How to get the most out of your email marketing

How to get the most out of your email marketing
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October 22, 2009

Ah yes, email marketing, the advertising medium that everyone loves due to the low cost and measurability. The question is; how do you maximize your campaigns so that you get the best open, click, and better yet conversion rates.

Here is where we insert the phrase… “as strong as its weakest link”. So what are all the “links”, metaphorically speaking? We have them itemized here into seven pieces:

  1. The Email List / Database
  2. The Message(s)
  3. The Subject(s)
  4. The Design
  5. The Offer(s)
  6. The Delivery
  7. The Measurement

So let’s elaborate on exactly what we mean. While reading this message it would be best for you to rate your business on each one of the items for each email campaign that you send:

1. The Email List

First things first… who are we sending this email to? Will the message or offer suit this list? Does your database or list contain first and last names or additional data that may allow you to personalize your message and subject? If the answer is yes, have you formatted your text with the appropriate casing such as “Proper Case” ?

2. The Message

Ultimately the question here is what is your desired outcome with this email campaign? Is it worthy enough to intrigue your email list into opening, clicking, signing up or buying what you are selling? A great way to measure this is by statistics and list segmentation.

3. The Subject

The subject line is like your elevator pitch. If you have given serious thought into your message (#2 above) then you need to consolidate and personalize it to grab someone’s attention.

4. The Design

Obviously the look plays an important factor in any email campaign. A clean and clear look and feel is always welcomed by the average reader. We have found great success with adding a navigation bar in the email that can direct a reader to a specific spot on your website. These links also play an important role in email statistics and when remarketing based on clicked interests.

You do need to be cautious when using graphics in your emails. You need to have enough text in the body of the message to entice the user to download or show images. Most email clients or web mail providers will not show the images unless the senders email is added to the “safe sender list”. So you can assume that they will see some red [X]’s at first.

Looking for a higher conversion rate? Try segmenting your list and designing an email that fits the desired look of the reader. A simple example is a male versus female design and message.

5. The Offer

Assuming that you are targeting the right audience, now is the time to insert the right offer or offers and a call to action to tell them the next steps in getting your products and or services.

Try an A/B test with your offers to see which one gets the most bites.

6. The Delivery

“The when and with what!”

With What:
Do your emails get sent with a email marketing tool such as Constant Contact, Vertical Response, iContact and etc? Or are you using your own email server? Ultimately sending through a private static ip address is your best bet but it requires more than just a private static ip and not always the easiest for most companies to facilitate. At the least you should use a company mentioned above.

The When:
Most research shows that a Thursday or Friday delivery proves a higher open and click through rate. I believe if you think about your demographic you can generalize their day or week and select a few possible times for a campaign. Remember this is really a science and if you have time you can blindly segment your list in three and send three blasts and measure the ones that work the best

7. The Measurement

A historical measurement of open, click and conversion ratios is your best ammo to maximizing your email campaigns. It is best if your statistics can also be integrated into your website analytics tool so that you can see what happened after they clicked out of their email onto your website.

The tricky part is how can you really measure all of this when your offer or messages may be the underlying factor? The important thing is to do your best to keep your offers consistent tempting and ever so different. Of course that is much easier to say than do.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

List Segmentation

Segmentation is an important part of getting that big pay day. The only problem is it takes several columns of up to date & well managed data… not to mention some time and patience. Id this is a list you are harvesting be sure to collect all of the fields that you would need to give the best personal one to one message.

Let 2020 eConsulting send your next email campaign

2020 eConsulting can help you to get your email campaigns on the right track whether its your first company email or your thousandth! Get a free quote today for professional email marketing.

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