6 WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR EMAIL MARKETING

Embrace Testing

To find out what works in your industry and your audience. You need to try out many different approaches and see which one drives the best results. No matter how experienced you are trialling out different approaches the only real way to see what works in email marketing.

Whether using simple, A/B subject line comparisons or a more complex form of testing. You are throwing caution to the wind this will surely come up with some enquires you couldn’t have predicted.

Accommodate Your Customers’ Marketing Preferences

It’s advised to keep your email marketing to a schedule, to not overwhelm your customers nor allow them to forget about you. Unfortunately, finding a balance depends largely on your customers’ preferences, and they won’t all be the same.

Flexibility is always an option. Have separate lists with different broadcast frequencies, and let your customers choose which one to sign up for. If a weekly email is better than a daily drip feed, then give them that option – you’re much more likely to keep rates to a minimum.

Keep a Clean List

It’s tempting as an email marketer to focus on the size of your list, but as the saying goes, less is often more. There’s no point in having a huge, outdated list full of recipients who don’t respond. It makes accurate testing difficult, and the low open rates can also work to drive down delivery rates as a negative reaction.

Removing inactive customers from your main database will keep your primary list clean, and you’ll know that your messages are actually arriving rather than being sent straight to the trash.

Engage Old Customers

When cleaning out the primary list there’s no need to delete a previous customer just because they’ve been unresponsive for a while. As part of your list-cleaning process, highlight customers who’ve not been active for six months and send them an exclusive offer designed for their market to try and reignite their interest.

You could even keep these customers on a separate list and send them occasional reminders that your company exists. But separate them off of your main list to keep it clean.

Personalise Where You Can

It’s a known fact that adding personalisation to an email can increase open rates and click-throughs. However, it’s much more than including the recipient’s name in the subject line.

What data do you hold about each customer that can be leveraged to your advantage?

Could you browse their purchasing history to match offers to their preferences?

The opportunities are limitless but you have to use your initiative. When you’ve had conversations with these people in the past did you take notes on what services they provide and who they target?

Measure Everything

It’s not always obvious in advance what you should be measuring. The solution, however, is simple: If something can be measured, then measure it.

You may have no idea just yet how to exploit the data you’re collecting. So it’s only common sense to collect whatever you can. When you come up with a new way of using that data, you’ll have an entire back history for a fresh approach.

Email marketing might have been tried and tested over decades, but it can still offer up new options. Keep experimenting and working to optimise your campaigns.