Quick steps to improve your email effectiveness

Image: JoelGoldstein.com

Email continues to be one of the most important communication channels you can use to keep in touch, and upsell, your customers. But are you using it to it's full potential? Below are some steps you can implement immediately to increase its effectiveness.

List Segmentation

If you have a list, for example, with 100,000 subscribers chances are that they did not all signup at the same time. This is even more true if signups come through the product registration. A simple way to deliver the most interesting and engaging content to these subscribers is by segmenting the list. You can put subscribers into different buckets such as: 

• Registered product type
• Interests (offers vs. news vs. industry thought leadership)
• Sign-up date
• Location 

Content is not one-size-fits-all and the more targeted the content you can deliver you will better results such as: open rate, click-through-rate (CTR) and ROI.

Subject line testing

Taking the same approach that not all content is appropriate for all people, this goes for subject lines. ASubject lines are one of the most important things in doing email marketing, but are also one of the easiest things to test. Some factors you can test in the subject lines are: 

• Personalization (i.e. first name)
• Subject line type 
  • General (example: Your June 2012 newsletter)
  • Offer specific (example: Save $XXX through Friday!)
  • Headline specific (example: Learn why [xxxxx] is important to your business)

Every industry and every list is different so the only way to find out which subject line is the best for you is to test. Most email service providers (ESPs) have this functionality built into their platform so you can, and should, start subject line testing today.

Connect with social media

Email and social media are first cousins if not siblings. If people are interested in your email communications (because we've been subject line testing, segmenting our lists and creating engaging content) we can help promote other channels that help drive sales.

Do you have an awesome blog? Great then the click-through on the article should go to the blog. Have a cool promotion starting on Facebook? Have the user click through to Facebook. Also including the icons of other social networks you're on are great so people can go to where they want. 

With email you can direct people to where helps you get conversions from either new or existing customers. If your open rate and CTR aren't 100%, then there's always room to test, learn and then test some more.

What are some techniques that help you improve your email effectiveness?