How to Improve your Email Marketing Strategies in 60 days

Email is a revenue-driving machine. It reigns supreme as the most powerful marketing channel in terms of ROI, returning $38 for every $1 you spend. What’s more: It converts 40 times as many customers as social media.

But just because you have some email content and a list of subscribers doesn’t mean you’re getting the maximum benefit out of your email marketing campaigns.

In this post, we’ll take a look at nine things you can do to improve your email marketing by driving subscriber engagement, improving CTR, and curating more compelling content.

1. Use personalization for customer retention

Over 75% of email revenue is generated by triggered, personalized campaignsrather than one-size-fits-all campaigns according to DMA.

That said, personalization is a must for customer retention. We all know it’s cheaper to keep an existing customer than to acquire a new one. Personalization nurtures your customers, keeping them engaged and interested by staying relevant and specific to their needs.

So how do you nail personalization? You can deploy:

1. Cart abandonment reminders featuring subscriber-relevant products
2. Personalized copy that leverages customer data you’ve collected
3. Location-specific images/offers that make emails feel hyper-relevant

Just remember: Personalization should be personal. Make sure your copy reads like it was written for a human, not just an inbox.

2. Create subject lines that improve conversions

Just like the headline in traditional copywriting, your subject line is the only part most people read. In the case of email, it’s what determines whether or not they open it.

Of all the personal data you can collect for targeted emails, one of the most important pieces is your subscriber’s first name. Subject lines featuring a first name have a 26% higher open rate.

Be aware of length when writing a subject line. 50% of emails are opened on a mobile device, and iPhones can only show between 35–38 characters in portrait mode—so aim for subject lines in the 17–24 character range. And try to keep it to 3–5 words.

If you need suggestions for a killer subject line, here are 20 to get you startedalong with subject line best practices backed by hard data.

3. Try segmentation-triggered automation

Once you know a thing or two about your customers, it’s time to segment them into categories based on their behavior, interests, and where they are in the buyer’s journey. Use behavioral segments to segment users based on how they’ve interacted with your website in the past.

Segments and behavior data can then be used to trigger automated emails that deliver your most relevant content exactly when it’s most needed (like on a subscriber’s birthday, post-purchase, etc.)

4. Personalize with dynamic content

Campaign Monitor’s tools make it easy to customize your content to fit different customer segments using simple drag-and-drop tools.

So how do you do that? Dynamic content allows you to customize pretty much everything about an email to suit the recipient. As in suit them, quite literally. Clothing size is one of the data points you can use for targeting and personalization.

With this type of personalized email content, you can boost the relevancy of your messages so your email marketing drives clicks (and sales) without forcing you to invest oodles of time in creating many different individual campaigns.

5. Track behavior with robust analytics

A website tracking snippet allows you to track users’ behaviors when they visit your site or follow links from an email. Tools like Google Analytics help you make sense of this data which you can then use to improve your personalization and segmentation.

With the help of these robust analytics and customer insights, you can then connect the dots and help your customers go from ‘interested’ to ‘purchased’ much more quickly.

As you dive into the numbers, keep an eye on some of the KPIs for an email campaign, like open rate, click-through rate, and conversion rate. These will tell you what’s working (and what’s not).

Need more? Check out our step-by-step guide to tracking activity on your website.

6. Turn to effective A/B testing

Torn between two great ideas for a subject line? Run both of them and compare their performance. This is the beauty of A/B testing: You can find out what works best and then deploy it with the rest of your audience.

As a starting point for your A/B testing efforts, try experimenting with your subject lines, as higher open rates often mean higher conversions.

Keep everything about the two emails the same except the subject line, and see which one gets more opens. Make note of which subject line approaches work best for your audience, and then incorporate what you learn into future email campaigns and marketing content.

7. Use timing to send emails

Sometimes driving email revenue is all about timing.

Research shows that the best time of day to send an email is between 10 and 11 AM and that Monday and Sunday have high transaction rates, but Tuesday has the highest open rates and click-throughs. There’s no one-size-fits-all for this, so it will take some experimentation to figure out your ideal email timing—but this data provides a starting point.

As you work to find out which email timing drives the best results, don’t forget to take time zones into account. If your subscribers are all over the world, this may involve some compromise.

8. Create consistency

According to Entrepreneur, there’s no magic number for how often to send your marketing emails. A MarketingSherpa study seems to suggest that it’s better to send emails more often than less often. 15% of those polled say they wouldn’t mind receiving a promotional email every day.

What that means for you: If nothing else, it’s important to be consistent with your email marketing and to ask your audience how often they want to hear from you. Give subscribers a voice and take note of their requests in your approach.

9. Make sure your writing is up to snuff

You don’t have to write the great American novel, but you should write in a way that engages and prompts action within your emails. All the basics of composition still apply, and overall, you want to create valuable, insightful pieces of writing that make people want to read what you send them.

That means:

• Write professionally
• Incorporate some personality
• Make it interesting and story-based

No marketing trick or software magic can compete with writing that’s so good people actually look forward to seeing it in their inbox. Here are a few more tips on email copy writing.


Wrap up

Email has so much to offer when it comes to driving revenue for your business, and with these tips in mind, you’re already on your way to getting more from your email marketing strategy.

From data you’ll leverage for greater personalization to a consistent sending schedule, you can make email your most profitable digital marketing channel.

Source: Lane Harbin