Whoever said “you can’t have your cake and eat it too,” obviously wasn’t a marketer. Marketing teams know that just about anything is possible when you’ve got the right team. That’s 50% creative and 50% administrative. So when it comes to creative summer email campaigns that I’ve now inspired you to take on, no one says you have to throw your goals to the wind in the pursuit of creativity. You can have both.

In one of the lasts posts, we did mention that you’re not going to see exact metrics right away. It will take time. People are away on holiday and summer campaigns are typically a little slower to yield results. That is unless in you’re in season-friendly commerce, which is a more favorable industry since customers are looking to spend on summer essentials and must-haves. For the rest of us, we need to have a little more patience to see exactly how our campaigns play out.

The most common marketing goals have to do with traffic and revenue. If your goal is to “get more traffic” and “make more money,” then let’s start by setting more measurable goals. What does “more traffic” look like? Does it mean you want 10 more visitors a day or 100 more visitors a week? Do you want more visitors to a specific landing page or to your overall website? Or perhaps your goal is to get people to your social media pages, which is something email marketing can still help you with.

What do you mean by “make more money?” Ask yourself the same question and set more measurable objectives that give you some sort of baseline with which to work. Do you want more sales, more specific item sales or more overall transactions? Whatever goal you set, be realistic by setting incremental goals. For example, you’re setting yourself up for failure by expecting a newly launched summer email campaign to increase profits by 500% in the first month. Set smaller more reasonable goals that incrementally go up based on the prior week or month’s results.

It always helps to chart these points out so that you’re approaching your email campaigns with a lean mindset that helps you stay on track. So, if your goal is to increase more social media engagement on Facebook, then start there. How will this be achieved? What sort of posts will you generate? What contests will you have? What conversations will you stimulate on your social media page using both graphics and content? The answer to this will depend on how you want to define your page. During the summer, it’s best to focus on more light-hearted content with the occasional focused piece delving into a bigger issue (if your industry allows for it). Always, always use big, beautiful and bright images. It makes a world of difference.

That said, you’re now going to create email campaigns using those images and teaser info to lead your audience to your Facebook page. A quick and simple way to execute what is essentially one branch of your summer email marketing goal is to create a weekly “Facebook Digest” email campaign of posts that were shared exclusively on that platform from your site versus also being shared in your campaigns. So the reader does eventually land on your website, but they’d first be directed to your Facebook page. A “digest” or whatever much cooler thing you choose to call it, is essential in creating FOMO: Fear of Missing Out.