Sometimes in the midst of all the amazing advanced email technology available to marketers the essential building blocks in email are overlooked or not maximised:

It’s essential to remember that email marketing shouldn’t be a one-off marketing experience – it should be a repetitive process in order to build, retain or nurture relationships. To get the best ROI and results from each send, it is essential to follow the cycle of email marketing: Test. Send. Analyse. Change. Repeat.

Test – One of the most powerful aspects of email is how quickly you can get results from your testing. By testing elements of a mailing to a small group before you send you can make changes based on the results prior to mailing to your entire list. Test: send times, subject line, sender, day, time, call to action, clicks and conversions.

Send – Before you hit send check spelling, dates and you are mailing to the correct list. What is the best time for you to send? Test to find out! Rather than follow general industry benchmark stats, base your day/time send on your own list of subscribers and your products and services.

Analyse – A valuable element of email is its measurability. With analytics you can measure activities and behaviour of groups and individuals. These include: delivery rates, response and click rates, identified opens, new subscribers and conversions.

Change – Use what you’ve learned from analysing to make changes and better achieve your business objectives, whether they be revenue, retention goals or awareness. Segmenting out your lists based on this information will allow you to send more targeted (received by the right person), timely (coming at the right time) and relevant (containing the right information) emails to all of your subscribers. What can you segment by? Customers, leads, geographic or demographic and business sector are just a few possibilities.

Repeat – Email marketing is very cyclical by nature – it’s never ‘finished’. But that is the beauty of it, it’s immediate and measurable. Use each send as an opportunity to improve your message and the content you send the next time to your subscribers.

denise cox is the email communications specialist for ESP Newsweaver.com. She is a member of the DMA’s Email Marketing Council)

About the Author

Denise Cox is Lead Consultant at Newsweaver. View the full bio here.

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