Four steps to maximizing email results

It’s easy to get an email marketing campaign off the ground – in fact, small business owners don’t need much more than a list of addresses and a basic Gmail account. However, getting the best results out of these campaigns is another thing entirely. To achieve that end, business owners will need to use a variety of strategies to maximize their efforts.

“Email marketing can help businesses keep in touch with customers and prospects. But there’s a big difference between simply adding people to your contacts list and running a savvy campaign that drives traffic to your website and generates sales,” Entrepreneur magazine explains.

1. Scrub lists

Entrepreneurs may have long lists of email subscribers, but how current are they? Customers who offered their email address years ago may have changed accounts or longer want to receive emails. These email addresses don’t add any benefits to campaigns should be dropped, as they are wasting the time and effort of the business sending messages and are giving a false sense of results – a campaign that has a 10 percent open rate may actually be performing even better, but non-responding subscribers drag it down.

2. Segment subscribers

Having a comprehensive list of email subscribers is a great start to an email marketing campaign, but simply mailing the same message to everyone on record is not an effective means of promoting products and services. Entrepreneurs need to realize that someone who purchased one product from them may not have the same interests as another person that bought an unrelated good – a shopper that buys a television from an electronics store may not care about promotions for iPods.

This is why segmenting a subscriber list is crucial. Business owners need to divvy up their databases using whatever information they have about consumers, using signals such as age, gender and purchase history as differentiators. After segmenting lists into specific categories, entrepreneurs will be better able to deliver relevant content to the right people.

3. Split test messages

Once a list has been segmented, small business owners should try to further dissect these categories by split-testing messages.

“Because broadcast messages usually announce timely information such as product launches and sales promotions, it can be important to make them as effective as possible. Consider split testing both the subject line and call to action in your broadcast messages,” the news source suggests.

“Even small improvements in open and click-through rates can make a significant difference in the ROI for your email marketing,” it adds.

4. Poll subscribers

Small business owners can perform research, collect analytics and study data all they want, but the only way to actually tell how subscribers feel about their email marketing campaigns is by simply asking them. Entrepreneurs should poll consumers every once in a while to see if they are hitting the mark or if they need to change. These survey results can lead to dramatically better email marketing campaigns down the line.

Email marketing has gained more popularity recently, given the number of Americans with smartphones who can check their inboxes at any moment. More than 90 million U.S. consumers currently own these internet-enabled mobile devices.

Given the new relevancy of email, how does your company conduct email marketing efforts? Have you given much thought of its integration into broad promotional campaigns?

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