Email marketing can be incredibly complex and there are a lot of variables to consider when implementing an email marketing program. Whether your goal is to increase your ROI or grow your email list, here are a few things you can do to crush your email marketing goals.
Best tips for email marketing optimization
Start with a solid strategy
Getting subscribers to open your emails starts with having a solid, clearly defined email marketing strategy. To build an effective strategy, you must do your research. This will help you keep up with the ever-changing needs of your customers. You can use a quality ESP to collect data on your emails, which you can then analyze to glean what your customers need.
You’ll also need to track metrics that are important to your business’ success. For instance, you can look at the open rates and engagement of past emails. Consider whether you would be able to improve on them by changing your send times, subject lines or the name you send from. Basically, the whole goal of analyzing email data is to optimize it in order to constantly improve your email marketing program.
Personalize, personalize, personalize
Personalization is a standard feature of modern marketing so you’ll do well to customize your emails to ensure that they’re relevant to your subscribers. Personalized emails are more effective than generalized ones because they offer a nuanced and customized experience for the subscriber.
Using the right email software, you can dynamically insert subscriber’s names into the email as part of your personalization efforts. This simple tweak alone can help you increase your open and click-through rates.
Segment your emails
Email segmentation is the practice of dividing your subscribers into different groups based on criteria such as age, previous purchase history and location. This creates a targeted list of subscribers. That way, you can be sure that you’re sending your emails to the right people who are most likely to connect with your message.
An easy way to do this is to create buyer personas of your customers based on their demographics, goals and motivations. Consider how working with a full-service email marketing agency might further enhance your segmentation efforts. By leveraging their expertise, you can develop more refined strategies and achieve better results with your targeted email campaigns. To see how this could benefit you, take a look at this resource for starting the year strong with expert support.
Be mobile friendly
Make sure your emails look good and load well on mobile devices. This includes ensuring that your CTA is above the fold to improve the chances of your customers seeing it from smartphones and tablets.
Create attractive subject lines
Your email subject line is the first thing that a person sees when they receive an email. That’s why you should ensure that it’s catchy, attractive and enticing. That way, subscribers are more likely to open it. Also, studies show that if you insert the subscriber’s first name into a subject line, they’re more likely to open it. Remember when we mentioned personalization before? This is where it comes in.
Time your emails well
Make sure to send your emails at the right time. Studies suggest that Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 10 am to 2 pm has the highest open rates. Depending on the content of your emails, make sure to schedule them to be in line with one of these days.
Make it fun
This means making your emails more conversational and avoiding salesy language that can turn off your audience. Bigger text, proper spacing and one-line paragraphs can all contribute to making your emails more appealing.
Use automated workflows
Instead of sitting down to write an email every time you get a new subscriber or have a new promotion to announce, use automated email workflows. Email automation is a great way to save time while maintaining constant communication with your subscribers.
Automated emails will go out to your email list in a timely manner according to a predetermined schedule. This is also a great way to ensure that the emails are sent at the right time and to the right audience. You can program these variables into the emails ahead of time.
One example of email automation is the cart abandonment flow. This automated email sequence enables you to keep in touch with subscribers that have shown an interest in your products. It sends emails to people who left your website with items in their cart. A few email reminders could be all the customer needs to make a purchase.
Clean up your email list
A large email list means nothing if most of your subscribers don’t open your emails. Plus, sending emails to people who won’t open them is a waste of email marketing dollars. This can happen because you’re sending emails to addresses that no longer exist or your emails simply bounce. Either way, email providers are going to notice when this happens and relegate you to the spam folder. That’s why you want to only keep subscribers that are engaging with your emails as this will help to increase your open rates.
You can clean your email list by removing people who have unsubscribed immediately. Get rid of any duplicate email addresses and suspect-looking, spammy addresses like “[email protected]” or “[email protected]” for example. Once you’ve done the initial clean-up, make email scrubbing a habit. Do it at least once a quarter to keep your email list healthy. Just this one change can significantly improve your results.
A/B test your emails
Email marketing is a numbers game. One of the best ways to increase your numbers is to A/B test your emails. For instance, let’s say you want to increase open rates by 100% from 5% of people opening your emails to 10%.
Running A/B tests will get you closer to your goals by helping you to figure out what works and what doesn’t. A/B test subject lines to find out which SLs get a higher open rate. Split test your actual email to find out if you should go with short or long emails. You can run A/B tests to determine all sorts of things, from what time you should send emails to the Subject Lines and CTAs you should use. All it takes is spending a bit more time on your emails to split test different options and optimize your results.
The importance of email marketing design
People check their emails every day and oftentimes they’re met with the same old marketing tactics. One of the best ways to stand apart from the competition is through eye-catching and compelling email design.
Pay close attention to how your emails look and don’t underestimate the value of visually appealing email marketing content. A few design tweaks can significantly increase your click-through rates. Create beautiful emails that subscribers won’t be able to take their eyes off of and you’ll be halfway to exceptional results.
How optimized email marketing grows your business
Why is it important to optimize your email marketing program? Because email optimization allows you to communicate more effectively with your audience to increase ROI and engagement.
The more your emails improve, the more credibility your business will have. Subscribers can tell when you’re putting more effort into your emails. The more you consistently improve, the better your engagement and click-through-rates will be.
In a Nutshell
Email marketing is one of the best ways to keep in touch with your audience. Most people consider checking emails a vital part of their day. If you can deliver value to their inboxes with every campaign you send, then you can create brand loyalty, enjoy high click-through-rates, boost engagement and of course, increase revenue.
Use these email marketing best practices to improve your email marketing program today. Or better yet, invest in an experienced email marketing team who will optimize your emails for you while you focus on other aspects of your business. If you're looking for a comprehensive solution to enhance your email strategy, consider exploring professional email campaign management services to ensure that every campaign is optimized for success.