Ways to get the most from your email marketing activities
As a daily editor, I’m always keeping my eyes open for the topics that our audience cares about. From email marketing to audience development and the advancements within the digital publishing community, there is always new content to share or existing strategies to remind people of.
Over the last few months, it has seemed that the topic of email marketing has been growing in popularity. Each week I find more industry members discussing ways to improve an email marketing strategy. Or they are sharing statistics on email marketing studies they have conducted.
Email marketing is a popular topic as the tools and mediums that support email evolve. Automation is allowing email marketers to create lifecycle campaigns. And as the mobile device market continues to grow, email marketing’s future is dependent on optimizing campaigns for tablets and smartphones.
Below there are nine topics related to email marketing that have been prevalent in my research as of late. If these tips align with your content and current email marketing strategy, they may help you fill some holes that currently need to be addressed.
Email marketing key metrics
The following email marketing metrics probably aren’t new to you, and hopefully you are already tracking them. In case these key metrics aren’t a focal point of your email marketing program, be sure to incorporate them into your daily activities.
Delivery rate: Delivery rate can have a direct impact on your email reputation. If you are continuously sending email to recipients who have marked you as spam, or if you aren’t removing email addresses that bounce, your delivery rate and email reputation can suffer. If you don’t monitor your delivery rate and it continues to increase, more of your campaigns may end up in the spam folder.
Open rate: After getting an email delivered, having it opened by the recipient is a major task. Overcrowded inboxes and email fatigue can lead to your email going unopened. Continuously providing great content and alluring your audience with interesting subject lines will help your open rates improve.
Click-through rate: Driving traffic back to your website is a goal of email marketing. Your click-through rate will demonstrate how desirable your links are to your audience. A snippet-based email template will persuade email recipients to go back to your website if they want full articles or additional content.
[text_ad]
Audience activities: Gauging your audience activities is another way to develop your community. When email recipients go to your website, are they purchasing anything or interacting with your content? Paying close attention to revenue generation and engagement can help you target the creation of new content products in the future.
Email retention techniques
Building your email marketing list is important, but retaining your email subscribers is just as important. An article from ClickZ shares four tips on email retention. The first three can be used for digital publishers, while the fourth suggestion may or may not align with your brand.
Email retention technique #1: The birthday email – If you have the data on the birthdays associated with your audience members, sending an email on birthdays can help in creating brand loyalty and make the audience member feel like you know them more than other email marketers do.
Email retention technique #2: Review solicitation – It’s great to get the opinions of your subscribers. It helps you know their thoughts on your content, and it keeps your pages updated for search engines. If you can provide incentives for filling out reviews, you will likely receive more responses.
Email retention technique #3: Re-permission emails – These programs could be for past buyers to get them interested in buying again, or it can be for subscribers who haven’t opened your emails in months. Reminded them of your content, and informing them of upcoming purges could spur them back into active engagement.
Email retention technique #4: Replenishment program – For companies selling products that need to be replaced, these email programs can remind subscribers to stock up when the time is right.
Finally, there is one more piece of advice I want to share, and it comes from the 10 Email Marketing Commandments. “You shall worship email marketing as long as you live, never giving in or believing that the next up and coming technology makes email marketing obsolete.”
Do you have any email marketing advice to share, or any questions to ask? Please use the comments section below.
