Spotlight on Email Marketing Efficiency

Are you under pressure to deliver stronger results from your email marketing efforts? Here are four tips to help you make the most of your email programs.

1. Relevance is more critical than ever before.
   Anyone can send an email, and that’s the problem: Everyone is doing it, so it’s easy to get lost in the shuffle. Try putting yourself inside the reader’s mind and make sure you really understand the people you’re sending emails to. In some cases, you may need greater segmentation of your list. For example, what you send to a junior level versus a senior-level IT person on your list may be very different. Have a reason to communicate. Spend time understanding what information is critical to readers on your list. The more you can do to show them you understand their needs, the more likely they will buy from you down the road.
   
   
2. Keep your lists updated.
   The idea for sending an email is that it will be received and read. This can be difficult if you’re working from an outdated list. It’s worthwhile to comb through your email list and eliminate those who aren’t responding at all. If you’re sending emails monthly and someone hasn’t opened a single one in a year, chances are they aren’t going to open any going forward, either. People really don’t unsubscribe as much anymore, they just ignore you. And in some cases, the recipient has left the company and the IT department may have not gotten around to returning the bounce. Conversely, with the plethora of new online social media outlets, maintain a program for adding appropriate new contacts.
   
   
3. Don’t overload the email.
   If you are unfamiliar with the expression “too much of a good thing,” remember it when sending emails. Attachments, an excess of active links and even certain words can easily result in having the email redirected to the spam filter. Send attachments only when requested and list active links sparingly. As for embedded photographs, don’t use them – keep the high-res photos available for download via your online newsroom.
   
   
4. Test to optimize performance.
   If you’re getting a little more money in your email budget, spend 10% to 20% of it to learn more about what will trigger people on your subscriber list to respond to your emails. What you learn may result in a lift of your conversion rate. Even a small percentage increase adds up substantially over time. You’ll never improve your effort if you’re not testing it.

With that said, what tests are the best to perform with a limited budget? In the article E-mail Testing: A Real-World Approach by Karen Gedney from ClickZ, she outlines a variety of basic tests you can do. Making some simple changes based on what you learn can make a real difference in your open rates and click-throughs.