Work hard get better email marketing results. This is common advice that works! Here are a couple of helpful hints that will teach you how to start get your email marketing muscles working.
You’ve probably heard this advice: you need to separate a list of contacts that includes only those subscribers that are not paying attention to your blasts (‘in-actives’). Once you have this targeted list, the idea behind the advice is to send this elusive group an email that prompts them to become active again. Once you’ve sent this email you’ll be able to better segment contacts if necessary. Some you’ll get rid of because they are inactive. Others you’ll re-establish a relationship with. This is a basic way to better refine your contact list.
Common email marketing solutions knowledge dictates that an in-active contact is one that hasn’t responded (by clicking on the links in your email or even opening it) to your email in any fashion over a defined period of time. We’ve also just discovered the importance of sending these contacts an email to determine whether or not they are inactive. The truth is, before you can make such a determination, you need to know how a contact opens their email so that you do not mistakenly remove someone who you THINK is in-active but is in fact an avid reader of your messages.
There are a percentage of people who do not download images in their email programs. The way that tracking open rates works, is that they will not be counted on your data for opens if subscribers do not download the images. However they will still be able to click on the links in your email. So if you attribute your success based on open rates, you might be doing even better than you think! You should also change your strategy to considering both your open rates and the clicks. You will get a much more correct understanding of you which contacts are not active by using the opens and clicks data in your email marketing solutions account.
The step to take before removing your contacts is to make sure you have put a bit more time into understanding whether or not contacts should be removed. Send an email to this group providing the chance for them to prove they still care! Then, make sure that you are looking through your email marketing solutions statistics to give you a better read on those email addresses that need to be removed
Another thing to focus in on is keeping a keener eye on ‘Unsubscribe Rates’. If you measure the success of your mailings by looking at which of your contacts have unsubscribed, then here is another bit of info that will make you think twice. Instead of unsubscribing, many users use the “spam” or “junk” button to remove an email from their inbox. This is especially true for senders that the contact deems untrustworthy.
Contacts that press the junk or spam link will not be recorded an unsubscriber. Therefore a low count of unsubscribes does not necessarily paint an accurate picture of the truth.
Your focus really should be on metrics like ‘opens’ and ‘clicks’ as a measure of your success with email marketing solutions. The better email marketing solutions experts look for ways to read their data to initiate higher quality and more refined contact lists. Knowing the whole story about your data will help you make your list more refined and therefore give you greater email marketing solutions success!
Rudy Barell is a Senior Business Development Executive with Elite Email, the #1 email marketing software used by businesses around the globe. Experience how easy it is to build your mailing list, create eye-catching emails and track your success using detailed reports with the complete email marketing program. Try it free!
Tags: clicks, contact list management, Email, Email Marketing, email marketing data, email marketing metrics, email marketing program, email marketing stats, list maintenance, list manager, marketing, opens