Email Marketing Best Practices: 6 Things to Put in Place

Although some believe that email marketing is an outdated way to reach current and potential customers, it is still one of the best ways to get the word out about your brand and the products or services you offer. Email marketing provides an incredible ROI of $36 for every dollar spent. Just because email marketing has the potential to grow your business doesn't mean it's easy to execute effectively, especially if you can't track your email marketing campaign's progress.  

Learn more about how to make the most of your email marketing campaign below.  

Before launching your new email marketing campaign, take some time to understand who your customers are and where their interests lie. Your company could create a stunning email campaign, but if you don't tailor it to your audience, your results will fall flat and waste your time and money. Conducting comprehensive audience research is a great way to understand your customers better and to ensure your email marketing campaign aligns with their interests.  

Once you have a better idea of your audience, you can run experiments to improve your strategy. Experiments, such as A/B testing, can help you make minor tweaks that better cater to your audience with more captivating subject lines that lead to more opens or intriguing calls to action that prompt more conversions. Not all experiments will provide positive results, but you can learn just as much from adverse outcomes as from positive ones.  

First-party data is data your organization collects without using a third-party data management solution. First-party data is helpful because it allows you to make changes as needed, giving you more control and options for using the data. Keeping your recipient list updated with your first-party data is crucial because it helps ensure that your email marketing campaign reaches those most interested in your offer.  

Email lists often get crowded with users who never open emails or have incorrect email addresses, leading to high bounce rates. By having your own first-party data, you can clean and curate your email list to improve your email marketing campaign's overall results.  

Customers want to feel understood, and personalizing emails to your customers is the best way to show them you understand them. Personalized emails can include customer names in the subject line or email body, increasing the odds that they will open your email. 

It can also mean that you group customers by interests so that you can send each group of customers the most relevant offers. If, for example, you create a group of customers that tend to make purchases when they receive coupons or special offers, you can continue to draw their interest and drive more sales by sending special offers at key intervals. If other groups tend to make more purchases when you launch new products, you can send them emails whenever you have something new to offer. 

The key to great results with personalized emails is that you continue to grow your database consistently. Several methods can help with this, but sweepstakes are one of the best methods for gathering more contacts quickly.  

When drawing up your first email marketing campaign, it can be helpful to create a campaign checklist to ensure you've hit all of the critical steps. It requires some forethought, but it can save you time and prevent doubt if you ever forget something. Creating a campaign checklist can also help inform future campaigns by helping you remember which steps worked well and which you may need to alter.  

Metrics are one of the most important aspects of a marketing campaign because they can tell you how your email marketing strategy works. Open rates indicate how often customers open your emails, showing how well customers engage with your information. Click-through rate is better for gauging interest in new products or sales, as it shows when recipients click on links to learn more. You can track hundreds of possible metrics, and the better you manage your email marketing data, the more they can tell you. 

Get the Most out of Your Email Marketing with Federated Media 

Email marketing can be powerful but can also waste time and money when not conducted properly. It can take a long time to learn how to run an effective email marketing campaign, and most businesses don't have the resources to use trial-and-error until they figure it out. Fortunately, the email marketing experts at Federated Media can help your business run a successful email marketing campaign right away, saving you time and money and helping you drive sales. To get started, contact us today!