• Drive sales
• Increase reach
• Improve engagement
• Customize brand experiences
• Boost brand recognition and awareness

What more could you want from a single campaign?

15 Best Email Newsletter Practices You Need to Use

Try any of the following practices for your next email marketing campaign. You may be surprised at just how much your audience appreciates them.

1. Make a Killer Subject Line

The way to someone’s heart is through the subject line (or something like that). You’re fighting for your readers’ attention, competing against thousands of other emails trying to do exactly the same. In this game, the most important tool in your open rate arsenal is your subject line.

In other words: your headlines can make or break your campaign. So make the most of the limited space you have in your subject line to grab attention and encourage users to open up your email.

Ways to stand out with your subject line include:

• Punny words or phrases
• Emojis (just avoid the eggplant and peach)
• CAPITAL LETTERS
• Punctuation marks!
• This Just In: use urgent phrasing
• Including [Subscriber’s Name]

Whatever you decide to do, just make sure your subject line is accurate and relevant. Misleading or false marketing in emails is against several e-commerce laws and regulations in the United States.

2. Include Eye-Catching CTAs

Your subscribers may open your emails, but don’t stop there—make sure they continue and click through to your landing pages. The best way to do just that? By optimizing your calls to action (CTAs).

Keep in mind the following four fundamentals when designing CTAs for your email newsletters:

• Word choice – Be brief and enticing with CTA copy. We recommend using action words, or energizing verbs with positive connotations.
• Placement – Place CTAs somewhere that make sense in the context of your entire email and are easy to see.
• Color – Drive conversions with high-contrast colors, or colors that make your CTA stand apart from the background.
• Shape – Rectangles and ovals are great shapes. The outline of Texas’s 33rd Congressional District? Not so much. Keep the shape of your CTAs simple and easy to click on.

3. Prioritize Quality Copywriting and Proofreading

Errors in your email content will cost you deerly dearly.

Research shows that glaring grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors can increase bounce rates by as much as 85%. And those bounce rates mean that you will potentially cough up +10% on your Google ad spend.

The solution? Prioritize quality copywriting and proofread everything before sending out your emails. Some of our favorite proofreading strategies here at Digital Strike include:

• Checking. Checking. Checking.
• Using online writing tools.
• Letting content “cool” a day before revisiting it.
• Reading your copy out loud.
• Checking again.

4. Perform A/B Testing

Testing. Testing. 1, 2, 3…

Find yourself stuck between two methods for optimizing your email marketing campaign? Perform A/B tests to see what works best. Simply divide your audience into two segments, and pair each segment with a unique version of your newsletter. Send both out, and see which version gets you better results!

Good news: performing A/B tests is easy. Several popular newsletter services, like Mailchimp, offer these tools.

5. Track Data Religiously

In the digital marketing world, we are all subject to the power of All-Mighty Data, which guides the trajectory of all campaigns and venture-planning.

Simply put, you need plenty of information to track the success of any campaign you have. That means you need a foolproof system for keeping track of data points like open rates, click-through rates (CTRs), and conversions. As is the case with A/B testing, many newsletter services automatically keep track of this data for you, so your only job is to analyze this information.

6. Be Consistent

People are largely comfortable with the familiar, which means you can keep subscribers happy simply by being consistent. By consistent, we mean in regards to both time and tone.

Firstly, you want to keep a consistent schedule. So make an editorial calendar, decide whether you want a quarterly, monthly, or weekly newsletter, and stick to this plan. Keep any extra emails outside of this posting schedule to a minimum to avoid flooding (and annoying) subscribers. Break this schedule only for truly important events, such as the launch of a new product.

Secondly, make sure to find your brand’s voice and then stick to it. If your brand has always been more traditional and conservative in tone, for example, don’t suddenly put eggplant emojis in your subject lines.

7. Use Roundups

Time is a precious commodity, and sometimes you have little of it. (Such is the life of a digital marketer.) In these cases, use roundups in your emails. This tactic helps you:

• Circulate old content
• Curate content for different demographics
• Save time and effort
• Group content by subject or theme

Can you say yeehaw, pardner?

8. Be Seasonal

It’s the most wonderful time of the year (to be on top of seasonal trends).

Evergreen content has its place, but seasonal posts can spice up even the most bland of inboxes. Welcome changing seasons and holidays with special offers and relevant content. For example, if you run a bakery, send an email about the easiest holiday pie recipes.

9. Don’t Neglect Social Media

More and more digital marketers are seeing the value in using social media for business; you should count yourself among them. Many people, especially younger audiences, are using social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram for searches. That means you need to make your business stand out on your socials in order to build yourself as an authority to (and connect with) netizens.

Share newsletter signup information on your social media profiles. But don’t just use social media to send traffic to your newsletter; use your newsletter to send people to your socials by including social media buttons in your newsletter.

10. Create an Attractive Email Design

Newsletter design is critical when it comes to email campaigns, as how (un)attractive your newsletter appears to users could influence CTRs and conversions.

We could spend another 10,000 words explaining the importance and intricacy of good design elements, but we’ll keep it simple here. When it comes to visual email design, consider the following two elements above all else:

• Fonts – We strongly advise against using “goofy” fonts like Comic Sans. The stars of the show should always be your content; the design is merely there to enhance what you already have. In other words, don’t overshadow great content with distracting design elements. Keep things on brand, attention-grabbing, and complementary to your copy. When it comes to fonts, that often means choosing a simpler style.
• Colors – Incorporate your brand’s key colors into the design. Just keep in mind that less is more when it comes to visual design. So, if you’re stuck between two colors, pick the least obtrusive of the two (unless your goal is to create contrast).

11. Include Useful Content

Spam on your plate? Good.

Spam in your inbox? Bad.

It should go without saying, but we’ll say it: give your subscribers a reason to read your emails. When it comes to email marketing, quality is always more important than quantity. No matter your emailing schedule, make sure your emails always include content that is useful, helpful, and/or enjoyable (more on that below).

12. Reward New Subscribers

Kick ass and take names… for your email subscriber list!

Giving newcomers a special deal or gift is a tried-and-true customer recruitment method for all industries. Do the same with your emails. Give new email subscribers something special, like a discount code, to entice people to sign up for your email list.

13. Offer More

Blog posts are great, but your newsletters should offer more than just that. Other items to offer to your valuable subscribers include:

• Webinars
• Podcasts
• Case studies
• Thought leadership pieces
• Subscriber-exclusive discounts

By offering varied, engaging content that people can’t find anywhere else, you increase the likelihood that subscribers will continue to open (and click through) emails.

14. Make It Easy to Unsubscribe

It’s illegal to make it impossible to unsubscribe from emails in the US. But go one step further and make it easy to unsubscribe.

Let people peace out peacefully from your email list. This one might seem counterintuitive, but trust us. Nothing will make people dislike your brand more than having to jump through hoops to unsubscribe from what they perceive as annoying emails.

15. Don’t Neglect Mobile Users

You’ve carefully crafted the most appealing newsletter… for people on computers. But, according to IBM research, that’s only about half of your audience! More and more people are using mobile devices to check emails, and more than 60% of people report ignoring emails that just don’t look right on their mobile devices.

Moral of the story is that your newsletter layout needs to translate well to both desktop and mobile devices.

Our Favorite Email Marketing Tools

You know the best practices. Now find the best email marketing tools to elevate your newsletter campaigns.

(We aren’t partnered with or sponsored by any of the following tools; we genuinely just think they rock.)

Mailchimp

Mailchimp is the undisputed monarch of user-friendly email marketing software.

It’s easy to see why too, as Mailchimp:

• Features a drag-and-drop editor that’s intuitive for even the most technologically illiterate,
• Offers plenty of email newsletter templates to suit the style of most businesses,
• Starts pricing for paid plans at just $11/mo, with a free plan available, and
• Has data-tracking software built into its newsletter services.

When it comes to easy email marketing automation, it doesn’t get much better than Mailchimp.

WordPress

The most popular website builder can also function as an email builder. There are plenty of free or affordable WordPress plugins that make it easy to create email newsletters and newsletter signup forms.

Popular plugins worth exploring include:

• Mailchimp for WordPress
• WP Subscribe
• OptinMonster
• MailPoet

Campaign URL Builder

Someone just visited your landing page. Great! But where did this person come from? You need this information to monitor the success of your various campaigns.

If you need an easy and free tool to track URLs for social media and email marketing campaigns, we recommend Campaign URL Builder. Simply enter your landing page URL, campaign source, and campaign medium, and this tool will generate a tracker URL for you. It’s that easy!

But when email marketing (or PPC marketing, or social media marketing, or content marketing, or… you get the idea) gets too difficult, our most valuable piece of advice is to give digital marketing experts a call.

But in reality, email marketers have to operate inside international email regulations when we send out our newsletters and drip campaigns. Some, like CAN-SPAM, have been around so long that email marketers probably don’t even think about it anymore — they just know how to follow it. But newer ones like CASL and GDPR might require further studying before you know them like the back of your hand.

You might think that email regulations will make an email marketer’s life more difficult. However, email marketing only works if your audience actually wants to hear from you. Email regulations do their best to keep everyone’s information safe and inboxes unclogged.

Email marketing can return an impressive ROI, but you don’t want to get sued or blacklisted because you didn’t know about a new law. Let’s take a look at the most critical email regulations you should know about.

1. CAN-SPAM

Unfortunately for a lot of people, CAN-SPAM doesn’t mean that you’re allowed to spam everyone. In 2003, the US Congress passed CAN-SPAM, which is the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act.

If you’re using an email service provider like Mailchimp or Constant Contact, then there are systems put in place that make it difficult to violate CAN-SPAM.

The main requirements are:

Don’t use false or misleading header information

Your “from,” “to,” “reply-to,” and routing information must be accurate and clearly identify who is sending the message. If you are misleading in that regard, you are violating CAN-SPAM.

For example, if you put a different name in the “From” to make it seem like it’s someone’s grandma emailing them instead of a company, then that is both incredibly misleading and in violation of CAN-SPAM.

Don’t use deceptive subject lines

When you work in email marketing, writing subject lines people will open is half the battle. But you also have to take into consideration the CAN-SPAM requirement of avoiding deceptive subject lines.

Sure, you could probably get more opens if you lie in the subject line, but it isn’t going to help you in the long run. Not only is it violating the law, but it doesn’t exactly make your audience trust you or want to open your emails ever again. For example, if you’re adding “Re:” to the subject line to make it look like they’ve emailed with you before, that’s deceiving your audience. If you say “Open for a 50% off coupon!” in the subject line, and then you don’t include that coupon in the email, you will be marked as a deceiver.

Tell recipients where you are

The email has to include your valid, physical postal address. Email service providers like Mailchimp or Constant Contact make this regulation easy to comply with by automatically adding it to the footer of your email for you. When you set up your account with them, they require this information from you, and then they’ll take care of the footer information.

Honor opt-out and unsubscribe requests promptly

Most systems these days can take people off your list immediately if they get an unsubscribe lists, but some people are still doing it manually, or maybe they’re using an older system that is programmed to clean their lists only a few times a month.

Not only is honoring unsubscribe requests quickly a good idea from a customer service and user experience perspective — there is nothing more annoying than unsubscribing from something and still receiving emails from them — but it’s also the law.

You have to be able to process opt-out requests within 30 days of the request, but we suggest you do it immediately.

Monitor what others are doing on your behalf

If you hire another company to handle your email marketing (like us! Hi!), you can’t contract away your legal responsibility to comply with the law.

Both the company whose product is promoted in the message and the company that actually sends the message may be held legally responsible.

2. CASL

Canada got into the email regulation game in 2014 when they passed Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL). If you’re in Canada or you send emails to Canadian residents, you need to comply with CASL.

CASL regulations apply to any “Commercial Electronic Message (CEM)” sent from or to Canadian devices in Canada.

The legislation defines a CEM as any message that:

• is in an electronic format
• is sent to an electronic address
• contains a message encouraging recipients to take part in some type of commercial activity

CASL defines two types of consent: implied and express.

Let’s take a look at both types of consent.

Implied Consent

Implied consent is a looser interpretation, whereas express consent requires action from both sender and recipient.

Consent is implied when:

• the recipient purchased a product or service with your organization in the past 24 months
• you are a registered charity or political organization, and the recipient has made a donation or gift, volunteered, or attended a meeting organized by you
• a professional message is sent to someone whose email address was given to you or is conspicuously published, or who have published or told you that they don’t have unsolicited messages

If they don’t meet the above criteria, then you need express consent before you can send campaigns to them.

Express consent

Consent is considered “express” if there is a written or oral agreement from the recipient to receive specific types of messages.

Express content is considered valid if the following information is included:

• a clear and concise description of your purpose in obtaining consent
• a description of the messages you’ll be sending
• the requester’s (i.e., your) name and contact information
• a statement that the recipient may unsubscribe at any time

Additional CASL requirements

1. You must retain a record of consent confirmations
2. When requesting consent, checkboxes cannot be pre-filled to suggest consent. Each subscriber must check the boxes themselves for the consent to be valid.
3. All messages sent must include your name, the person on whose behalf you’re sending (if any), your physical mailing address, and your telephone number, email address, or website URL.
4. All messages sent after consent must also include an unsubscribe mechanism, and unsubscribes must be processed within ten days.

3. GDPR

Remember around May 2018 when your email inbox was full of privacy policy updates?

That was the GDPR’s fault.

The GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation. It’s Europe’s new framework for data protection laws.

GDPR changes how businesses and public sector organizations can handle their customer information, and it gives individuals more control over their information.

Understanding the new GDPR requirements can be daunting, so let’s take a look at some of the key requirements.

Lawful, fair, and transparent processing

Companies that process personal data have to treat the data lawfully, fairly, and transparently. But what do those words even mean in this context?

• Lawful means that all processing must have a legitimate purpose.
• Fair means companies take responsibility and don’t process data for any other purpose than legitimate and necessary purposes. For instance, they may save data for tax purposes or if it’s necessary for the service you’re providing. Illegitimate reasons to keep someone’s information includes saving a customer’s payment information after you’ve already processed it and no longer need it.
• Transparent means that the companies must inform data subjects (A.K.A. people whose data they have) about the processing activities on their personal data.

Limitation of purpose, data, and storage

Companies are only allowed to process and collect data that is necessary, and they cannot keep personal data once the processing purpose is completed.

Data subject rights

People have the right to ask a company what information it has about them and what the company does with that information. They also have the right to ask for a correction, object to processing, lodge a complaint, or ask for their personal data to be deleted or transferred.

Consent

If a company intends to process your personal data beyond the legitimate purpose for which the data was collected, the company must obtain clear and explicit consent from you. The consent must be documented, and you can withdraw your consent at any time.

Data Protection Officer

If an organization requires a significant amount of personal data processing, the organization should assign a Data Protection Officer. They have the responsibility of advising the company about GDPR compliance.

If you don’t know, now you know

Email regulations are one of those things that you probably don’t think much about unless you’re knee-deep in email marketing every day.

There are definitely more email regulations than what we talked about today. But if you’re emailing people in Europe, Canada, and the United States, you need to know about the big three laws above.

And if you need help creating a comprehensive email marketing strategy? Well, you know you can always call Digital Strike for a personalized plan.

But where do you begin?

The key to any successful newsletter is the quality of your email list. Currently, you have zero subscribers, other than your current customer list and friends and family, but you’re looking for new opportunities.

You could buy a list of emails, but we’ve seen that tactic crash and burn more times than we can count.

Your first step is to build a list of subscribers.

Subscribers who are excited to see your email come through. Subscribers who can’t wait until your next email newsletter.

We’re talking “Glengarry leads” quality subscribers.

Building your subscriber list isn’t going to happen overnight – and if it does, your list is probably garbage. If you’re buying subscribers, then your open and click rates are going to resemble my chances of getting front row tickets to Hamilton: 0.2%.

But if you can be patient and build your email list the right ways, it’ll pay off in the end. You’ll have a list of dedicated subscribers who chose to follow you because of your content. That’s the goal.

What exactly is the right way though?

Techniques to build your email list

By 2019, there will be 2.9 billion email users worldwide. All you have to do is get some of them to subscribe to your list. You don’t need a billion (though it would be nice) – just some of that billion.

Here are the strategies that will help get the ball rolling:

Build an opt-in landing page

If there’s no spot for people to sign up on your website, how do you expect to capture their emails?

The landing page needs to be specifically designed for turning web traffic into subscribers. It sounds simple in theory, but you can’t just create a page that says “Sign up for emails.”

That doesn’t sound convincing or like the subscriber will be getting anything out of handing over their email.

Think about it: you probably don’t like to give out your email willy-nilly to just anyone. You might even give out a fake email to people who ask for it – notmyname@fakeemail.com.

So your landing page needs to offer something to the potential subscriber – a 10% off coupon, a downloadable eBook, first access to something, etc.

Drive traffic to the landing page

Once you build the landing page, you can’t just twiddle your thumbs and wait for people to stumble across your website. The internet is too big for that to work in your favor.

You need to get as much traffic as possible to your landing page. Feature your landing page on as many marketing channels as possible.

Blog about your new newsletter. Post about it on all of your social media channels.

Add a CTA on the sidebar or the footer of each page on your website to increase the exposure and encourage website visitors to sign up.

As you might have noticed, Digital Strike has a bar dedicated at the bottom of our blog to encourage sign-ups:

Anything you can do to drive more people to your landing page will only increase your subscription rates and build your email list into a robust collection of dedicated readers.

Give people a reason to give you their email address

Like I alluded above, people don’t want to give you their email address for nothing. Asking for their email address without offering anything in return is just like that guy who comes up to you at the bar and demands your phone number without giving you a reason to like him at all.

Don’t be that guy.

Your company and your newsletter might be fantastic, but not everyone knows that. This is especially true if you’re a small business or a startup.

People get enough emails throughout the day, and they probably don’t want to receive more unless they’re actually going to get something out of it.

Offer some kind of value that improves their lives or experience with your brand. Give them a discount for signing up or the chance to win a prize. Anything that will tip the scales in your favor.

They might sign up just to get the discount, but if you work to establish a good relationship with them and send them useful content, chances are they’ll stick around.

Segment your lists

Not all of your subscribers are the same and not all of them sign up for the same reasons.

It’s key to identify the differences and group people accordingly – A.K.A., segmenting.

This isn’t necessarily a way to build your email list, but rather to maintain it.

A 2017 study by MailChimp found that segmented email campaigns have a 14% higher open rate and a 101% higher click rate.

So yeah, segment your list if you can and reap those benefits.

There are practically unlimited options for segmenting your lists, but some of the most common ways are:

• by interests
• location
• email frequency

Maybe people don’t want to hear from your every week, but they’d like you to appear in their inbox on a monthly basis. If there’s a frequency preference in their email settings, they might be more likely to choose to hear from you a little less frequently rather than unsubscribing altogether.

Encourage your subscribers to share with their friends and family

To get the most out of your list, put your subscribers to work for you. They aren’t just going to forward your email out of the goodness of their hearts – people just aren’t that willing to do that.

But if you offer an incentive to do it or an added value, people will be more likely to do it.

For example, TheSkimm is a daily newsletter that brings the news in a condensed, easy-to-read way to its subscribers.

Not only do they have an Invite Friends button at the top of every newsletter, but they also have a section every day counting the number of referrals you have until you are a “Skimm’bassador.”

The goal here is to create a snowball effect. Or maybe a pyramid scheme. You want each new subscriber to get more people to join. Encouraging your subscribers to share will help you get more subscribers.

Never stop never stopping

You’ve finally reached your email subscribers goal! You have the amount you wanted, so now it’s time to chill out and just enjoy it, right?

Wrong!

Growing your email list should be a constant priority. There’s no downside to adding more subscribers, so don’t stop now.

Depending on the email platform you chose, you could get charged more based on the number of people added to your list. But the costs are marginal and overall worth it because of the high ROI of email marketing campaigns.

Bottom Line

Achieving your email list goals is probably going to be a long process, but since there are so many different tactics and strategies to try out, you won’t be bored. Email marketing lends itself easily to other digital marketing strategies like SEO and PPC, so you can integrate it into what your team is already doing.

If you need help setting up your email marketing strategy, drop us a line. And while you’re there, you can subscribe to our monthly newsletter. 

Email marketing is the answer.

Don’t believe me? Just check out these email marketing stats that’ll melt your face off faster than Tool’s Lateralus album:

• Email is the third most influential source of information for B2B audiences, behind only colleague recommendations and industry-specific thought leaders. So basically, it’s only behind word-of-mouth.
• Click-through rates (CTRs) are 47% higher for B2B email campaigns than B2C email campaigns. Say whaaat!
• Consumers who purchase products through email spend 138% more than those that don’t receive email offers.
• 73% of millennials identify email as their preferred means of business communication. According to Pew Research Center, there are about 71 million millennials. 73% of 71 million is over 51 million. That is a lot of people who prefer email, and it doesn’t even account for other generations.

Interested now?

With so many digital marketing channels available to the modern marketer, you might be thinking “is email marketing still a valuable part of my digital marketing strategy?”

Email marketing is still one of the best ways to reach and engage with your audience. That last sentence applies to all businesses big and small because the ROI is incredibly scalable relative to other mediums. So, small businesses can do email marketing as well – it’s not just a big-budget project!

But what is the actual Return-on-investment (ROI) for email marketing?

It obviously depends on the business, what you’re offering, how big your list is, and if you have good content to share. If you’re an eCommerce website, your customer-base might make react positively to transactional emails, meaning a great email blast could yield huge dividends.

For a B2B company, however, your ROI might be more closely tied to broader lead nurturing goals as the customer journey is typically a bit longer. In these cases, you may be better off working on a content marketing campaign or simply building brand awareness.

That being said, according to an eMarketer study, the median email marketing ROI is 122%. 

That is not a typo.

And that is four times higher than any other digital marketing channel.

BENEFITS OF EMAIL MARKETING

Even though email seems quaint compared to the sophisticated ways we interact on the internet nowadays, the number of email users around the world is still growing. At the end of 2019, the number of email users worldwide reached 2.9 billion. That is over one-third of the planet’s population.

So, email isn’t going anywhere and here’s why:

Your customers check their email every day 

How many times have you checked your email today? At least once, right? Maybe a few times if you’re at work.

It probably varies from generation to generation, but let’s say that the average person is checking their email at least twice a day. That means you can get in front of your audience’s eyes on a regular basis.

Additionally, if your contacts completed a traditional opt-in for your email newsletter, your email list will be excited to hear from you.

Email marketing often leads to higher conversion rates than other online marketing tactics

By creating a well-written email that ends with a clear call-to-action, email marketers can encourage readers to take that next step in their buyer’s journey – moving them ever closer to conversion.

If a subscriber has already bought something from you, they’re more likely to be receptive to your emails, and then more likely to convert again.

What’s more, once they’ve become a repeat customer, you can use the information they’ve given you to increase your email’s personalization.

Take an eCommerce email as an example. These are written with one goal in mind: get the user to make a buying decision.

You can center your content around the topics that interest them the most based on your Google Analytics intel, CRM data, and other email marketing statistics. Oh, they visited three pages on your website looking browsing brown zip-up jackets, but never purchased one? Send an email that promotes your selection of brown jackets, and maybe throw in a set of your jeans that would complement those jackets very well.

All these factors make marketing emails more effective to repeat customers.

It’s more cost-effective than traditional marketing tactics

It’s inexpensive compared to direct mail and print media.

With social media becoming more pay-to-play for businesses, it just isn’t the best way to get in front of your audience. Email marketing only requires a small investment of time and resources to develop compelling content.

According to one report from DBS Data, you can expect an average return of $38 for every $1 you spend on email marketing. That’s amazing!

You’ll increase traffic to your website

One of the most significant marketing challenges is generating website traffic.

There are a variety of digital marketing tactics that help you improve your traffic, like SEO and social media management, but ranking on Google takes a lot of time and resources to develop.

SEO takes at least six months to a year to really get going, and social media requires daily upkeep if you want to stay relevant.

Speaking of relevance, email marketing not only increases the click rates toward your landing pages, but it helps make sure that traffic is relevant. The people interacting with your emails are already in your marketing funnel, so they’ve already shown interest in your company.

The more high-quality leads going to your website, the more opportunities you have to influence more conversions.

Keep in mind some contacts will unsubscribe from your emails, but know that this is very natural. If they aren’t interested in going to your website, then they shouldn’t be receiving your emails anyway.

It’s easy to track and measure

One of the best features of this tactic is how easily you can track email ROI.

With the proper tools in place, you can see exactly how many people are opening, reading, and clicking on your email content. It’s so easy to see whether the campaign was successful and see how much of an ROI these campaigns are offering your business almost instantly.

This feature of email marketing makes setting realistic key performance indicators (KPIs) a breeze. Email open rates, click-through rates, and conversions are all easily trackable throughout these campaigns.

Even if you don’t hit the marks you are aiming for, you can see exactly how far off you were and understand what you need to do differently next time.

As you make adjustments to subject lines, messaging, and types of offers, you can continue to track success to see which strategies are bringing you the best results. You’re also measuring deliverability, so you know how many people even have access to the marketing materials you’re putting out.

You can target your email marketing campaigns for better results.

List segmentation! Segment or separate your list into different groups with relevant characteristics or interests. Once you’ve done this, you can deliver more targeted content to your readers.

It’ll increase the relevancy and value, which can encourage more conversions.

For example, a bra company called ThirdLove makes a note of your bra size after you make a purchase and then sends you emails with bras of just that size.

Customers are definitely more willing to open that email and convert because they know that everything offered is for them.

Or if you’re a larger retailer like Kohl’s or Target, you can segment your list by gender, age, past purchases, etc., and target your list with content they might actually want to see.

You aren’t going to have a high click-through-rate (CTR) if you’re sending information about suits to someone who has only ever purchased dresses from you. Or if someone bought a book from your store, don’t send them an email about shoes.

You can automate a lot of the process

What separates email marketing from other marketing efforts is you can remain in constant contact with your customers while reducing the amount of work on your end.

Now, while your email’s content is what drives the revenue, your ROI of email marketing grows even more by reducing costs. Setting up automated email campaigns accomplishes just that, freeing up time and resources for you to focus on other things.

This a great step toward producing higher return-on-investment because once you put the work in, the system then does the work for you.

Depending on your email marketing software, you can easily send email subscribers different types of emails based on a few factors. HubSpot, for instance, makes it easy to make emails and automatically send them to the right customers. They also allow you to use signup forms in your WordPress, which then integrate with your CRM. They also offer popups on your website plus other email marketing services. Mailchimp also offers automation services, but they aren’t as fully integrated with your website.

In practice, you can immediately follow up to a new subscriber by setting up your marketing automation or autoresponder to send a welcome email. This is a great way to stay fresh and relevant in front of new customers as well as new subscribers.

The possibilities are endless for the personalization you can automate into your email campaigns.

Optimize content by testing it in emails

Maximize open rates and conversions by testing your content and figuring out which types of messaging and offerings work best for each audience. You’ll really get to know what your audience loves and hates by A/B testing on subject lines, content, emojis, size of images, what kind of images, CTAs – the list literally goes on and on. The A/B split possibilities are endless.

Email integrates easily into your other marketing channels

Take content from your emails that has performed well and develop several social media posts from it without having to start from scratch. You can also use email marketing to promote a social media contest. Once again, the possibilities are endless.

THE TAKEAWAY

The benefits of email marketing definitely outweigh the drawbacks, but if you want to calculate your potential ROI before starting your email campaigns, you can! Check out this email marketing ROI calculator.

Let’s say per campaign, you send 1,000 emails. Only 40% are opened. Then only 20% clicked, and 20% converted. Your ROI is still 60% if you only spent $150 on the campaign. Once you have content and an email template set up, making the actual email doesn’t take a lot of time.

Email marketing requires a lot of set up, but in the long term, it can pay off in droves.

If you need help setting up your email marketing strategy, give us a shout! And while you’re there, you can subscribe to our monthly newsletter.