What is an email campaign and how does it fit into an email marketing strategy?

8 min read

One of the most effective ways to retain loyal customers is with a personalised and relevant email marketing strategy. Your strategy outlines the email marketing goals and processes that will contribute to the overall objectives of your business.

Within your strategy, you will have individual email campaigns. These campaigns will have specific objectives that also align with your overall goals. This could be anything from telling customers about a new product launch to increasing revenue by promoting a limited-time offer.

But, how do you make sure an email campaign is as effective as it can be and complements your email marketing strategy? Yes, you could send out ad hoc emails and as long as they’re relevant and on-brand, you may see some positive results. But, if you haven’t planned your campaign to be part of your overall strategy, it’s unlikely to wield the results you might hope for.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to email marketing. For example, it would be wrong to assume a B2B medical equipment company would need the same email marketing strategy as an events company. While we can’t tell you the exact steps you can take to improve your strategy, we can go into how you can find that out for yourself. So, we’re going to dive into all the key points and considerations for creating an email campaign that slots perfectly into your marketing strategy.

What is email marketing?

So, what is email marketing and how does it work? It’s the process of sending email communication to customers who have opted into your email marketing list. It complements your digital marketing strategy and ensures an omnichannel experience. With the data you’ve collated on individual customers, you can send highly personalised and relevant emails to each customer, to increase engagement, decrease unsubscribe rates and give your revenue a much-needed boost.

That’s an email marketing strategy, but what is an email campaign? Well, it’s a specific email or sequence of emails that fit within the strategy to serve a specific purpose. This could be to increase revenue, reengage previous customers or launch a new product. 

There are many different types of marketing emails your organisation can send, including:

• Welcome emails
• Promotions and offers
• Regular newsletters
• Surveys
• Lead nurturing emails
• Lead generation
• Brand awareness
• Retention and loyalty emails
• Reengagement emails

It’s a balancing act between remaining on your customers’ radars while not straying into spam territory. It’s also vital that you adhere to privacy and data protection laws, such as GDPR, so you don’t land yourselves in hot water.

When planned and implemented well, email marketing can be incredibly effective and ensure you retain your most loyal and valuable customers. To discover more about how to create a strategy that aligns with your business’ goals, read our guide to getting started with email marketing.

How does a campaign fit into a broader strategy?

An email campaign should always fit into your email marketing strategy, which itself is created to align with the overall goals of your organisation. So, if your goal is to increase average customer value by 10%, you may focus your email marketing efforts on sending promotional emails to customers who fall into a specific segment, such as those who have bought from you within the last six months, or those with items abandoned in their shopping cart.

Because individual campaigns will have different goals, you must also segment your audience so you only send emails to the right customers at the right time. This will ensure loyal customers stay loyal, and you don’t inadvertently make customers look for the unsubscribe button. Campaigns should link to your broader marketing strategies, ensuring consistent messaging to create a seamless customer experience.

Keeping an eye on your analytics will help you measure your campaign's performance, so you can refine future efforts to align even more closely. There may be changes you can make that will increase engagement in ways that complement your email marketing strategy.

How many campaigns should you plan into a strategy?

This is an exceptionally difficult question to answer because basically, the answer is it depends. Your email strategy will have specific goals that contribute towards the goal of your business, which means your campaigns will also have individual goals themselves.

Not every campaign will have the same goal. One campaign may have the goal of driving subscribers, while the next may be to gather customer feedback. After that, you may want to re-engage old customers before launching a new product or service.

While you may have a lot to say, it’s also important that you don’t flood your customers’ inboxes. The last thing you want to do is see your unsubscribe rate tick up, so it’s about sending the right emails to the right customers at the right time. That means segmenting your customers and only sending the most relevant, personalised emails. By doing this, it could mean that many of your customers don’t receive an email from you at all, and that’s ok – if you have nothing to say that’s relevant to them, then save contacting them for when you do.

It might not be a black-and-white answer, but the number of campaigns you plan into a strategy should align with your business goals, audience segmentation and several other factors, such as: 

• Changing business goals
• Sales cycle
• Seasonality
• Trends

The more relevant, personalised and well-timed an email is, the more likely your customers are to engage. And it’s certainly not a case of throwing everything you can and hoping something sticks.

How do you define the purpose of each campaign?

We’ve covered that every campaign must align with your business’ goals, but how do you define the purpose of a campaign? There’s more to it than saying, ‘We need to increase revenue so let’s send out some promo codes’ – yes, this might work, but will it complement your strategy by sending it when you do?

One of your business’ main objectives is likely to be something along the lines of ‘increase revenue’. Sending a promo code off the bat will likely do this, but there may be campaigns to launch before this to ensure it’s as effective as possible. For example, do you first undertake a campaign to re-engage previous customers?

Here are eight steps you should consider for defining the purpose of a campaign:

1. Refer to the marketing objectives of your business and identify what type of campaigns will help the business reach its targets.
2. Identify the audience you need to target that will align with meeting those goals. Segmenting your email list will allow you to contact customers that fit.
3. Determine the specific goals you want to achieve. These should be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound).
4. Outline your key messaging or value proposition. What problem can your product or service solve for your target audience? Don’t tell them what your product or service can do, tell them how it will make a difference.
5. Align messaging with other marketing channels, such as social media, website, content, paid media and influencer marketing.
6. Create simple, direct and actionable calls to action, so your audience knows exactly what they have to do to engage.
7. Measure the success of your campaign and check in real-time whether you’re on target to reach your campaign goals. If not, can you make changes to subsequent emails in the sequence?
8. What is the budget and timeline for your campaign? This can have an impact on the purpose, with smaller budgets often yielding smaller results.

How many topics should your campaigns cover?

The number of topics your campaigns cover also doesn’t have a specific answer anyone can tell you, as it also depends on various factors, such as your industry, the complexity of your products or services, your target audience’s expectations, the frequency of your email campaigns and your overall marketing strategy.

For example, if your campaign is suitable for a very specific and niche audience, you may only want to focus on a limited number of topics. If you’re sending a monthly newsletter, it will possibly cover a broader range of topics.

When determining the topics you should cover in a campaign, bear in mind the target audience, seasonality and trends, your content calendar, and your marketing goals and objectives. There is no right or wrong answer, but it’s important not to get your key messaging lost within the mire.

How do you ensure your campaigns help you meet the goals of your strategy?

Only with research and planning can you ensure your email campaigns will contribute towards the overall success of your strategy. As with any marketing strategy, it requires careful planning driven by actionable data – just sending a few emails and hoping for the best won’t get the results you expect. Not that you’re likely to do this, of course, but the more data you have at your disposal the better.

This helps you understand your audience, so you can create highly personalised emails that drive engagement. Not only this, but the content also needs to be engaging, including any graphics and copy. You should also test emails to make sure links and interactive elements work as intended.

Something else that is incredibly useful and can ensure campaign goals are met is implementing A/B testing. This allows you to see the type of copy, graphics and messaging that gets the highest level of engagement from your target audience.

A great way to collate the data you need is through Apteco Orbit, which allows you to automate data-related tasks and produce actionable insights.

Key points for setting up email campaigns as part of your strategy

An email marketing strategy is a fantastic way to keep in touch with loyal customers and let them know what’s going on with your brand. As part of that, you’ll want to devise regular campaigns to build your email list and engage your target audience.

Here are 12 key points for setting up email campaigns so they’re an effective part of your strategy.

1. Always have your objectives in mind. Not only your email marketing strategy objectives but the overall objectives of your business.
2. Have a tool in place so you can easily collate and organise comprehensive data, such as Apteco Orbit.
3. Make sure you have a deep understanding of your target audience, including their preferences, behaviours, purchase history, problems, pain points and needs. This is in addition to demographic and geographic information.
4. Segment your audience so you can send relevant content to your target audience.
5. Have an email marketing platform in place that aligns with your business’ goals.
6. Continue to build an email list of loyal customers who have opted in to receive communications from your brand.
7. Create content that your audience is going to want to engage with.
8. Personalise, personalise, personalise. Always personalise your emails.
9. Test, test, test - Always test.
10. Ensure your emails are optimised for mobile devices.
11. Comply with local data protection and privacy regulations, such as GDPR.
12. Track and measure the performance of your emails and undertake continuous improvements.

Learn more about Apteco’s email marketing solution

Email marketing ensures you can keep in touch with your most valuable customers. Learn more about Apteco’s email marketing solution and find out how you can supercharge your email marketing.