To enjoy a delicious campaign curry, you need to put ingredients such that the final curry tastes good. You need to take utmost care, not to miss out on any of the ingredients, lest the curry will not taste good.

To start with, let me first tell you about email marketing.

Email marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of Communicating commercial or promotional messages to an audience. It is a collection of related ads or offers. Email marketing is the practice of sending sales letters or customer newsletters by email. Email communications are often more effective than printed direct mail, because a reader can click on a link and go straight to the website the sender wants you to go.

In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. This method of direct marketing is less costly as compared to other media investments like Newspaper ads, TV Ads. Email Marketing is more than just sending bulk emails, newsletters, or auto responders, and then keeping your fingers crossed. Rather, effective email marketing campaigns involve a targeted developmental process and intelligent email list management - smart marketing that works for you.

Email Marketing campaigns are nothing but, promoting yourself and your products in the market through emails to your existing or potential clients to gain recognition of your product.

Let us now know about the ingredients for preparing an email campaign.

Ingredient1:
Campaign: What is a campaign? A campaign contains a collection of one or more ad groups, which have the same budget, schedule, and geo-targeting criteria. Campaigns are typically created to achieve a specific marketing goal. To send email content to a group of email addresses is called an email campaign. An email campaign typically consists of Email Content, Email Addresses, Subject Line, Test Emails, From and Reply To address etc.(e.g. a new product launch campaign, or a campaign that targets customers in a specific geographic location).

An email campaign can be a normal campaign, a split campaign or even a recurring campaign.

Split Campaign: A campaign can be split based on specific criteria like list, content, subject line and other factors.

Recurring Campaign: A campaign which is sent again and again at specific interval set to email address. This could be based on certain criteria's if required.

Ingredient2:
Opted Format: What types of formats does a email campaign go to the client? The Opted format could be in HTML, Text or AOL formats. The format is opted by user in the Campaign Request Form (CRF).

Ingredient3:
Campaign Calendar: It is a calendar wherein you have the current and the upcoming list of campaigns.

Ingredient4:
Campaign Request Form (CRF): The CRF contains the campaign name, campaign subject line, the campaign number, the client name, his email ID, the opted format, the TAT of the campaign(or the Deployment date. of the final campaign), the test list & the final list it has to be sent & any specific conditions mentioned by the client.

Ingredient5:
Friendly From Address: It is the Friendly Form of from Address (email address) used to send an email, displayed when recipient receives email (eg.Begonia). It is the name displayed before the actual email address while sending an email.

Ingredient6:
Friendly Reply to Address: It is the Friendly Form of from Address (email address) used to receive an email, displayed when recipient replies email (eg.seoindiaonline). It is the name displayed before the actual email address while replying an email.

Note: It is possible that the Friendly from Address and Friendly Reply to Address can be the same.

Ingredient7:
Formal From Address: It is the Email address, from where the actual email is originated (e.g. info@begoniainfosys.com).

Ingredient8:
Formal Reply to Address: It is the Email address, where the recipients send an email in reply (e.g. info@ebizinternetmarketing.com).

Ingredient9:
Subject Line: It is the Subject of an email displayed in email box, which normally indicates the content of email.

Ingredient10:
Turn Around Time (TAT): The TAT or the deployment date when the campaign has to be sent or deployed to the final email list.

Now, your delicious campaign curry is ready with all the ingredients to be served to the customer. But, it needs to be tested for deliverability.

Deliverability: It is the probability of emails delivered in INBOX of email recipients. This includes the Browser test and the domain test before deploying the campaign.

Now the email campaign is ready for deployment (to be served) to the customer (i.e.) Make the reports that need to be prepared for the client.

The report contains the Scheduled count of emails deployed, the Delivered count of emails(actually delivered), their percentage, the total number of clicks & opens, the Unique Clicks, the Unique Opens, their percentage, The Deliverability percentage, the track opens and track clicks, what is the number of Global Unsubs or Department unsubs, the number of Opt-ins and Opt-Out.

So, take care not to miss out on the key ingredients for preparing a delicious campaign curry.

About the Author

Hari Qumar is a management graduate from a UK university and owns Begonia Infosys. He is actively involved in promoting SEO in India and works for an Affiliate marketing website as well.