An Email Marketing Workout That Gives Results
Already failed that “New Year, New Me” resolution? Yeah, me too. Gym membership aside, one workout that can produce major results is focusing on your email marketing strategy.
Has it been awhile since you took a step back and evaluated your email marketing efforts? If so, follow these steps to refine those strategies and see how you can improve this year!
1. Warm Up – Analyze
Before you begin any great workout, we all know that warming up makes a big difference. Same with your email strategy – warm up by creating a plan and knowing what you’re getting into.
If you currently have an email strategy in place or you’ve been doing a little bit of email marketing, that’s a great place to start. First, take a look at the data from past email campaigns or blasts. Some stats to look at include:
- Successful sends compared to bounces
- Open rate and click rate
- Unsubscribes
- Conversions (if applicable)
Once you’ve looked at your reports and data, ask yourself if you’re happy with those results. Would you like to see higher click rates, lower unsubscribes, maybe more conversions? Great! You can now create your plan centered around your goals.
If you’re getting a lot of unsubscribes, you may want to take a look at why people are unsubscribing. On the other hand, if you’re getting a lot of opens but a considerably low click rate then there might be something wrong with the email itself or the links in it. Is the Call to Action clear? How does your email look across inboxes in Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, etc?
2. Cardio – Build Your Email Stamina
This may take some time and testing, but finding the right frequency of sending is ideal to your strategy. Pace yourself: some audiences like a lot of emails, but others only like to hear from you every once in a while.
Many platforms offer contacts the ability to choose their preferences, such as how often they want to hear from you and which types of emails they want to receive. Take advantage of this feature!! It is a great way to personalize your emails and keep your contacts engaged on their terms, instead of being bombarded by emails from you.
The days of sending emails to your entire list every single time are over. Getting to the right inboxes at the right time is key to increasing click rates and conversions.
3. Training – Refine Your Strategy
Now that you’ve defined your goals and adjusted your frequency, you can work on getting into the heavy lifting (see what I did there 💪). During a workout you typically rotate to target different muscle groups, so think of your emails the same way.
At this point in your email marketing workout, you can dive into testing. Testing is the fun part, because all the little things could make a big difference. Here are some ideas to get you started:
- Call to Action (color, placement, style, etc.)
- Layout
- Subject Line
- Colors
- Content length
There are lots of other elements you can test! Remember: just like a good workout, focus on one area at a time to get accurate results.
4. Cool Down – Remain Steady
This step is a little misleading because during a workout your cool down is actually the end, but email marketing never ends. This is the part in your process where you can let your marketing remain steady, so continue with what has produced successful results so far.
However, don’t remain here forever! Just because you’ve done all this hard work and are getting good results now doesn’t mean that will continue. In order to see results from your workouts, it takes dedication, time and repetition. Wait, you mean I won’t have a six-pack after 1 workout?
Repeat, Repeat, Repeat
Take time and continue repeating these steps to refine and enhance your email marketing strategy. Sometimes it’s not an easy process, but it’s always worth it in the end! And remember, if you ever need help or advice, our All Web “trainers” are here!
