How to get Best Results From Your Email Marketing Campaign?

I agree with Bridget, the subject line of an email is crucial. Without a good one, your email will likely not be read. You also need to know your audience, create a sense of urgency with a clear call to action, and you need to test, monitor and improve. Check out our post about email marketing at Wishpond http://corp.wishpond.com/blog/2013/01/03/6-tips-for-writing-effective-subject-lines-for-email-campaigns/

There's no one magic bullet to email marketing. The whole thing is a process, and a lot of people don't like hearing that. When I tell people I do email marketing, I still get bombarded with questions like "When is the best time to send an email?" or "What kind of subject line works best?" and people get frustrated when I tell them there's no easy answer. As someone else said, test test test. That said, there are some things that you can do to make the process better. For one thing, look at social. Social use and email use mirror each other closely, except that social is a lot faster, which means you can answer questions like "When is your audience online?" or "What topics matter to them right now?" a lot sooner than with standard iterative testing with email. We've actually written up a great list of some simple email hacks you can do to get your open and click rates up fast, check it out here http://stuntandgimmicks.com/blog/email-hacking-9-simple-steps-to-better-open-rates/

Beyond adhering to best practices regarding spam, the simple-yet-hard answer is test, test, test. Every audience pool is different, even in the same vertical.  Data is key. Test your assumptions, test your offer, test your CTAs.

Have an outcome for the email in mind before typing a word. Click here...for what? Call us...to do what? What do you want to happen after the person reads (or skims)? Add value to their day. Don't hard-sell your product or just try to make yourself sound smart. Speak like a real person right out of the gates. Short sentences. Short paragraphs. Casual vocabulary (depending on your subject). Don't over-template the email itself. Too many images screams "marketing department". Measure, adapt, try again, measure, adapt, etc.

I really like the points that Brandon and Ben have brought up. Even though your message could be interesting, there is no way that it pertains to all of your customers, and segmenting can solve that. Keeping a casual and fun format that doesn't always look like a newsletter or sales promo can increase the chances of your customers being engaged. Not to say that you can not mention special or current offers, but maybe starting off which interesting industry data or trends and analytics around them is a way to show what issues arise for similar customers........and what kind of products, services or practices that you suggest to resolve them.

One of the keys to email marketing is segmentation.  Segmentation helps narrow down your audience so a more relevant and concise message can be delivered.  Simply, people open emails that are relevant to them. As Jeremy spoke about, testing is extremely important as well.  Testing the subject lines, body content, and even link placement can be crucial. Feel free to checkout http://www.marketingmadefree.com (full disclosure: I'm part of the team).  Create your legitimate email lists, create your email, and measure the results.

After 6 years, 80% (!) of our customers is still subscribed to our daily (!) e-mails. The secret? Narcissicm. Read it here: http://realinboundmarketing.com/2012/09/23/content-curation-the-tale-of-the-76-twitter-accounts/

I agree with Jeremy and Krista that testing and subject lines are both critical. In email marketing (like in conversion optimization), no hypothesis should ever go untested. No matter how strong your gut is, testing and ONLY testing will validate your results. To add something to the conversation, I would say all the subject lines/successful tests/cool designs don't matter without a great list. You can have all these things in place, but without a long (and curated list), you've basically got a Ferrari with no gas. So I would say before worrying any of the hoopla around testing and subject lines, try to find ways to increase the size of your list. It's a numbers game: the more addresses you have, the more money you will make. Here are a couple of interesting case studies on email listbuilding you may find useful http://bit.ly/15w9dqH http://snip.ly/UOZH    Cheers -

1. Good list of names that have opted-in. This will increase the engagement and click rates of your emails. Spamming people won't get you sales 2. A catchy subject line. Make it short and sweet if you want people to open it. We find that asking a question or leaving people hanging will help improve open rates drastically 3. Relevant content. Make sure the content you are sending people is suited to their needs. This will keep them subscribed to your list and wanting more emails. 4. Make it pretty. There is nothing worse than opening an email with an awful template. Keep it simple and in line with your brand. 5. Add video to help increase engagement rates! Did you know that subscriber to lead conversation rates increase 51% when video is included in an email marketing campaign? Check out our post we did for Vidyard about increasing leads with video in emails: http://www.vidyard.com/blog/turn-subscribers-into-qualified-leads-with-video-in-email/ Check us out: http://simplestoryvideos.com/portfolio