Tag Archives: tips for optimizing email campaigns

How to Clean Your Email List

How to Clean Your Email List

You need a healthy email list to be successful at email marketing. Ongoing list maintenance keeps your deliverability high and conversion rates at an acceptable level. Use these tips to get the most out of your email list.

1. Purge Inactive Subscribers.

If too many people delete your emails or mark them as spam, all of your messages may go straight to the trash. Reach out to inactive people. Inquire if they still want the information and messages you provide. If not, take them off of the email list. If they’re interested later on, they know where to find you.

2. Be Consistent

You don’t have to email your list every day to see results. You do need to be consistent if you want to email your list once per week, try to stay with that pace. Focus on quality over quantity. You’re competing with countless other marketing messages in their inboxes.

3. Track Your Open and Click-through Rates

Do you know how many people opened your last email? Your click through rate? Pay close attention to your email stats. Track:

  • The type of emails that work best with your subscriber list
  • Open rates
  • Click-through rate
  • Device the email was viewed on

You can learn a lot about your subscriber preferences and use that information to improve with each message.

4. Provide Value in Exchange for the Email Sign-up

People have crowded inboxes, so you need a pretty good incentive to get space in there. If you run an e-commerce store, you can offer free shipping or a discount on their first order. For B2B companies, ebooks or a comprehensive guide to your industry is a good way to attract new subscribers.

How to Improve Your Email Open Rate

How to Improve Your Email Open Rate

According to eMarketer, almost 237 million Americans will use email in 2017. This represents a significant portion of the online population.  People read email! Getting your message out isn’t hard, it’s just a matter of presenting it professionally and hitting send. The tough piece is convincing your customers to open your latest message.

The bottom line is the subject line

It all starts with the subject line. Enticing readers to open your email is your first duty. Because of that, the subject line needs to be something more than what you can dash off at the last moment. I have had emails where I’ve spent more time crafting the perfect subject line than I spent writing the email.

If the subject doesn’t grab them, they won’t read it!  Personalize your email subject lines, most ESP (email service providers) allow you to do this easily.

If your email contains an offer, tell your audience about it, so your recipients know what’s inside the email waiting for them.  Keep it concise, active, and inviting.

The perfect send time

Timing your email send perfectly can lead to greater open rates. Email marketers agree that mid-week (Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday) emails are most successful for B2B businesses. If you’re B2C, your delivery window widens by Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

I like to send emails early in the morning, so they’re in the inbox when it’s first opened in the am. Or around lunch, people ease back into work by checking their emails. Because they’re full and satisfied, they’re more likely to be patient enough to read the mail rather than deleting it for lack of time to read it.

If your email is promoting an event with specific timing, send the email a couple of weeks before and again a couple of days before the event.

Valuable email content

Give your customers something of value in every email. Even if it’s just tips and tricks on how to do something. When you offer value, you’re less likely to end up in the spam folder.

It’s a good idea to segment your list right out of the gate. Group your readers by products they’ve purchased, where their IP address is located, or special interests. Your ESP will now their location from their IP address.

Add several email subscription forms to your list with free downloads and segment as to the download they choose or page they subscribe on.

Here are a few of the most common data sets you may want to segment by:

  • Time they have been on your mailing list
  • What they’ve purchased from you
  • Date of the last purchase from your company
  • Last interaction

Drilling down with that information can lead to more effective and directed email campaigns.

Where do your readers view their email?

Take your email recipients’ lifestyle into account as well. A full 64% of decision-makers read their emails via their smartphone. (Want to know what your readers are viewing on and you use MailChimp? Learn how here.) If your email isn’t formatted to be easily read on a mobile screen, you may receive fewer click-throughs and find your open rate decreasing over time.

If you make these changes and don’t see an immediate turnaround in a declining open rate, don’t get discouraged. There is an art to strategic email marketing. When you pay attention to what’s going on with your email recipients, you’ll become better tuned to what works best for your business.

Create an Email Series for Lead Generation

Create an Email Series for Lead Generation

In the past, one tried-and-true marketing method always included email, which was sent to the most people possible, in case some of that huge audience would buy. This strategy isn’t very effective. The overwhelming majority of recipients had no interest and either deleted the email or unsubscribed.  It was a scattershot approach. In effect, shoot broad and hopefully hit something. Today a narrow or more targeted approach is needed and is possible.

The more focused approach is to send out a series of emails.  Sent your emails based on an event or trigger. A recipient will appreciate a personalized birthday note. Or a ‘thank you’ note when someone registers for a particular event or makes a purchase. The important element of this strategy is that the emails are focused and purposeful, rather than broad, generic, and hopeful.

How to optimize your campaign

  • Establish goals and objectives – This is essential for planning your campaign, and coordinating team effort to achieve the desired outcome. Decide what the email message should be, whether it’s a new promotion, a suggestion to buyers about similar products, a friendly greeting to a new subscriber, coupons or discounts on products, or an announcement about your event or activity.
  • Categorize your email lists – Don’t use the same list for every email. Not all recipients will be interested in every type of email. Thus categorize your email lists by interest type, geographic location, birthday month, purchased products, or follow-up. Categorization should occur at the moment a new subscriber signs up, so they are placed in the most relevant group. By mailing to specific groups of individuals, you’ll get a much better ROI on your automated emails.
  • Make effective use of email software – There are lots of automated email service providers. Therefore, you should use the one best suited to the strategies you use in your marketing efforts. All of them track the open rate of your emails, gather demographic information about recipients, and monitor link clicks. Many of these email software companies have free versions.

Planning your campaigns

  • Plan for the long term – Many recipients won’t respond to the initial email. Plan follow-up messages and schedule them at regular intervals to achieve the results you want. These will serve as reminders and reinforcements of your original message.
  • Prepare emails in advance – Write your emails ahead of time. They need to have a consistent tone and language. Your subject line should grab their attention. Hence, your email content should clearly communicate that only your products can solve their problem and make their life better.
  • Be persistent – Nurturing email leads is not a one-time deal. You’ll need multiple emails, and each one should be better than the last. Now you have more specific information about your recipients so you can zoom right in on their pain points. Don’t be afraid to tinker with the subject and the message to see what works best and gets you the responses you want.

That’s a wrap on improving your online sales through a more strategic email lead generation series.  Remember first capture, then segment, based on actions they take to give them relevant emails.  Email works, make it specific and personalized.