Tweet

Are you using the best tactics to optimize your e-mail marketing newsletter?

If you’re not sure, you’re not alone.

We meet with so many companies that mail newsletters to their subscribers, but just don’t know how to maximize them. For companies, growing your audience is crucial and using newsletters should be part of that strategy. We also work with many media companies, teaching them not only how to grow their audience through newsletters and other channels, but how to productize their newsletter strategy, too.

When it comes to optimizing your newsletters, there’s a lot to cover, so we’re going to do it in three parts.

Let’s begin with knowing your audience. Do you really know your audience?

Not just at a high level. It’s easy to say, for example, my audience is comprised of engineers, but do you really know them? Like what types of content are they engaging with, which calls-to-actions do they click on, and so on.

When you determine your audience, you need to be realistic about how rich your data is. Let’s talk about how rich your data is. Do you have any valuable information aside from e-mail address and names (hell, everyone has those)? Do know which companies they work for? Do you know which industries those companies are in? Do you know a user’s gender, for example? And most importantly, do you know what makes them act or what things they click on – back to point one.

The more you can segment the data the more valuable the user become because now you can target them. And, yes, classify and mapping the data, along with the journey may be some tough work, but the reward is worth it!

Once you are able to gain visibility into certain groups, you can see clearly see what they are doing. So, let’s say all female engineers under the age of 35 in Texas like to watch videos on RF  technology. If so, and if there is enough of them, maybe you should create a targeted newsletter geared toward that group. (Need more information on this? Check out our other awesome article about creating products that really, really work.) Another thing you can do is provide recommended articles in your newsletters based on their unique interests.

The last thing to consider when it comes to optimization is nurturing. Companies love to send the same emails to everyone one, whether or not they even interacted with them.

There are probably users on some mailing lists that haven’t opened an e-mail in over a decade! So, what is your fall-off rate? Are the users you register today gone in six months to a year? What engaged them enough to sign up in the first place?

You need to re-engage your users. How? By analyzing their behaviors and giving them more of what they like and need.

For every company and every audience the solution will be unique.

So, to re-cap: Determine your audience, get down deep and analyze who they are and what they do in your universe, and then nurture them like crazy.

Stay tuned for Part Two of  Optimizing Your E-mail Marketing Newsletters where we’ll discuss how to expand your audience quickly, effectively and efficiently!

 

Tweet