Email Marketing
Ultimate Email marketing objectives: How to set goals for email marketing campaign success
A wise man once said: “If you shoot at nothing, you will hit it every time.” And that applies perfectly to email marketing. The first step to any successful email marketing campaign is to determine what you want your campaign to achieve in the end and how you intend to achieve it. That’s where email marketing objectives and goals come in. Email marketing goals are clear, specific and measurable outcomes for any email campaign. On the one hand, email marketing objectives refer to steps that MUST be taken towards achieving the goals of your email-based campaign. It’s obvious they don’t mean exactly the same thing, but they work hand in hand to deliver remarkable success if followed through. Goals help you stay focused and measure the success of your email campaign. For example, you can set a goal of generating 500 new leads in the next four months. Your objective will include improving email engagement and generating more traffic. But there are other solid reasons why you should define your email marketing objectives early on.
5 reasons why email marketing objectives and goals are important for your campaign
1. Provides clarity
With your goals and objectives spelt out, everyone working on your email marketing campaign will know exactly what to do, when to do it and how. Such clarity will improve efficiency and the overall success of your campaign. Email marketing objectives give you and your team members a sense of direction and understanding towards achieving set goals. Now there’s no beating about the bush.2. Streamlines your effort
Your email campaign objectives should be written down and displayed for you and your team members to see. Doing this will help you channel every effort towards meeting your campaign goals. Having identified your campaign objectives, you won’t dissipate energy on unproductive tasks that add nothing to the bottom line.3. Helps you allocate resources
Defining your objectives will help you know how best to strategically channel your resources towards meeting your goals4. Motivation
Email marketing can be tedious even for experienced email marketers equipped with all the right tools. That’s why we consider email marketing objectives as a light that guides you through a dark tunnel towards your goals. They’re that important.5. Helps you measure success
You can only measure the success of your email marketing campaign if you set objectives and goals in the first place. And here are some examples of email marketing objectives that will work for any campaign.8 best email marketing objectives (examples)
1. Generating traffic
Email Marketing can be effective in driving traffic to your website and online store. But driving email traffic is not as easy as launching an email campaign. In many instances, you will not instantly see a spike in traffic for your site even with a reasonable number of subscribers. Your email marketing objective should be focused on changing that narrative. To generate email traffic for your brand, your email campaign MUST be directed at people who are actually interested in your content and have intentionally subscribed to your mailing list. Visitors like that are more likely to respond to the CTAs and spend time on your website. Using double opt-in to add new subscribers to your list will help you build an organic list of people who are more open to responding to your campaign and landing on your site. Here’s an example of what a double opt-in email looks like.
Here are 5 proven ways to improve your web traffic through email marketing:- Personalize your emails
- Provide clear and concise content in emails
- Include call to action between email content, not just at the bottom
- Use creative designs for your emails
- A/B test email campaigns on different segments of your audience.
2. Increasing email open rate
Stats say on average people receive 200+ emails per day with more than 50% of those ending up as spam or unread. This tells you the level of competition your email campaign is facing even before you press start. It also shows why you need to have a plan to increase your email open rate. Email open rate is more than just the number of people who open your email. To prioritize improving this metric, you have to consider email open rate as the number of readers who open your email and also click a link in the email. Here are 5 ways how to improve email open rates:- Build and organic email list. Avoid buying email list if you don’t want a low open rate.
- Segement your list and only send emails to the relevant audience.
- Update your list regularly. Remove all inactive subscribers.
- Use compelling subject lines for your emails.
- Optimize your email campaign for mobile
3. Generating more leads
Lead generation is another important objective to set for email campaigns because new customers are essential for extending the life span of any business. With email marketing, you can build a list of prospective customers who you will eventually become loyal customers if you nurture those relationships using high-quality content and excellent communication. Have a look at this email example that engages the subscriber and baits them into becoming customers:
Notice that in the above example, the email is personalized, has a professional but friendly tone and addresses a problem the reader might be trying to solve. Here are simple ways of turning leads into customers using email marketing:- Target the right audience. Use simple opt-in forms
- Optimize your landing page content
- Send timely emails. This can be immediately a prospect performs an action on your site
4. Improving engagements
A successful email marketing campaign will get more subscribers and prospects to interact with brand content and respond to CTAs. When customers engage with your campaign it ultimately results in purchases, sales and an increase in revenue. To achieve higher engagements your strategy must put focus on content that’s valuable, attractive and personalized for your subscribers. It’s also important to write compelling subject lines. Little things like the structure and design of your email can determine the level of engagement an email campaign attracts. Here’s an example of an email from Chelsea Football club that encourages fans to become members with just
From this example you can see that captivating email design, concise and making offers to your audience can get them to engage with your campaign. Also take note of where the CTA button is placed in this email — just two paragraphs into the content. 5. Grow customer list
Subscriber list does not equal customer list. You can have a decent number of subscribers but only a handful of them are paying customers. An email marketing objective to grow customer list will implement various strategic methods targeting an audience who will be interested in what the brand is offering. In 2023, brands are leveraging promotions, exclusive deals, discounts and rewards to grow their customers list. Here’s an example of an email that makes a promotional offer to subcribers based on their preferences:
Most email marking campaigns can boast of new subscribers but customers are what every business needs to survive. Pin this as your objective. Here are other methods of growing your customer list through email:- Send relevant emails
- Make your emails consice and clear
- Use attractive designs
- Include a call to action (CTA) at the top of your email content
- A/B test your campaign on various audience segments to see what works best.
6. Brand loyalty
Email marketing campaigns remains one of the oldest strategies for improving brand loyalty and retaining customers. This can be achieved by building excellent relationships with customers via email. Using customer data from customer behavior and preferences, brands can better understand how best to tailor their marketing effort to meet customer needs. Here are a few ways to improve brand loyalty: 1. Personalize your emails. Your emails must be tailored for the customer based on their preferences and behaviour, 2. Offer incentives. Like freebies, promotions, discounts, rewards and exclusive deals. Take a look at this example a gospel ministery offers a personalized free gift
2. Improve interactions. We already highlighted the power of engagement for email marketing campaigns. Ask for regular feedback and appreciate your customers. 3. Respond to feedback. Customers are easily frustrated when their feedback isn’t taken seriously. It’s worse when a brand takes too long to reply customer email or don’t even reply. 4. How to measure brand loyalty: Customer lifetime value, customer retention rate, customer satisfaction. 7. Increasing conversion rate
In (email) marketing conversion rate refers to the number of subscribers that complete an action requested in an email. Conversion rate can be an accurate way to measure return on investment (ROI) for an email campaign. Your email marketing objective would be incomplete without a plan to increase your conversion rate. Leveraging user-generated content like testimonials, images, social media posts and positive reviews can be included in emails to improve conversion rate. See this example of a resort that uses pictures shared by their customers on Instagram in their email campaign.
Image source: ReallyGoodEmails
8. Improving sales
Email marketing can also be crucial for improving your sales if you set it as one of the objectives of your campaign. Growing sales through email marketing would require some intentional effort on the part of the marketer. Things like using segmentation to target specific sets of your prospects with highly personalized customers, optimizing email subjects, improving CTAs and A/B testing strategies are a must for any brand serious about improving sales.Bonus. Reducing bounce rate
Email bounce rate refers to the number of emails sent that never get delivered. A high bounce rate of an email campaign can lower the reputation of a brand. To determine the percentage bounce rate of your email campaign, divide the number of bounced emails by sent emails and multiply it by 100. For example, if you send 5,000 emails and 500 bounces, your bounce rate will be 500 / 5000 x 100 which gives you a bounce rate of 10%. Your objective will be to reduce this number. Here are 5 ways to lower bounce rate:- Implement double opt-ins in your signup forms.
- Regularly cleanup your email subscriber list.
- Segment your list
- Stay consistent but not spammy
- A/B test your emails
How to set SMART goals for email marketing
Your email marketing goals must be SMART — Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely. Here’s how to set goals for your email marketing campaign.Email marketing goals must be specific and clear
The goals you set must be clear for every team member to understand. This helps everyone to know where they fit in and what they need to do to help the team achieve results.Goals for email marketing campaigns must be measurable
It is essential that your email campaign goals are measurable using predetermined metrics. This helps your team to stay focused throughout the lifespan of your campaign.Email marketing goals must be achievable
When setting a goal for your email campaign, it is important to set targets that are feasible for your brand based on your budget and resources. Unrealistic goals easily overwhelm and ultimately discourage the marketer.Email marketing goals must be relevant
It’s also important to set goals that will have a positive impact on your business. SMART goals for email marketing help the brand achieve its core values and bottom line.Email campaign goals must be time-bound
Finally, SMART goals must have a target completion date. A firm deadline to achieve your goal is essential to help you view current progress and measure success. It also helps to keep your team motivated with everyone working on the same timeline.Email marketing goals examples
- Reduce bounce rate by 50% in the next 6 months.
- Grow email subscriber list to 2000 in the next year.
- Record a conversion rate of 15% in the next six months
- Generate $50,000 in sales in the next five months
- Generate 1000 new leads from our email marketing campaign
Email marketing Goals vs objectives at a glance
| Email marketing objectives | Email marketing goals |
| Specific actionable, milestones for a campaign | Lifelong aims of an email campaign |
| The strategies required to achieve email campaign goals | The end result of an email campaign |
| Based on facts, data and customer preferences | Based on marketing ideas |
| Easy to measure | Difficult to properly measure |
