Secrets for Better Email Marketing

Email marketing may not be the most glamorous form of digital marketing, but it is one of the most efficient. When done right, it can drive leads, sales, and conversions like no other channel.

Whether you’re a grizzled veteran marketer looking to up your email game or a newcomer just getting started, our guide can help you tap into the power of email marketing like a pro.

Why Email Marketing (Still) Matters

For many millennial and Gen Z marketers, email might seem like an outdated marketing technique. After all, it’s been around since the dial-up era of the internet. How can it possibly remain relevant in a world of social media, video ads, and influencer marketing?

The answer is simple: it just works. Every step of the customer journey—from acquisition to onboarding, all the way to customer retention—can be optimized with email campaigns.

Email campaigns let businesses create customer-specific segments, target messages for customer preferences, and build customer loyalty with customer-exclusive promotions and discounts. Plus, email marketing is highly measurable and flexible, giving businesses the ability to track the effectiveness of customer campaigns in real time and make adjustments as needed.

That responsiveness makes email marketing a perfect fit for smaller businesses with tight budgets—pivoting and refining campaigns on the fly have never been cheaper.

How to Create an Email List

Let’s start with the basics: how do you create a successful email list?

Start with your audience. Think about who they are, what interests them, and what kind of content is likely to resonate with them. Don’t make the rookie mistake of catering to an audience you’re hoping for. Follow the data, not your gut.

Set up sign-up forms and make sure they are easy to find on your website or social media channels.

Once you start to get subscribers, segment your list into groups that share common characteristics such as age, location, occupation, and so on—tailoring your messages to the specific needs and interests of each segment can have a huge impact on your results.

Don’t forget to set up automated welcome emails and nurture campaigns that will introduce new subscribers to your brand, warm them up with relevant content, and keep them engaged over time.

Cranking Out Bespoke Emails

That may seem like a contradiction in terms, but it’s not. Crafting individualized emails that don’t take hours to create is possible—you just need the right tools and techniques.

In-house email marketing templates give you a great starting point: they streamline the design process, allowing you to create visually appealing emails quickly and easily. They also come with pre-made segments, making segmentation simpler and faster.

Always leave some room for customization, though. You still want your marketing staff to work their magic on each message. A/B testing can help you figure out which versions of your emails work best, while personalization tools allow you to include the subscriber’s name, location, and other information in the body of the email—a great way to increase engagement.

You can also integrate your email software with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems or analytics tools to get access to data like customer purchase history or website visits, helping you craft even sharper, more relevant emails.

Is It Working?

Ah, the million-dollar question. How can you tell if your email campaigns are actually working? The answer lies in tracking and measuring the performance of each campaign.

Start by looking at open rates, click-through rates, conversions, unsubscribes, and other metrics to get an overall sense of how successful each message was. You can also look at the average revenue per email to get a more granular sense of how effective each message was.

But don’t focus solely on the numbers. We’re all human here, so don’t forget to take an emotional approach as well. Surveys, feedback forms, and customer interviews can be invaluable sources of insight into the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Staying Ahead of the Curve

Now that you’ve got everything figured out, you might be tempted to rest on your laurels. Don’t!

Sure, you can churn out the same old rigmarole, but that will only lead to a slow decline in interest and engagement. Before you know it, your emails will be collecting virtual dust in inboxes all over the world, leaving you wondering where it all went wrong.

The secret is to keep experimenting, tweaking, and improving. Stay abreast of the latest trends in email marketing, figure out what works and what doesn’t, and update your campaigns accordingly.

Finally, don’t forget to review your emails regularly and remove dead weight. Your list should be lean and mean—no bloated emails here.

Email marketing is here to stay.

Newer channels might come and go, but email remains an important part of any marketer’s toolkit.

With these fundamental tips, you can confidently take your email campaigns to the next level—and get results that will make a real difference to your business.

Combining a data-intensive approach with creativity and testing is the key to success. It will take some time refining and tweaking your emails, but once you’ve got the formula down, you’ll have a powerful weapon in your arsenal that will help you achieve success.

Need help with email marketing for your business? The experts at Fisher Green Creative can lend a hand. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help.