Essential Email Marketing Tips to Run Effective Campaigns

These tips will help take the science and jargon out of running effective email marketing campaigns.  This form of marketing should be at the core of your marketing channels as you’ll find out as we go through the article together.

Electronic marketing, if done right and legally, helps build product and brand awareness and keep you in touch with your target audience.  With these marketing tips, you will be able to take your campaigns to a new level.

This article might be a long read for some, so feel free to jump to the sections below that are of most relevance and interest to you.

With so many different digital marketing tools to choose from, email marketing is often left to the bottom of the pile.  However, despite many believing that the use of electronic mail would begin to die out from 2020 onwards, its usage is on the rise.

Electronic mail marketing still offers the best return on investment (ROI) in digital marketing.  The reason is that you are communicating directly to your customer base who are already interested in your company, product or services.   It can increase customer loyalty and keep potential customers in the loop.  Loyal customers are likely to come back to you as you will retain the customer engagement after you have initially made a sale or provided a service.  It’s a really good way of keeping in touch.

It is a powerful tool for businesses because it allows you to reach customers directly.  It’s also a cost-effective way to market your products and services.  This makes email marketing an essential part of every business today.

However, this form of marketing is not as straightforward as some people think it is.  There is a “science” to it.  It’s important to understand how email works, why you should use it, and how to create a successful campaign.

15 Benefits of Email Marketing

Email marketing has its place front and centre in your marketing mix.  Why?  Because almost all of us have an account we visit daily.  Most of us are also likely to have more than one account.  As long as you collect said email, you can then communicate directly to this customer or potential customer about your product or service.

Once you have established an optimised website for example, with proper systems in place for capturing leads, interests of your visitors and segmenting your needs, you can control when they receive information from you, direct to their inbox…and where do most of us go every day?  Our inbox!

Here are some real benefits you might not have thought of regarding this marketing channel:

• It is cost-effective.  It offers the most cost-effective return on investment over all other forms of marketing today.  Not only is it cheap to run and do (despite perhaps an initial setup), you can continue to do it, receiving a greater return on investment over time.
• Most people use email.  Unlike other communication tools, almost all of us have an address.  What’s even better from a marketer’s point of view, is that often, our various electronic address is what allows us to access our online accounts such as our cloud services, entertainment services, shopping and more.
• People visit their inboxes a lot!  People will visit their inbox, on average, over 15 times a day!  This means that despite people predicting the demise of email, its usage is actually on the rise.  It’s because it’s simple, time-saving and efficient for sending information, sharing files and documenting things.
• Usage is global.  It doesn’t matter where you are in the world, you can always access your inbox.  No matter who you are, if you use a computer then it’s likely you use an email address.  There are no additional tariffs regarding geography unlike phone calls, so it is an efficient way to spread the news.
• You can personalise the content and form.  One of the great things is that you can personalise the content that the end-user sees.  Heck, you can even say hello to them with their own name if you keep accurate email list data.  This makes the end-user feel much more valued than a flyer or random social post that they might click on or were tricked into clicking.  The design of the messaging and layout can also be used differently too. For example, you can use email marketing for lead nurturing, welcome messages, newsletters, eCards, customer support and more.  It’s incredibly versatile and accessible.
• You build relationships over time.  Remember when you met the person you fell in love with and you got married the same day?  No?  That’s right, relationships take time.  Electronic mail marketing helps you nurture that relationship and build a connection that keeps people in touch just so they know you’re there for them.
• They can be opened more than once.  Unlike social media, emails don’t just evaporate unless you delete them permanently.  It might be your email gets filed to be opened on a later date or opened several times to refer back to useful content later.  It’s a great way of collecting and curating helpful content and information time and time again and becoming a trusted source.
• People can forward your content.  Any message you send can be forwarded to someone else with the click of a button.  This helps scale up your efforts even further.  They can then also file your campaign for reference at a later date too!
• Messages aren’t too intrusive.  Someone can open your mail or they won’t.  Either way, you’ve not hugely disrupted them in their day.  If you send your campaign across the world and it’s 2 am in someone’s local time, unless they have loud notifications enabled then you’re not going to disturb them and they’ll see your message first thing in the morning.
• You can plan and schedule in advance.  Your campaigns can be planned using email marketing tools.  This means you can work in the future and then automate the process.  This stops you from having to constantly revisit things over and over.  Is it a hot July summer’s day?  Sounds like a great time to schedule that Christmas eCard for your users which you can schedule to go our on December 18th later this year.
• You control the data and your lists.  One of the best things is that you control the data.  It’s your own personal list of subscribers.  You can cultivate it, grow it, shrink it, segment it and more, it’s up to you.  They’re yours.  Your personality and ability to grow your personalised lists will be the backbone to the success of any effective email marketing campaign you run.
• Your marketing is targeted.  Unlike social media, email marketing is a targeted marketing tool (unless you have a random list of names).  This means those you are emailing are interested in you which means they will be more interested in what you have to say.  This saves a lot of time and effort longer-term.
• It enhances your brand awareness. Email marketing works great for increasing your overall brand awareness.  Even if the content is not interested this time, they will still have heard of you.  You didn’t have to get in the car or pay thousands on a TV commercial or PPC campaign, you just wrote high-quality content, and put it out there to those already interested in you.
• Helps grow your content.  Email marketing can help grow and repurpose your content, reaching new audiences in the process.  We all like to look at different things at different times, and email is one of those things you can take your time with.
• Measure the effectiveness directly.  Unlike other marketing methods, you can easily measure the effectiveness of your campaigns and learn from them.  If you send out a direct mail campaign for example or pay for some PPC, you will never know how interested someone is in your services.  With emails, however, you can build a wider picture of the type of content and information that is of use to your prospect or client.  You can then tailor the information further and be of greater service and support to them.

Interesting Email Marketing Statistics

Here are some interesting statistics which show how important your email marketing campaigns remain:

• On average, people check their inbox 15 times every day.
• Employees spend 13 of their working hours each week in their inboxes (on average).
• Personalized email messages improve click-through rates by an average of 14% and conversions by 10%.
• Only 39% of online retailers send personalized product recommendations via email.
• The average open rate for any mailshot across the UK is 10% and 5% in the United States (though this does vary from industry to industry and in some cases can be over 20% in certain industries).
• You are 6x more likely to get a click-through from an email campaign than you are from a tweet.
• Email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter.
• When it comes to purchases made as a result of receiving a marketing message, email has the highest conversion rate (66%), when compared to social, direct mail and more.
• 72% of people prefer to receive promotional content through email, compared to 17% who prefer social media
• Email marketing has an ROI of 3800%.

Email Marketing Explained

The simplest way of explaining this form of marketing is that it is the process of sending emails, to a list of contacts you have built up, with helpful and informative information.  The difference between just writing them an email and sending it is that you will write the email once (and make it look really smart and pretty), and then it will be duplicated to each person you send it to on the list.  So if you had a list of 1,000 people, the email that you wrote once, will be sent 1000 times and each user will see the same email.

The only difference is that if you personalise the campaign, then the text might welcome them to the email so that it is more user friendly and welcoming.  This can also form the basis for different email marketing strategies too.

The people on your list will need to have consented to receive emails from you but once they have, you can build up a community of people to keep them interested in your products and services.

Unlike sending a standard email, you can also check reports and data per each email campaign sent.  Why would you do this you might ask?  Well, this can let you know things like:

• Who has opened your email?
• Where they were based (ie which country they’re in).
• How many times did they open the email (for example, did they return back to it or forward it to someone else?).
• Who has unsubscribed from your email list?
• Which links they might have clicked in your campaign (which you can then use to figure out what the user is interested in and provide further helpful information).

SUMMARY
Unlike the traditional methods of electronic mal where we send and receive messages, this form of marketing allows you to send in bulk and target key segments of customers.

Common Email Marketing Jargon Explained

As with anything, there are the usual buzz words, jargon and phrases.  Whilst some sound complicated they’re actually incredibly simple and this will help you get the most from your email marketing campaign, especially when analysing the data.  The language is common across all major email marketing tools too.

Here are the most common words and what they mean when it comes to email marketing.

Relays

In simple terms, an email relay is a process to send your email.  1 relay, equates to one email being sent.  Email relays are important because they determine how many emails you are sending, and how effective your email campaigns are and ultimately will have a bearing on how how much your email campaigns are costing you.  Usually, the more relays you send, the more a campaign can cost.

Contact Lists

Your email marketing list is one of the most important components.  Without an email list, you have no need for email marketing.  Your email list is simply a collection of all the emails of the people you wish to send an email to.

You can manage and maintain more than one list usually, which means you can segment the content and email marketing content you send.  This plays a key component in your overall email marketing strategy.  Each time you run or send an email marketing campaign, you will need to decide which email list it will be sent to.  Of course, you will also need consent from each of the people on the list to fulfil your legal requirements and remain legal and GDPR compliant.  This applies to business owners and anyone running email marketing campaigns within the public, private or third party sectors.

Your email marketing list is also sometimes known as contact lists.  These lists are typically made up of potential customers, and existing clients and the variety of lists will dictate the types of emails you will send them.

Spam and Spam Filters

Spam email is classed as emails which the user deems irrelevant, unsolicited and generally “dodgy” looking.  Usually emails with bad spelling, poor imagery, and offensive content and used for malicious purposes to try and trick the user into something they don’t want to do.  The worst form of spam emails can contain viruses, link to malicious software or even be part of a denial of service attack to take down email communications at an organisation.

Spam filters are generally built of software built into email service providers that use artificial intelligence and are constantly learning about and detecting unsolicited email campaigns.  If you end up triggering someone’s spam filter then you will likely be blocked or end up as an initial soft bounce or later a hard bounce.  A spam filter will generally assess:

• Your email subject title
•   Spam words and phrases (such as free money, free offer, lowest price etc)
• Feedback from users who previously marked you as junk
• Whether your IP address used to send the relays is blocked

You want to avoid spam filters because they can impact your sending reputation but worse than that, annoy your audience too.

Unfortunately up to 20-25% of legitimate emails sent to genuine audiences end up in the spam folders because a spam filter might be set too high or come under attack from too many spam emails.

Bounce Rate

An email bounce simply means that your email was not delivered to the intended recipient.  Therefore, the bounce rate is the total of emails which didn’t arrive, generally shown as a percentage.

If you had a list of 100 people, and 10 emails bounce, this means you have a bounce rate of 10%.

If you have a high bounce rate then it means something is wrong with the quality of your email list which can damage your organisation’s send rating.  If you have a low bounce rate, this means you generally have a high-quality list (assuming they are your intended audience interested in your product or services).

An email service provider usually pays close attention to bounce rates to ensure their services are not being abused and used for malicious means such as spamming.  You need to as well, as you could be paying a premium for emails which are not actually being delivered.

Hard and Soft Bounce

Typically a bounce is defined as either a soft or hard bounce.

A soft bounce is usually a temporary delivery block.  This is usually because the end recipient has an issue on their end.  For example, this might be that:

• their inbox is full.
• the service provider is down.
• the email is too large to be accepted (common when large attachments are sent).
• or simply that the inbox has become unusable for some reason outside of the sender’s control.

A hard bounce is more serious.  This is more of a definitive reason as to why the email could not be delivered and never will be again.  Common hard bounce reasons include:

• the email address not actually being real (e.g. someone submitted a fake email address).
• an email address no longer exists.
• or, that your email sending address has been completely blocked.

Either way, your email is never going to arrive in their inbox again and should be removed from your email list to avoid your email credibility being tarnished.

Open Rate

The open rate is the number of times your email was opened.  You could, for example, send an email campaign that no one opens.  This would give you a 0% open rate.  You could send one that everyone opens which gives you a 100% open rate.  You could also send an email campaign that has a 200% open rate, which means everyone opened it twice.  This is merely the number that dictates to some degree how effective your email campaign was and how many people read it and saw your content.  A high open rate means a high level of email deliverability and justifies your email marketing efforts.

A/B Testing

Simply put, this is the process of testing how effective a variation of your email campaign was against the other.  You might use a different email template for one campaign compared to the other and get a better click-through rate or open rate as a result.  It’s a way of learning what your audience liked best and was most effective in getting a transaction at your business.  A/B Testing is frequently used when sending commercial emails and campaigns.  It’s also what some call growth hacking, as you constantly test and refine solutions to get the best results possible.

Bulk Sending

When you send an email to someone, it’s usually just to them or anyone else you manually copy into the email.  This is something you manually do.  When you send bulk emails, the email tools that you choose to use will send out potentially thousands of emails in one go without you needing to manually send them.  This makes it a very effective mass marketing tool to reach as many potential customers or service users as possible.  It also though has been misused as you’d expect by scammers seeking to reap benefits for their own malicious purposes as well.  This is why running your email marketing service professionally gets you the best long term result and stops you from getting marked as a spammer and damaging your business reputation in the process.

Call to Action

A call to action is a word used across the digital marketing sphere.  It is usually a button or instruction to do something.  The most common in email marketing is a “read more” button which links to a blog article or other content piece on your website or social media campaign.  You might also see a “buy now” button for promotional emails that are selling products online.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is one of the key tactics used today.  It is the process of writing, developing and repurposing content you or the business has created to be of interest to the intended audience.

The goal is to pique their interest so that they click to learn more.  In the process being captured in the branding net that’s being cast to keep them interested in your product and services.  As humans, we love stories and absorbing more and more information, and content marketing fit right in.  You’re very often being targeted by content marketing and don’t even realise it.

Conversion Rate or Click-Through Rate

The click-through rate (CTR) in terms of email marketing is showing you how efficient and successful your call to action was on the campaign.  For example, if your email was opened 100 times and your read more button was clicked 20 times, then your click-through rate would be at 20%.  It can also be used to assess how many links were clicked in the campaign.  For example, they might not click the read more you wanted them to, but they clicked your business logo and went to your website to find out more about you – which is also a win for you.  Using this metric can show you how efficient your campaign is and it’s design and if often used in A/B testing.

Opt-In

This is simply someone choosing to join your mailing list.  They are consenting to join one or more of your lists.  Your users will often opt-in via your website through an opt-in form (perhaps reading some interesting content of yours), or may join up if you run campaigns.  Using this method can increase the change of people entering a fake email address and increase your bounce rate.

Double Optin

A double opt-in is still the customer or prospect signing up to your list, only this time they are not immediately added to your list, they have to confirm that their email address is correct.

They do this by confirming the email which will have automatically been sent to them to ensure they submitted a genuine email.  Double opt-in increases your chances of maintaining healthy, bounce-free email addresses in your lists, but it has the negative impact of making the person have to take two steps to join your list.  Some might simply forget to click your link to join the list therefore never join it.

Campaigns

An email campaign is a coordinated marketing piece which is sent using an email marketing tool or email marketing service.  It might be a one-off email or a collection of steps that are fulfilled (see drip marketing campaign).  Usually, an email marketing campaign would be used for commercial purposes, but they are also used for informative and important announcements by not for profit organisations too.  This is mainly because email marketing campaigns are cheap to run and effective as they go directly to the end customer.

Effective email campaigns have a goal in mind.  Such as, clicking through to buy a product, learning more about a business or joining a campaign perhaps on social media.  They are the catalyst to an end result.  Sometimes, however, there is no action to take and it’s just providing information to the end-user.  For example, you might have signed up to just receive stats and data about a particular industry or an insight from someone on a weekly basis.

Everything though will be tied to the goal of the email campaign being run.  To identify an email campaign they are usually given a name so that performance can be tracked and linked to any further marketing efforts too at the organisation.

Drip Marketing (or Drip Campaign)

A drip marketing campaign is similar to an email campaign, just it might have more than one step.  These types of campaigns are often used when someone signs up for software for example online.  They might get an automated welcome message, followed by a how-to email a few days later, followed by a how are you doing email a few days after that.

Drip campaigns are essentially pre-planned steps performed automatically by the email client.  They also support the buyer journey when someone becomes interested in a business.  Very often you will be initially placed into a drip campaign to retain interest.

Email Newsletters

An email newsletter is a common tactic used in email marketing strategy for keeping audiences in the loop.  People commonly might send a weekly or monthly newsletter with everything that’s been going on such as news, updates and product releases or perhaps the latest sales happening.  If this information is exclusive to people on the newsletter list, then it gives people greater incentive to sign up for your list.  The newsletter will often have more than one section and link to various areas of a website or further resources such as white papers.

Email Subject

The email subject is the first thing someone will see relating to your email campaign.  This is what they see before opening up the email.  This is why writing a great email subject is so important and can greatly impact your email open rate.  You need to be careful though, write a poor subject line it’ll never get opened.  Write a subject line that doesn’t reflect the content of the email and you’re likely to get marked as junk.  It’s a fine line and one that needs careful and honest consideration for each campaign.

You also have to be careful that you don’t use words that will trigger people’s spam filter.  In doing so you might appear to be an unsolicited email.  After spending so much time creating a beautiful email, it can all be for nothing if you then write a poor email subject.

List Segmentation

Email list segmentation plays a key role in your email marketing goals and strategy.  The reason for this is that you are likely to retain customer interest by providing information which is relevant to them.  If you provide content that is of no interest to them then they are likely to unsubscribe and tune out from you.  It’s then difficult to then build up their interest once more.

Segmenting means carving up.  Think about all of the emails you have on your list and let’s say you’re a coffee shop which offers takeaway coffee, lunches and delicious puddings.  Some customers will want to know all about your coffee, where it comes from, how it’s made, and the process you go through.  Some, just want to eat your deserts.  Some actually aren’t that interested and just want to know when you’re running offers or special events.  This means, that to ensure you’re sending the content of interest, you need to break up your core list into lots of little ones and let them choose what they want to know about.  Your list segmentation therefore might look like this:

• Coffee Club
• Pudding Club
• Lunch Club
• Special Offers
• General News

When you come to send your email campaign which is all about your new coffee on offer, you’ll just select the coffee club, saving the other customers who have no interest in coffee seeing that campaign.  This will increase your open rate, reduce your bounce rate and keep everyone happy.

Unsubscribe Rates

This means that people who have unsubscribed will not receive any of your future campaigns.  If you sent an email campaign to 1000 people and a 15% unsubscribe rate from it, then that campaign achieved a 15% unsubscribe rate.  Legally, you have to now provide an unsubscribe link to your email campaigns. You’ll very often find this link at the bottom of the email template design.

Whilst some view unsubscribes negatively, in some respects, there is no point in emailing people who are no longer interested in your products and services (if you are sending legitimate email campaigns).  If your email campaigns are poor and of low quality then unsubscribing is inevitable.

Email Marketing Software

Email marketing software is the vehicle in which you will run and manage your email campaigns.  Email marketing software typically:

• Runs online in the cloud or offline (rare nowadays).
• Allows you to create and manage email templates.
• Send out and schedule your email campaigns and drip campaigns or series of emails.
• Manage and segment users in your email marketing lists.
• Provides an email editor to edit your email content.
• Supports your email marketing plans.
• Will help you create responsive email templates for desktop, mobile and tablet devices.
• Provide you with the relays you need to send our your campaigns.
• Provide the technology to override email sending limits held in your usual email service provider account.
• Assist you in ensuring consistent and reliable email delivery rates.
• Provide you with a collection of reports which you can analyse the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Without using email marketing software you will not be able to perfect efficient email marketing campaigns.

15 Email Marketing Tips to Improve Your Campaigns

If you want to improve your campaigns and get more people opening, reading and sharing your content, then these 15 tips will help you achieve rapid results almost straight away.  None of this is too complicated, it’s about just doing the right thing and not becoming impatient and ruining your hard work with one bad move.

Follow these, and you will see a marked improvement in all your campaigns.

Get Personal

The more personal and relevant you can make your message to your audience, the better your campaigns will do.  This means you need to keep the content relevant to what the person signed up for.  If you go off-topic or provide no further personal value to them, then there is no need for them to remain on your list.  The best way to do this is to segment your lists and plan in advance helpful content for the audience.

Write a Meaningful Subject Line

Provide a meaningful subject, one that lures the prospect in and makes your content come across as a must-read. Using block capitals for a specific word is fine if required, but certainly don’t type the entire subject line in them as this is often regarded as spam. Also try to make it brief, summing up the content of the material in a few well-selected words.  Make sure you avoid using words which reduce confidence in your campaign and end up triggering the dreaded spam filters.

Avoid Using Spam Trigger Words

If your campaign triggers a spam filter, then it won’t arrive in your intended recipient’s inbox.  Indeed you might even be classed as a spammer indefinitely by them.  Generally, you need to avoid words that sound desperate, forceful, overly aggressive, words that are spelt wrong, words that sound too good to be true and lean too heavily on some sort of free offer or outcome.

This list is not complete as there are hundreds of spam trigger words, but here are the most common words that will trigger a spam block you should definitely avoid within the content and subject titles:

• #1
• 100% free
• 100% satisfied
• 50% off
• Act now
• Buy direct
• Apply now
• Be your own boss
• Buy
• Buy now
• Free
• Call now
• Can’t live without
• Chance
• Clearance
• Click
• Deal
• Deal ending soon
• Direct email
• Do it now
• Don’t delete
• Don’t hesitate
• Email marketing
• Freedom
• Friend
• Get started now
• Giving away
• Guarantee
• Hello
• Home based
• Income from home
• Increase sales
• Lifetime
• Limited time
• Lose weight
• Marketing
• Marketing solutions
• Month trial offer
• Near you
• Nigerian
• No obligation
• Offer
• Order
• Open
• Opt in
• Order status
• Passwords
• Please read
• Prizes
• Sale
• Sales
• Search engine listing
• Subscribe
• Success
• Teen
• Valium
• Viagra
• Web traffic
• Weight loss
• Wife

Email Marketing Requires Focus

None of us is likely to read a long, rambling, complicated message to its conclusion, so keep your message short and sharp. At the same time though, make sure to include all necessary information that you think will come across as helpful and intriguing, not annoying and inadequate or factually incorrect.

Optimise Your Content and Images

You really need to work at optimising your email design and layout.  Remember that images can be blocked for example, so if your main title in the design is in an image, make sure you show that text in text format too.  In not doing this, it’s one way to just look like a complete spammer.

Make sure that you keep your images as small as possible and host them elsewhere so that it reduces the overall size of the email arriving in the recipient’s inbox.  Not only will large images take a while to download, they will also potentially trigger a spam warning, annoy your recipients or also just not show up at all, ruining all your hard design work.

You also need to optimise your written content and layout to ensure it’s not too long, doesn’t contain grammatical errors and renders properly.

You will now also need to optimise your email campaigns to render on mobile phones and tablets.  Make sure it looks modern and responsive to the environment it is being read on.  Make the most of A/B testing as it will guarantee better results in the long run.

Keep it Simple

There’s so much truth to this.  We’re all so busy, so keep your emails simple to read and clear in terms of what to do with your call to action.  If this means sending a simple design with an image, a small paragraph and a button, do it.  You will likely find a higher opening rate, than an email with lots of different link options.  Why?  Because it’ll focus the recipient’s mind and they will be able to process faster what to do next.

Accept Your Email Will Be Read Differently in Software and Devices

We all use different tools and software to open up our emails.  This means your email design and email marketing campaign will render differently across different devices.  This means you need to test it across as many platforms as possible.  This includes mobile, tablet and desktop devices.  With the emergence of VR in business, some may even read your emails in the metaverse.

People might read their email in Microsoft Outlook, Apple Mail, open-source software, internet browsers, and even on the TV!  You need to be prepared that all these systems work differently so test, test and then test again.

Be Relevant and Timely

Make sure you remain relevant to your audience.  Keep up to date with what’s happening in your industry, the news, the time of year, and the economy for example.  Basically, don’t go wishing anyone Happy Christmas in the middle of spring!

Keep Your Email Lists Clean

Cultivating your email list is a must.  You must respect those that unsubscribe, but you must also respect those that chose to be on a particular list and not send them content that they indicated would not be of interest to them.  By trimming back your list, you will actually end up with a much more focused group of interested people in your product and services and save yourself any additional email relay costs.

Manage Your Bounce Rates

You need to keep your bounce rates as low as possible, namely so that you can keep sending email campaigns and not get blocked.  This means you should never buy email marketing lists, it just doesn’t work.  You should also make sure that you consider using double opt-in if your bounce rate starts to increase dramatically.

Make sure you avoid using spammy words as this will just get blocked by spam filters and damage your reputation.  You might think it will get you somewhere, but shortcuts usually lead to trouble and problems further down the line.  Be patient, be unique.  Don’t copy others.  Just because someone else uses spammy content doesn’t mean you should.  Quality content, well written always wins the day and the respect of your audience.

Just because you have a large list doesn’t mean it’s a great one.  This means you also need to spend time cleaning up your list of those who have bounced it it’s not managed automatically in the email tool you’re using.

Remain Consistent

This means keeping your email templates the same and on-brand.  By keeping consistent in your layout and quality, you will remain a trusted sender to everyone on your list.  You should also remain consistent in your sending days and times of the week.  Anything that seems off might not get opened.

The best way to do this is to plan your content out in advance and then schedule it.  This will also keep you consistent and will improve your conversion rates too.   You will remain consistent and it will actually help your spam scores and reputation.

Don’t Send for Sending Sake

Just because you can email market doesn’t mean you should.  Yes, you should be consistent, but if you generally have nothing useful to say, don’t say it.  You might do more damage from one campaign than from 5 high-quality campaigns.

Don’t Over Promote

People don’t just sign up to your email lists to hear about your promotions.  They also want to know more about you and how you can help them.  If all you send are promotions (which might work if you offer coupons are are a discount site) then people will quickly just think you’re all about the money, not the experience.

Make Your Content Exclusive

Keep your content exclusive to those on the list such as first to know, offers only etc VIP club.  This is a really good tactic for growing your list and making people feel important.  It also means your information has to be of very high quality, but you will end up with a high level of return as a result.  Just be genuine, and authentic and treat your VIPs extremely well!

Assess and Read the Statistics

Use the tools within a professional email system to improve your marketing efforts, such as:

• Monitor open rates – See exactly how many recipients have opened your email and who they are. You can treat these as warm leads and follow up with a phone call.
• Monitor bounce and unopened rates – Keep your database clean by only sending emails to those who really are interested in what you have to offer.
• Monitor click-through rates – See who has clicked through to what. If you’ve written a web article and promoted it through email, you can see how many recipients have been interested enough to click through and read it in full.

By analysing the data you can find out what content you sent was popular, which wasn’t and how you can better serve your email list community.

SUMMARY
The key to your marketing campaigns is to make sure you avoid triggering spam filters, keep your message direct and simple and to make sure your content is of relevance to keep your audience engaged.

Drip feed content so that you don’t oversaturate people’s inboxes and appear too pushy.  Keep cultivating and growing your lists and don’t be too worried if the odd person unsubscribes.

Email Marketing Tips Conculsion

Now you’re equipped with all the knowledge you need regarding email marketing, you are well on your way to understanding how email marketing can benefit your organisation and will see a remarkable improvement in your email communications.  It should also help with assisting your customer journey to keep them better informed and engaged.

It might be you require an email marketing management service or would like someone to manage your campaigns for you to get the best results.

If this is the case, you can find out more about email marketing by contacting us, we will be happy to assist you and answer any questions you might have.

For more insights and digital marketing tips, make sure you sign up for our newsletter so you can stay in the loop and keep the best informed.  If you send and receive a lot of emails each day then you might also be interested in our article “The Ultimate Email Management Guide“.