Tips for Improving Email Campaign Performance

Email marketing can be fun and profitable if done right. But email marketing is so much more than just sending a weekly message to potential customers. You need to engage your audience by getting and keeping their attention. In today’s world, so many of our eyes are trained to either ignore emails completely or at the very least give them no more than a few seconds glance of our time.

One of the best email marketing practices is a welcome program. When readers sign up for your mailing list, it’s important they receive a welcome email as soon as possible. That first contact helps to establish a relationship and trust. At the same time, welcome campaigns greatly improve your ranking with Gmail’s priority boxes and establish your emails as “not spam.” Then you can begin a drip campaign: Every 72 hours, send a new email to remind subscribers about your company and your products.

The hour at which you send your emails also is critical. Companies like Gmail and Hotmail judge emails by how long they sit in the inbox before they are opened. If marketing emails sit too long in too many inboxes, mail service providers can and will assume the messages are spam. Learn when your readers typically open their emails and plan your send times accordingly.

Also, remember that most people like a little bit of personalization. When collecting email addresses from potential customers, be sure to gather their names as well. Then you can customize emails to make them more personal, starting with the subject lines. A subject line from a known source that calls out to a reader by name is friendlier and more interesting — and, consequently, much more likely to be opened and read — than one that isn’t personalized.

Creating both email and web-based versions of your marketing messages is an easy and effective way to increase the number of people you reach. You put a lot of effort into writing marketing emails, so why not put them all online afterward — perhaps in a blog-like format — and let search engines pick them up? That way, each email does double duty, spreading your message to current and new customers at the same time. This tactic also gives your email subscribers a link to share with others.

Lastly, don’t forget about keywords! You should know what keywords people are using to find your websites, and these should be included in both the subject lines and email bodies. The importance of showing readers you understand what they’re looking for cannot be overstated. If you don’t understand, they will see right through this.

Go beyond the basics with your email campaigns. Get creative and cover all of your bases. Making your messages work as hard as you do will make your marketing efforts more efficient, more fun, and more effective.

Richard Buss is the senior account manager for YNOT Mail and director of products and services for YNOT Group LLC.