Top three email marketing tactics of 2011

Email marketing might be one of the oldest online promotional strategies, but many businesses are still discovering new and innovative practices to improve their campaigns. What may be an effective tactic one year could be ditched for an entirely new strategy the next. As is the case with any marketing initiative, the willingness to try and experiment with new things is crucial to achieving email success.

MarketingSherpa recently noted three of the top email marketing tactics being used this year, based on the results achieved by a few different brands. The common theme between all three of these tactics was "value" – companies wanted to achieve the biggest impact from the least amount of resources expended.

1. Triggered emails

"Automated emails are like robots. They work 24 hours-a-day, long after you've gone home. Setting them up and improving them is hardly 'automatic,' but an established campaign can drive results without eating many resources," the news source explains.

JetBlue was one of the many companies that used triggered emails this year to achieve results. One of the four automated messages was sent to users who started booking flights but quit mid-process for one reason or another. The end result? The emails helped JetBlue improve per-email revenue by 1,640 percent.

Roku, a video-streaming device for television, used triggered emails in a different way. When new users signed up for the service, they were automatically messaged and encouraged to tell their friends about it. In the end, the referral program generated 75 percent of all registrations.

2. Padding subscriber list size

"The quality of subscribers in your database is extremely important – but it isn't everything. Even if you had the best subscribers in the world, it would not help your marketing if you only had a handful. Sometimes, you simply need more names," MarketingSherpa adds.

Kentucky Fried Chicken leveraged its social audience to bolster the size of its subscriber list this year. The company added an email sign-up field to its Facebook fan page and it had a huge impact on the overall results of the campaign.

Meanwhile, Kodak completely overhauled its website and email landing pages. The company added more calls to action, improved its welcome-series messages and created a new capture page. Overall, Kodak was able to grow its email marketing list by approximately 33 percent.

3. Retargeting inactive subscribers

"Some marketers in 2011 were tired of wasting resources on prospects who never converted. Their teams launched campaigns to reactivate deadbeat subscribers and remarket to visitors who left their companies' websites," the research company explained.

Software provider Infusionsoft was one of the many companies to implement this strategy. Reaching out to inactive subscribers ended up accounting for 37 percent of new customers over the course of the year.

Cisco similarly used the approach, but incentivized the program, offering free access to whitepapers and gift cards to users who re-engaged the brand. Gift cards ended up doubling the conversion rates of lapsed email subscribers, from 3 percent to 6 percent.

Regardless of which email marketing tactics are used, it's crucial that small business owners use a variety of channels to maximize their reach. Email is effective but it has a specific audience. Integrating search engines and social media campaigns can help companies promote their products and services to a variety of prospective buyers.

Which email marketing tactics did you find most effective this year? Conversely, which didn't provide the return on investment you were looking for?

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