Every website owner knows that there’s a lot more to email marketing than just sending out a random email now and then. To truly maximize your results from email marketing, you’ve got to have an effective plan that includes targeted, well-thought-out content, consistent effort, and testing. It’s also important to know your audience well and determine exactly what their wants and needs are.
Wether you’re planning to launch a new email marketing campaign or want to overhaul your present campaign, using the five strategies below will help to boost your success.
1. Employ A/B Testing
Testing your email marketing tactics is vital for getting the most out of your efforts. Without it, you’ll never know for sure if what you’re doing is really working. The simplest and one of the most useful testing tools is A/B testing. This simply means that you send one email to one segment of your list, and another version to the rest. Looking at your response rates from each segment will tell you which email was most effective. Rarely, you might find little or no difference, but more likely than not, you’ll be able to identify email components that are more useful than others.
2. Integrate Social Media
Emails that include the option to share content on different social media websites can significantly increase your leverage all over the web. When your name becomes a part of conversations on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter, your subscribers will help get your name out there by spreading your info to their community and to other social networking sites. The result will be an increased number of subscribers who are interested in what you have to offer.
3. Make it Personal
A very effective way of creating successful marketing through email is by personalizing the content to suit each reader. One of most basic and simple ways to personalize an email is by using the name of the recipient in the subject line. But if you want to take personalization to higher levels, include info based on things like location, stores frequented, brands being purchased, customer lifestyles, customer preferences, and different demographics. The overall goal of using this type of dynamic personalization is to supply the reader with a message that is completely relevant to them.
4. Track Outcomes
A very helpful marketing move is to include email outcomes in your database. These consist of the results of your email interactions - things like clicks, opens, and other stats that will give you a better grasp of how your emails are being read and used. This tracking is part of most good email marketing platforms, and it’s critical to the success of your campaigns.
5. Segment Your List
Having a large list of subscribers is clearly better than having a small one. But segmenting your big list into smaller groups of people with similar interests can significantly improve the outcome of your email campaigns. Not only does sending relevant messages to target audiences improve the reach of your campaign, but it will also improve your ROI. When you’re gearing emails to specific individuals, your opt-out rate will be considerably smaller than if you were to send the same message to every subscriber on your list.
Segmenting customers into different categories based on specific email behaviors is a good tactic. Some categories customers can be placed in include:
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Social Media Supporter: Determined by the number of times a customer has shared emails on social networking sites.
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Email-Influenced Buyer: Based on link-clicking numbers, followed by purchases.
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Coupon User: Based on the number of redeemed email coupons.
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Clicker: Determined by the number of times emailed links have been clicked.
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Inactive: Based on the number of delivered emails that were not opened by recipient.
Once you’ve gained a more thorough understanding of who your subscribers are and under which category they fall, you’ll have the knowledge required to generate an email campaign that will be geared toward each of your subscribers individually.
Keeping track of your email campaigns and maximizing their effectiveness isn’t an easy job, but it’s one that’s worth doing right! What other tips and tricks for email campaigns can you share? Let everyone know in the comments!