5 Keys to Improve Your Email Marketing Campaigns

It seems like email marketing has been a standard tactic of marketing strategy for a very long time. So long, that some would say it is outdated and no longer useful. They say the younger crowd no longer use email. New, more hip modes of communication have replaced email. If you don’t want to get left behind you better get with it and ditch your nice comfy email program and venture out into the wide, wonderful world of new-fangled communication tools…if you want to survive.

I have a nice four letter word for them – bunk. How’s that for an outmoded word? Actually, statistics don’t support the “email is dead” crowd. It is true that younger demographic groups use email slightly less than older groups, but not by much. According to MarketingSherpa research, the 18 – 26 age group receive an average of 12.4 emails per day from businesses. That compares to 14.9 per day for the 27 – 38 age group, and 15.9 for the 39 – 54 group. Not really a huge difference.

What about those active in social media you ask? They want you to use email more, not less. 75% of daily social media users said that email is the best way to communicate with them, compared to 65% of all email users. And, for you Twitter skeptics, 49% of those users said they made an online purchase because of an email, compared to 33% of all email users.

Convinced? Here are 5 keys to rev up your email marketing campaigns.

Email must be integrated, not isolated. Don’t use it as a stand-alone marketing tactic. It needs to be an integral part of your overall marketing strategy. This is especially true for larger organizations that may allow separate departments to send out emails. Otherwise your customers will end up getting email fatigue from too many unrelated emails coming from your company. Also remember to use the social sharing features that most email marketing programs have today. That can dramatically extend your reach when done properly.
Good customer service is not enough, focus on customer loyalty and retention. Everybody says they have good, or even great, customer service. That’s not differentiator, it’s expected. Joseph Jaffe in his book “Flip the Funnel” says that customer retention should be the new focus of marketing, and that satisfying and rewarding customers for their loyalty will help companies grow.
Test best practices and assumptions. What may have worked for you last year, sometimes last month, may not still work today. You should design tests that challenge your assumptions and continually measure what is truly effective. Test your subject lines, your headings, your content length, frequency of mailings, number of articles, call to actions, etc. Ask yourself what am I asking the recipient to do? Why should they do it? What is my objective? What is the best way to achieve it?
Highlight your sign-up form like it’s a product. Don’t hide your subscription form on your website. As a matter of fact, put it on every page that might end up being a landing page. Did you know that fewer and fewer people don’t start on your home page? Even fewer still ever look at your contact page. Make it easy for your web visitors to sign up for your email newsletter. Give them some free educational content as a gift for signing up.
Better Deliverabilty results from better engagement. Want to get higher open rates and click-throughs? A proven benefit of designing better email campaigns that increase subscriber engagement is better deliverability. Do the hard work of testing, optimization, social integration, etc. and you will see higher open rates and clicks.

Use these five tactics and watch your email results improve. Want more about designing engaging email campaigns? Check out session #9 Successful Email Marketing of Inbound Marketing University. It’s part of a free educational series that we offer.

Join the conversation and comment below regarding your experiences with your email marketing campaigns.