7 Tips for Taking Your Email Marketing to the Next Level

Did you know email marketing has three times as many user accounts as Twitter and Facebook combined? If executed strategically, email marketing can also be the most cost effective way to drive conversions and speak directly to your customers about their specific interests. These email marketing tips will help you boost email performance and increase ROI.

  1. STOP and determine your specific email marketing goals (if you haven’t already)

Before you can effectively measure your email marketing efforts, it’s very important that you’ve determined your goals. Is your goal to increase subscriber lists? Turn more leads into new customers? Or are you simply looking to drive web traffic to your site? Without establishing your goals and developing an email marketing strategy specifically aimed at achieving them, your time and efforts may be wasted. As with any marketing goals, your email marketing goals should be specific and measurable. Example: increase course enrollment through email by 10% in Q1.

  1. Forget the typical email metrics—track data that actually ties in with your goals

Many marketers get caught up in tracking the typical email metrics— open rate, CTR, etc.—without taking a thorough look at established goals and which metrics provide the best insight into progress against these goals. With the multitude of tracking options available through most email marketing software, it’s crucial to make sure your team is monitoring how closely you’re trending toward your goal, and how these metrics change. This added level of analytics and strategy can also help provide ideas for optimizing your emails to best achieve their purpose.

Is your goal to grow the top of your sales funnel? This could include increasing email signups or blog subscribers, or maybe just attracting more web visitors.  

Your emails should contain strong call to actions (CTAs), such as “Subscribe to our Blog”, or “Join our Weekly Email List,” and important metrics to track include subscriber list growth rate and CTA click thru rate.

  1. Understand your audience—segment and personalize

Did you know that more than 40% of marketers still aren’t sending targeted email messages? Email list segmentation can work wonders for guaranteeing you’re delivering relevant content to the right parties, and it can also increase your engagement rates. Additionally, it should tie in with the email marketing strategy mentioned above. Depending on the nature of your emails, some important data points to segment include industry, position/seniority level, location, engagement or purchase history.

While it may take more time than blasting your emails to everyone that’s ever been included in your email lists, segmentation can have a strong impact on the effectiveness of your email efforts. And we all want emails that are relevant, right? Think about the last e-blast you received that you weren’t interested in; did you unsubscribe?

  1. Keep engaged subscribers, or remove them

It’s no surprise that email marketing is most effective when you’re sending to an engaged list of subscribers. Don’t allow yourself to get tunnel vision when it comes to tracking and growing your lists. It’s equally important to keep focus on your unengaged subscribers, and even consider removing them altogether. Why? You’ve worked hard to build your email contacts and subscriber lists, and it’s easy to be hesitant to say goodbye. But sending emails to people who aren’t opening or engaging at all with your emails can negatively affect your sender score. Email clients could be notified by low engagement rates and deliver your messages straight to junk folders. If that’s the case, your emails will still technically be sent and delivered, but are much less likely to be seen. Email lists churn 25-30% on average each year, so continually growing your lists and removing inactive subscribers is essential.

  1. A/B Testing!!—Test your emails, test yourself!

Using A/B testing is a great way to discover the most effective email strategies, as well as test yourself as an online marketer. Getting creative with different subject lines, pre-headers, and send times/days and CTAs, can provide valuable insights into your audience and their email behaviors, as well as the most effective elements of a promotion. Another important A/B testing method is to play around with the “from” name and sender addresses of your emails. Think about it: most people open emails based on the “from” name over anything else, and you’re not just up against competitors, but also bosses, clients, doctors, adult basketball leagues, etc.

  1. Give (before you take)

Roughly 84% of email traffic is spam and that number is continuing to grow, so it’s crucial that you make the efforts to stand out and stay away from junk folders. Avoid asking your subscribers or new leads for too much information up front. Offering something of value before asking your subscribers to make a purchase or sign up for a service can help to establish a sense of worth and significance from your subscriber base. Maybe try offering a whitepaper download with helpful industry tips or a coupon to encourage them to get started with your brand or service. Then, you can follow up with those subscribers who engaged with your offers to collect information and provide additional resources and value. Making sure your email efforts are always providing value can go a long way with encouraging your subscribers to do the same in return.

  1. Improve your email templates!

Maybe you don’t have a creative team or a dedicated designer, but investing in at least one, professional and mobile-optimized email template can go a long way. As more people increase use of mobile devices to do just about everything, including read email and surf the internet, it is more important than ever to design your emails with mobile users in mind. A lack of mobile-friendly templates will not only lose the impact of your message, they’ll distract from your content and branding. By designing or investing in responsive, mobile-friendly and branded templates, you can bring a clean, professional look to your emails that’s consistent with your marketing efforts elsewhere.

Thinking of improving your email strategy? We have the knowledge and insight to help with your design, strategy and execution needs. Reach out to us to see how we can help take your email marketing— and your brand—to the next level.