Seven ways to make email marketing work for you

1. Start a conversation

Many marketers follow the ‘batch and blast’ method of email campaigns. This achieves the objective of sending out an email, but it often fails to start any real dialogue with your audience. Look to extend the conversation by listening, adding relevant value, and engaging prospects with meaningful communication via your email marketing campaigns. Always include social share buttons to encourage your audience to continue the conversation on social channels.

2. Focus on the message

Remember email campaigns send out more than communication – they send out a message. Consider sending different emails/messages to the different segments within your prospect list when appropriate and tailoring your messages according to the prospect’s profiles, interests and actions. By making sure you are including value added content, your readers are more likely to engage with your emails.

3. Look carefully at your results

Standard metrics are important, but it’s worth exploring all the information available to find out how effective your campaign has been. Pay attention to things like where prospects went on your web site, the number of visits, visit frequency, social sharing and how you can segment them based on their behaviours. You should be measuring engagement in addition to traditional metrics.

3. Give your prospects what they need

Examine your data to find out who opened the email, whether they downloaded the offer, the length of time they spent on your web site, and what they downloaded while they were on the site. Once you have a better idea of what your different segments find interesting, you can customise your offers to fit their needs.

4. Automate

By automating your email marketing campaigns, you will have more time to spend on developing strategy and being creative. Use your marketing automation solution to automate campaigns based on event and behavioural triggers, and this will ultimately give you more time to build relationships with prospects.

5. Keep it fresh

To avoid under-performing email campaigns, consider mixing up campaign styles and methods. As you test different email components such as delivery days, content, surveys, and fulfillment pieces, you will start to learn what your customers are responding to. By always keeping your content and methodology fresh, you will have a better chance of keeping your readers engaged.

6. Deliver

Even the best plan will fail if your message doesn’t reach the inbox of your intended recipient. Proof your messages beforehand and avoid common spam trigger words like free, opportunity, offer and click here.

7. Test

To achieve optimal results from your email marketing campaigns, testing is a must. Consider testing subject lines along with standard A/B testing to ensure the right message goes to your prospects’ inbox. You can also test other elements including: images, change in copy or other small revisions. Why not also try testing your email on a small in-house group to make sure that all your links go to the right pages.

Follow these simple suggestions to make your email marketing campaigns more effective and turn your emails to sales.

Rob Barber is managing director at TYGA

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