1. A/B testing

What subject line triggers your recipients to open your emails? Should you use an image to visualize the call to action? Should you personalize your messages?

Use A/B testing, or split testing, to answer these questions and test the effectiveness of two (or more) of email messages. Randomly split your email list into two groups, A & B and deliver a unique email message to each group to determine which one is the most effective.

Some options you can test:

• subject lines
• call-to-action: wording, size, color, placement
• headline or product description
• layout and style of your newsletter
• images
• length of your mailing (short vs. long)

And the list could go on and on. Always make sure the tests relate to the goals set for your specific newsletter to find out what works for you. All in all A/B testing is a very interesting tool for marketers to get the most out of their email marketing campaigns.

2. Exclusive content

Why should people subscribe to your email newsletter? What’s in it for them? These are two of the most important questions to answer in email marketing.

Make your subscribers feel important and privileged by giving them exclusive content before showing it to the rest of the world via your website or social media. That is if you want to share this content with non-subscribers at all.

For example, offer a 10% discount on your product, exclusively to your email subscribers. Or let them be the first to see your new collection before placing it on the website. Other options could be giving away special whitepapers or courses.

Keep your subscribers happy and they are likely to become ambassadors of your brand. These are the people that want to be the first to find out about your products or offerings and share this with their peers and other relations. Engage with your most loyal relations, find out which content or what offer will suit them the most?

3. Use social sharing

Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and so on. Social networks were booming over the last couple of years and they will flourish for the time to come. How do you combine these social media with your email marketing efforts to leverage your business?

Recent study by Get Response, after analyzing 2.2 billion emails sent by their customers, revealed that including sharing buttons in email messages can increase email “Click Through Rate” (CTR) significantly. The study showed exceptionally high performance results for newsletters that included social sharing buttons. Those emails had a CTR up to 115% higher! The CTR for emails with a LinkedIn sharing link was 9.6%, Facebook 5.4% and Twitter 5.0%.

With millions of users on social media you can reach a far bigger audience than you could ever reach before. Therefore you should combine the power of both email and social media by using social sharing buttons in your email marketing messages.

4. Last but not least: always be personal and relevant!

These days it is the customer who decides when, how, how many times and via which channel they want to be approached by companies. So companies should focus more on customer behavior. But how do you get these valuable insights?

Start with the basis of your marketing activities, your database. Who are the persons within your marketing database? How do they react to your email newsletters? What are they interested in?

By re-segmenting your database based on personal customer profiles you will get a higher conversion on your email campaigns. You will also lose fewer subscribers, as your mailings are personal and therefore relevant.

For example, if you are an insurance company, log which clients ordered a car insurance for the length of 2 years and do not bother this person with similar offerings during the coming 18 months. Instead if you know which of these customers are looking for a new house – based on their personal customer profiles – inform them about your fire and theft insurance.

So start collecting information about your subscribers. Really get to know the persons within your target group: their likes and dislikes, needs and wants. Any important data and anything else that appears relevant to your subscribers. Then create an email message that reflects this information. As a result you will build stronger relationships and successful email campaigns.