Blog Post

Email marketing best practices: Setting your goal & deciding on your message

Liz Seymour • Jan 08, 2016

There is no denying that email marketing is a low cost and effective channel to reach out to thousands of people in an instant. Not only does email provide the highest return on investment of any form of marketing it’s a fantastic way to maintain brand presence, share content, keep in touch with your customer base and deepen existing client relationships – supercharging you to win more projects, gain new leads and get ahead of your current competitors.

Over the next few weeks we will be taking you through the steps of how to create a professional Email Marketing Campaign – starting with email basics right through to measuring campaign success.


  • Email basics
  • Gathering your audience
  • Selecting your platform
  • Email tips
  • How to Measure Email campaign Success

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Set your goal and decide on your message

Before you jump in and start sending out your emails it’s important to set specific goals to enable you to have a clear idea of the outcome from your Email Campaign.

Establish your goals and ask yourself the following:

What is your main reason for sending out an email campaign?

Why are you talking to your audience?

What outcome do you expect?

This could be range from increasing website visits, raising brand awareness, offering your clients a promotion, showcasing your work or just keeping in touch. The important thing here is to have an aim and have a solid reason, if you don’t have either and heading up a campaign ‘just because’ it will show.

Content is key

We all get stuck on content, but if you have effectively established your goals this shouldn’t be too much of a challenge. Part of your goal strategy should and must include your audience. Before you even think of writing that first line of compelling copy you need to have an idea of who you are talking to.


Make it stand out

What value will your email bring? How can you interest your reader? Excite them, resonate with them. Your email is competing with hundreds of others on a daily basis, make it stand out and make it stand out the right way.


Complement your campaigns

Make sure your content complements your current efforts especially if you are doing a promotional campaign. The key is to use all available (and relevant) channels to hit the message home.

Where to get content ideas
  • The google keyword planner will give you an idea of what your prospective clients are searching for based on high performing keywords or phrases
  • Monitoring social media and digital platforms to find trending news and interesting content, perhaps you can utilise a story or write an article about it with your own spin on it?
  • If you’re well versed with analytics, have a look at where your visitors to your website are going, what pages are popular? A page that has a high bounce rate (people looking at your page and exiting quickly) may be lacking important information that your prospects are asking.
  • Competitors: what are talking about?
  • Calendar events: is there something on your yearly calendar that you can ride on the back of?

Types of emails to send

There are lots of different approaches that can be used to engage your audience and the format of the email you send all depends on the nature of your business and what you are trying to communicate.


Newsletter Email

This is great for ongoing business relationship building. Make sure however that your content is interesting and valuable enough for a reader to anticipate your emails, open them and click through to the articles. The newsletter should be sent out on a regular and timely basis. Utilise those social media channels too by posting teasers and encouraging readers to sign up and subscribe.


Promotional Email

A promotional email is a great way to provide an offer to current customers and prospects. A promotional email should always have a CTA ( call to action) to give the reader the opportunity to redeem the offer.

Remember the 3 ‘S’ keep it simple , keep it sincere and don’t make it too salesy


Thought knowledge email

Inspire your audience with advice and knowledge on a topic that they will value. The best thing about this type of email is the fact that it does a brilliant job at reassuring your clients and prospects that you are knowledgeable about your service and products.


Information email

A simple email which acts as the reminder or a notice, such as a change in operating hours, an announcement, An invitation to a webinar or event.


News email

Slightly different from the newsletter, based on the fact that a newsletter is sent out at a regular interval usually giving a summary of news within your business.

A news email can be sent out based on current events. The idea of a news email is a great measure to keeping your audience up to date and provide them with timely information. These are usually short and contain just one or two calls to action.

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