The 4 steps of email direct marketing

I would like to take a minute to explain what are the 4 steps of direct marketing and how to maximize your campaign's efficiency on each of these steps:

Step 1:
Deliverability. Of course having the email reach your database's profile is the first step of a successful campaign.
To do so is a hard work and needs you to work long on matching the highest standards of email marketing. Let's not detail everything; it will probably be done in a future post. But the most important elements are having a double optin on your website, being very cautious when choosing the company that will sell you leads, erasing long inactive users from the DB,...

Step 2:
Once in the user's inbox, the next step is having him open the mail, this is determined by the following elements:
- The sender name (is your brand recognized by the user)
- The targeting (it seems quite obvious that sending a communication to people in the right target is better)
- The subject line
This last element is probably the easiest step of the campaign to work on, the goal is to interest the user and to have him open the email for further information.
You need not give to much information as it might avoid people believing not to be interested opening the email.
The subject line needs to be attractive but remain in adequation with the creative and the offer; else it will directly impact in a negative way the next step.

Step 3:
The click on the creative.
To have people click on your creative you need:
- A nice and clear creative
- Multiple clickable elements (it has been proved that the less clickable elements in the email, the less clicks you get)
- A nice offer (people are obviously more likely to click on a nice offer than on a poor one) - It might be interesting to have a special offer only available through the email.
It is important to remember here that the creative will also depend on the target, prospection emails or emails sent to new clients should contain more company related information than an email to good and faithful customers that have a good knowledge of your company.

Step 4:
The transformation rate.
Once the user has clicked on the creative, he usually ends up on your website, from now on, he will be quite free of going wherever he wishes.
My advices here are to:
- Have a clear landing page (probably better to have one dedicated to the email campaign).
The information in the email creative need to be the same as the one on the landing page.
- Have a minimum of links out of your website.
Your goal is to keep the traffic on your website.
- Have a minimum number of steps up to your transformation page.
It can be either an order or a subscription to your services, but you need to keep the transformation process as short as possible, the more steps, the more likely people might resign.

Hope this short post will help you, I will get back on these elements separately soon.