The key to running successful email marketing campaigns boils down to the methods you use. It starts with the tools you use, how you build and segment your email list and studying the results of your campaigns. Here are a handful of tips to help you improve your email marketing strategy:
1. Use tools made for email marketing
Standard email services, such as Microsoft Outlook and Gmail aren’t meant to be used for email marketing. When you use email marketing software, you can easily manage a contact list, generate leads and send and track bulk and blast emails. Many of the tools made for email marketing include features or integrations with other types of software to help with marketing, such as CRM and landing page builders.
2. Build your email list proactively
You may already collect email addresses from customers after an interaction with them, but there’s more you can do to build your email list. Whether you sell a physical product, digital item or a service, you should have some information that’s valuable to offer for free – or for an email address. Offer e-books, free trials, coupons or a webinar to leads and all they have to do is provide an email address.
These free offers you create can live on your website and you can promote them on social media or through digital advertising. As you grow your email list, you can then start segmenting, which helps you market to each group with better intent.
3. Segment your list by user intent
Segmentation is one of the key factors of effective email marketing. When you divide your audience into groups that separate user interests, you can create more personalised campaigns. At the very least, you can segment your audiences by purchase history (customers vs. leads), but you can go granular. Try segmenting by geographical location, types of purchases and website interactions.
You can even send surveys or set up sign-up forms to let your customers and leads tell you what they’re interested in, which makes it easier to segment them. Some of the best email marketing services include automated segmentation, which creates lists based on sales history or how a user has interacted with your site.
4. Engage your readers at every step
Crafting an effective marketing email is about more than just the body of your email. You can increase your open rates and CTR by tweaking many elements of your emails, starting with the from and subject lines.
- From: Try to avoid generic “from” names. Use your brand name or a name your users will recognise
- Subject line: Several email marketing software help ensure you keep your subject line short so it’s eye-catching for the recipient. The preheader line is what shows up after or below the subject line, which can be a bit longer and include more enticing info to encourage a click. Use an emoji or two to make it fun
- Body text: This is the meat of your message. You want to keep it short but informative and lead directly to the action you want your readers to take
- Call to action (CTA): These are buttons or links that drive the email recipients to click through to your website, a form or a product page.
Also, make sure to optimise the send time. The best time to send an email varies, but the consensus is that 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on weekdays is the optimal window. To hedge your bet even more, send on a Monday; data from HubSpot shows that 22% of marketers say Monday is the best day for high open rates.
5. Measure your email marketing campaign results
One of the best ways to find out if your email marketing campaigns are working is to check the reports. Most email marketing software include at least the basic reports, such as open rate, bounce rate and CTR.
If you’re using split testing, or A/B testing, for subject lines, body text and CTAs, you’ll be able to see what worked best and what didn’t. Use the data you gather to hone your email marketing strategy so you can increase your open rate and CTR.
6. Scrub, rinse and repeat
You’re going to have bounced emails. It’s only a cause for concern if it happens too often or you don’t scrub the bad emails. A high bounce rate can affect where your email ends up for your readers; that is, your emails could end up in spam folders and not the inbox as you want.
Just ensure you scrub those email addresses that weren’t delivered for whatever reason (fake email address or blocked email, for example). You should be able to easily remove the bounced email addresses and carry on with your campaigns (with a bit of fine-tuning for better results the next round).
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