these services is highly recommended.
Collect (or Clean Up) Your Subscriber Data
Email campaigns cannot be effective if the data they have on subscribers is outdated or non-existent. Larger email marketing campaigns need comprehensive, up-to-date information; this is why sprucing up your data is a must.
Whether it be removing duplicate entries, combining multiple data-sets, or offering additional fields for subscriber input at the time of subscription, gathering as much data – and keeping it accurate over time – will only further refine the output of large email marketing efforts.
Improve Email Reputation
For mass email campaigns, effectiveness can only be improved to the point that visibility becomes an issue. Some brands have notable difficulty with avoiding spam filters due to the actions of subscribers themselves.
Excessive mailings, clickbait subject lines, and words/phrases commonly associated with spam can all lead to a sender’s reputation among ISPs and email services being downgraded. From Comcast to Gmail, it’s important to take steps that reduce the chances of your emails being identified as spam or promotional in nature.
Ensure Opt-Out & Opt-Down Are Available
For larger campaigns, ensuring that users have an option to unsubscribe – or change the frequency/type of emails they receive from you – is a must-have feature (click here to learn about opt-out vs opt-down).
If a user cannot easily unsubscribe or change what they’re receiving, they’re likely to just mark your email as spam. Repeated enough times across an internet service provider or email service, and these entities begin to identify your emails as undesirable. While this might not be a huge factor for small-scale mailing lists, larger entities have to safeguard their visibility by offering users an ability to walk away.
Invest in Target Audience Research
Once a subscriber list reaches a certain size, knowing just who exactly comprises it is crucial for long-term success. Whether it be segmenting your lists for custom campaigns or simply improving overall CTRs, knowing the characteristics of your target audience makes managing large email marketing campaigns easier.
Factors such as age, gender, geography, income, interests, and beliefs are all critical characteristics that should be researched appropriately when managing any large mailing list.
As email campaigns grow, they can become unruly. Managing these growing entities is fundamental to improving the reach, growth, and profitability of any brand or business. With these five tips, managers can more effectively use their subscriber lists to secure any and all desired conversions, sales, clicks or calls to action.
