Managing Email Marketing Campaigns With Excel

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For most people I know, email marketing looks something like this:

Signed up for an email service? Check.
Opt-in form added to website? Check.
List segmented so you can target messages to specific subscribers? Wait, what?

If you’ve heard that you need to be doing this but have no idea how to start, you’re going to love this post from Angela Nino!

Janet

Regardless of whether you’re a new or an established business, it’s important to build and maintain your email list. It’s a powerful marketing tool that enables you to directly reach your customers, and approximately 75% of companies agree that email offers “excellent” to “good” ROI.

Organization is key to successful email marketing campaigns. Email marketing platforms like Mailchimp are great, but it helps to use tools like Microsoft Excel to map out your email marketing plan.

Here are some handy tips and tricks to help get your email list in shape!

Email Personalization

First things first, who are you emailing? Most businesses already have at least some information for their customers. If not, now’s the time to start gathering that data. You’ll absolutely want to collect the basics, like name, postal code, and email address. You may also want to collect insights about their gender, age, and birthday.

Once you’ve gathered this data, it’s time to organize it. A simple format will do the trick, and will make your ongoing marketing efforts a breeze. It will also make it easy to import your list to an email CRM.

Here’s an example of what that could look like:

example of email CRM using Excel

Audience Segmentation

Chances are, your business has a variety of customers with many different interests. It would make sense, then, that they’re not all interested in getting the same marketing emails from you.

For example, if your business is a concert venue, you probably have customers who love one style of music but have absolutely no interest in another. If you’ve been keeping good tabs on their preferences and purchase history, you can sort your existing Excel list, quickly pulling subgroups of customers who enjoy a specific genre.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”Email marketing platforms like Mailchimp are great, but it helps to use tools like Microsoft Excel to map out your email marketing plan.” quote=”Email marketing platforms like Mailchimp are great, but it helps to use tools like Microsoft Excel to map out your email marketing plan.” theme=”style1″]

A/B Testing Email Variations

Now that you have your contacts segmented out, it’s time to write some emails. But how do you know what types of messages your customers will respond to?

Sounds like it’s time to run some tests!

Many email providers will allow you to A/B test subject lines, send times, content, and more. However, if you don’t use email marketing software, you can run manual tests through your inbox.

You can use Excel to organize your tests. Just be sure to only test one thing at a time so you know what’s actually working!

Here’s an example of what that spreadsheet could look like:

A/B Testing Excel example

Tracking Your Successes

If you want to know what really works, you need to measure your results. The first step to measuring your results is knowing what a success looks like to you. Here are some common KPIs for email marketing:

  • Replies: This is probably the easiest to track. Even if the response wasn’t exactly what you were looking for, you can at least make the assumption that your subject line was enticing enough to be viewed.
  • Conversions: If you don’t have tracking codes enabled this could be difficult. For those of you running ecommerce email marketing out of your inbox, try including a different discount code for your test campaigns so you can gauge success.
  • Opens: If you’re sending email marketing campaigns through your inbox, seeing if your email was opened isn’t possible without a little help. There are plugins and other tools that enable you to track opens directly from your inbox, including ContactMonkey, Mail Track, Bananatag, and Gmelius.

By staying organized in your email marketing efforts, you don’t just earn results, you also secure quality customers. Regardless of whether or not you use email marketing software, having the flexibility to manually manage and plan ongoing strategy with Excel will help you yield results year after year.

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Angela Nino

Angela Nino is blessed to be part of two fantastic organizations. At Versitas, she is the Training Manager and manages the blog and social media. At Richland College, she is a full-time professor and program coordinator in the School of Business. Outside of the office, you will find Angela with her husband and her two boys, playing outdoors or reading.

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9 Comments

  1. Avatar Sabrina Quairoli on June 26, 2017 at 10:37 am

    This is very helpful information. I use Excel often so using it for tracking testing for my email marketing campaign is a easy fit. I am going to try it. Thanks for the guidance.

    • Avatar Janet Barclay on June 26, 2017 at 12:25 pm

      I use Excel for a lot of things too – it’s a great way to manage information.

  2. Avatar Seana Turner on June 26, 2017 at 10:45 am

    I love data and sorting what I’ve got in different ways. Information about your client base is power, and in today’s market, most businesses are able to target and understand their client in a very specific way. I am still not sure how effective email marketing will be in the future, but if you are using it, use it wisely! Great to see you here on Janet’s blog, Angela.

    • Avatar Janet Barclay on June 26, 2017 at 12:26 pm

      I haven’t seen any indications that email marketing is declining. Have you?

  3. Avatar Ruth on June 28, 2017 at 9:53 am

    Great article. Further proof I need to learn excel. Lol
    The list of plugins has gone on my review list – I totally needed this, THANKS!

    • Avatar Janet Barclay on June 28, 2017 at 2:07 pm

      You definitely should! There are loads of free online resources for learning it, too.

  4. Avatar William Nathan on February 9, 2021 at 6:27 am

    I also use Excel to make it easy to use for monitoring testing for my email marketing campaign. I’ve gathered some valuable knowledge from this article. The article is well explained and easy to understand. Thank you for sharing this important knowledge with us. Keep a good job.

  5. Avatar Kevin Johnson on October 27, 2021 at 8:53 am

    This is extremely useful information. I frequently use Excel, so using it for monitoring testing for my email marketing campaign is a good fit. I’m going to give it a shot. Thanks a lot.

  6. Avatar Louis Bryson on April 4, 2022 at 9:37 am

    I too use Excel for a lot of things as well; it’s an excellent method to keep tracking of data.

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