8 ways to improve your email marketing campaigns

Along with social media and pay-per-click ads, email marketing is one of the top 3 most effective marketing methods. Like with all digital marketing strategies, it is an ever-changing landscape that business owners need to keep up with and pay attention to the latest changes. In this article we have 8 key modern suggestions for how any business can improve their email marketing open rates and click rate.

Let’s go!

1. Segment your email list

Many businesses offer a wide variety of things in their email marketing. Some of your emails could be purely informative, others directing people to website pages, others to downloads and others offering discount codes or special offers. Your subscribers can be divided up into segmented groups depending on what you’ve seen them show interest in in the past. For example, if you offer discounts for students or for retirees, consider segmenting your email list by age group. Providing relevant messages to your subscribers encourages higher open and click-through rates.

2. Make your emails mobile-friendly

Now a days most people open their emails on their phone rather than on a desktop computer, because of this it has become very important to ensure that your emails are mobile friendly. For your emails to be considered mobile friendly they need to be easy to read and navigate across all devices that your customer could open them on. If you fail to make your emails mobile friendly, then the subscriber would be much more likely to just delete the email or unsubscribe.

3. Keep the preview pane in mind

Before customers decide if they want to click on your email at all, often on desktop devices they will see a preview pane of part of the first sentence of the email. Make sure it’s eye-catching and encourages them to find out more. Ideally have a call to action right at the top. Most recipients will glance quickly at the preview pane and subject line and decide whether or not to click on your email from those elements alone. So they need to be utilized to the max.

4. Be succinct

You’re emailing your subscribers because you want them to DO something or KNOW something. If you have a lot of content to share, consider including teasers for each section and then ‘read more’ buttons to the full info on the original source. You don’t want to give too much away in the email to the point where your customers won’t need to go to the source, especially if it’s a page on your website or a social media post.

5. Find out the best time of day to email your subscribers

Every organization is different and you need to spend time learning about your subscribers’ wants, needs and what they are really interested in. Don’t assume that everyone only responds between 9am – 5pm on weekdays. Plus make sure to consider time zones. Again, this is where email segmentation will help you optimize your campaigns.

6. Personalize your content

Establish your own tone of voice. Emails that clearly have no customization and differ little from your competitors won’t resonate with your contacts. Adding some type of personal touch can encourage contacts to open your emails and will make them more likely to click through to find out more.

Make sure you’re doing at least the basics by adding the recipient’s first name. If you have the tools, use more advanced data e.g. use their past purchase behavior to determine what they might be interested in moving forward. As well as this, make sure you have your own tone of voice and branding, something that instantly resonates with the contact that it’s your organization when they see the email in their inbox.

7. Verify your email list

When someone is adding their email address, it’s possible they make a mistake or even use a fake email altogether. This will negatively impact your email campaigns and your stat reports. Try running your list through a scrubbing and verification service or software on a regular basis.

8. Have one clear call to action per email

It’s fine to include updates about multiple elements in your emails, but make sure you only have 1 main and clear call to action per email. If your recipient doesn’t know what you want them to do within seconds of opening your email, whether that’s visiting a page, calling a phone number, or completing a form, they are more likely to delete your email.

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