Email-Marketing Strategy Checklist for 2013

As we’re about to begin a new year, it’s a great time to evaluate your email-marketing program and see where improvements can be made. We’ve compiled an email-marketing strategy checklist for 2013 that highlights 10 of the top areas you’ll want to think about for the New Year.

1. Segment your email lists. Dividing your email list into subgroups lets you send more targeted emails and increase the relevance of your marketing message for each subscriber. From purchase history to demographics and level of engagement to website behavior, there are a number of highly effective segmentation methods that can help improve your open, click-through, and conversion rates.
2. Optimize your emails for mobile. With about four in 10 adults owning a smartphone and one in five owning a tablet today, using responsive email design to optimize your emails for your mobile subscribers is more important than ever. Though it may add a little more to your design budget, responsive email will greatly improve the user experience for subscribers to drive a better response rate.
3. Integrate your email marketing with social media. By using many of the social media networks that are trending today, you can help give a boost to your email-marketing results. Check out our articles on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest for valuable tips on how to use each of these social networks to optimize your email-marketing results.
4. Write copy that converts. Email copy can make or break a campaign. Keeping the copy strong and simple, talking about the benefits versus the features, and making your calls to actions hard-hitting and plentiful are just a few of the ways to ensure your copy drives conversions.
5. Use A/B split testing to improve your email campaigns. A/B split testing basically involves testing two versions of an email among a small group of subscribers to determine which version gets the best results, and then sending the winning version to the rest of the subscribers. Subject lines, calls to action, from lines, and offers and incentives are just a few of the variables to test. You can use A/B split test information to fine tune subsequent email campaigns and achieve continual improvements from your email-marketing campaigns.
6. Optimize your landing pages. Designing promotion-specific landing pages is the first and most important step in driving email campaign conversions. Once prospects have clicked through to your promotion, you have them hooked — so reel them in! Creating credibility and making sure the eye track of the design leads the reader’s eye to the offer are two good examples of how to optimize your landing pages.
7. Implement effective email drip campaigns. By setting up a series of automated email messages to be sent in response to a “trigger” — such as a request for product information — you can more efficiently and cost-effectively bring prospects and customers down the sales funnel. Drip campaigns may take a little more time and planning compared to email campaigns that are sent to your entire list, but the payoff is well worth the initial investment.
8. Be sure your email design drives conversions. Help cut through the inbox clutter by employing email design best practices. For example, ensure your preview pane engages recipients by aligning the critical information to the left and keeping the main purpose of the email, the call to action, and your company’s logo within the top 300 pixels.
9. Use cart-abandonment emails to increase your ROI. If you have an online shopping cart and aren’t doing cart-abandonment recovery, you’re likely losing a lot of revenue. Online retailers have found that sending a series of recovery emails to web visitors who have added items to their shopping carts, but haven’t completed their transactions, works well in bringing them back to finish the transaction.
10. Measure your email ROI. Your email ROI is a great benchmark that can be used to compare the effectiveness of your email-marketing program to other marketing channels. For the key drivers of ROI, as well as some great ways to measure and improve email ROI, check out this article that I wrote for iMedia Connection earlier in the year.

If you’re looking to boost your email-marketing ROI in 2013, FulcrumTech can help. We have a 10-point email-marketing assessment that will determine what is and isn’t working in your current email program. Then, our email-marketing experts will provide you with measurable recommendations customized for your specific organization’s needs. Email us or give us a call at 215-489-9336 and get started today!