Beyond the Blast: Tips to Make Your Email Marketing Work for You

Even us marketers are guilty of it, in the hustle and bustle of our everyday lives, many a message is sent to the trash before even being opened. How then, do you burst through the clutter and make your email marketing work for you?  Email can seem like a simple, cost-effective way to reach thousands of target consumers with just one click. Alas, we don’t always achieve the results we’d like! Follow these tips to help you get the results you want!

Quality Over Quantity

Duplicate emails, stale addresses, inactive contacts, these are just a few anchors weighing down the effectiveness of your eblasts. While you may have thousands of contacts in your database, how many of those are actually qualified leads? How many have long ago stopped opening your emails, let alone clicked through to consider an offer? Start by cleaning up your list, and come to terms with that fact that this tedious cleaning up process should be done quarterly.

Removing an individual from your contact list after three unopened emails is a good rule of thumb. If you’re crunched for time, there are a ton of companies out there that will clean up your list for you, DataValidation being one. Whether you manage this process yourself or contract it out, make sure it gets done! Closely managing your contact list will help improve your metrics while maximizing your effectiveness.

Segment Contacts

The process of segmenting your customers assumes you have collected key information, for example, company affiliation and position in the company. If you’ve only captured emails to date, shame on you! Moving forward, ensure that at a minimum, you ask for company and position in your offers. Knowing the role your contact has at a company, and their associated seniority level, is valuable in segmentation.

It’s simple, the more information you have about your contact, the better! It makes your job easier and their experience better as you can ensure that your prospective client is receiving information of value to them. Now, there are an endless number of ways to segment your email list. Some others to consider include geographical location, buyer persona, purchase cycle, and industry.

Globally, segmented campaigns achieve 59.99% more clicks then non-segmented campaigns. List segmentation in email marketing can help you achieve higher open rates, lower unsubscribe rates, and increased deliverability! What are you waiting for?

Personalize!

Yes, this tip goes hand in hand with segmentation. It may seem counterintuitive but personalizing emails really starts with you. What is your goal in sending out this email? If you’re trying to get your contact primed for the next stage of the buyers journey, make sure the information within the email is tailored to doing so. There are a number of ways to personalize an email beyond including the contacts name in the subject line or email.

If your contacts are spread globally, you should consider this when scheduling your eblasts to go out to ensure that they are received at the optimum time. Another tip is to make use of automated emails. An example would be a thank you email sent to a contact that has just taken advantage of an offer.

If you’re using already HubSpot, a sales and marketing platform, it already has tools in place to facilitate personalization. Read more about that process here.

Measure Metrics

The job doesn’t end after you click ‘schedule’ on the eblast you worked so hard to craft. This marks the moment where the fun begins! As you sit back waiting for the results to come in, what metrics are you analyzing?

Below are a few insightful metrics to get you started:

• Open Rate: Simple enough, the number of recipients that opened your message.
• Click-Through rate: More specific, reports on how many people clicked on specific links within your email.
• Unsubscribed: The number of people that unsubscribed from future communications.
• Conversion Rate: Percentage of individuals who take advantage of the action you’ve pitched.

Test It Out

We’ve covered a lot of ground in these tips to make your marketing work for you. In short, every email you send out should be a data-backed, personalized communication sent to a target buyer persona. Following these tips will lay the groundwork for you in proving the ROI of your efforts.