2 Tips for More Effective Email Marketing

Every business needs email marketing. Yes, every business. Owning your list of prospects, customers and brand advocates is more valuable than any social media followers – which are technically owned by the platform and not you even if it’s your account.

Here are my top 2 quick tips for making your email marketing more effective:

1. Segment Your Lists

Not everyone in your database is going to be interested in everything you are sending. Some may only care about one or two topics and you can talk about seven. Great for diversity, but don’t send them the ones that aren’t relevant.

By sending content related to their topics of choice you are going to increase your open rates. Yes you’ll send to less people most likely, but the ones who DO receive will have a higher propensity to open.

Higher open rates = higher probability conversions

After all, if they don’t open there is ZERO chance they’ll convert.

Additionally, this allows you to customize the message to the audience you are talking to in that email.

Example:

For instance, if you are sending out an email about a new service offering, you’ll want to separate your lists between prospects and past clients. Then in the email to the past clients, acknowledge they have been clients and you wanted to let them know about something new they may be interested in.

For the prospects, you can be more thorough in your explanations. Clients already know, like and trust you (the 3 keys to any business relationship) and so the message can be shorter and to the point.

Segment Based on Behavior

And finally, you can segment based on behavior in a given campaign. This avoids the same person getting the same message twice and still allows you to capitalize on getting back in front of those who didn’t open or didn’t click through. Be VERY careful with your settings though and always send a test email to yourself to preview it.

2. Only send email marketing when you have something of VALUE to say.

The fastest way to sink your open rates, hurt your deliverability and reduce your chances for conversion is to send an email for the sake of sending an email (i.e. sticking to a schedule.) Emails are precious. They get us directly connected to our audience so use them wisely in order to KEEP them in your audience.

We all hate spam so don’t blow up your list by emailing them over and over when there is nothing new or noteworthy just because you think you “should” be sending more, again, or on a specific day.

Stick to these principles and you’ll be golden!