The Whitelist

Quick, what are two elements of your email marketing campaign you can easily tweak to improve your email marketing ROI?

If you guessed subject line and email body, you’re right…or maybe you already got a peek at this month’s ClickMail Marketer.

Although there are other ways to measure the effectiveness of your email marketing, email marketers still do need to pay attention to open rates and click throughs. And the two factors which will influence those metrics the most are 1) email subject lines and 2) email copywriting in the body of the email.
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It’s admittedly easier to execute an email marketing campaign than it is to measure, learn from and improve upon one. Maybe that’s why as an email marketing vendor, we see so many companies relying on simplistic metrics, unaware of how to make changes that matter to their campaigns.

If you’re wondering  whether your metrics are providing you with any real actionable insight–and how to act on that insight–good news: The newest email marketing whitepaper to be added to our growing email marketing library will take you beyond measuring open rates and click-throughs, to some metrics that really matter.
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It’s springtime! The birds are singing, buds are bursting and grass is greening. Could your email marketing results use some freshening up too? If so, check out MarketingSherpa’s 2009 Email Awards Gallery for inspiration.

With 43 inspiring email marketing award winners’ examples and descriptions, you could consider this an email marketing best practices tutorial. Seriously. Take some time to skim it, then go back through and learn from tried-and-true techniques for:
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One of the appeals email marketing has over other direct marketing methods is measurability. Send a postcard, and you haven’t any way to know how many recipients interacted with that piece of mail. Send an email, and you can measure opens, click throughs and more. Then you can use those numbers to adjust, optimize and improve your email marketing ROI. But you can also use those numbers with upper management to justify your budget and changes you’d like to make to your email marketing program, like hiring more staff, switching ESPs or even getting a promotion.
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Email subject lines: Now there’s a topic email marketers can debate at a cocktail party! Problem is, for all the attention the topic gets, the subject line isn’t necessarily the first thing your recipients look at when deciding whether or not to open your email.

The “From” line might be.
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If you read this blog with any regularity, you’ve seen plenty of references to email best practices. Pick any facet of email marketing, and you’ll find numerous email best practices you should adhere to in order to maximize your email marketing ROI: email copywriting, email subject lines, email delivery, email everything…

…including email design.
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Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Digg, social media, social networking, tagging, blogging…there’s a lot of noise going on in the online marketing world. Are you letting it pull your focus away from your email marketing efforts? Beware of the latest and greatest shiny new thing if you haven’t yet done all you can to maximize your email marketing ROI.

Chances are, with all the moving parts that make up email marketing, there are some moving parts of your own email marketing campaign that can use some refinement. Rather than look outside of your existing email marketing program to try to up your open rates, click throughs and conversions, like adding video or a link to Facebook or something like that, first look inside to see where you can tweak and improve…and increase your email marketing ROI.
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You’d have to be  completely out of the loop to not constantly hear of the recession. But that doesn’t mean you have to be like Chicken Little panicked that the sky is falling either. The trick for you as the email marketer is to see the opportunity. You already know email marketing provides a better ROI than any other medium. You probably already have your company’s support to keep your program going, even as other marketing channels are cut back. So you’re in a good place (I hope). But it can be even better with the right outlook.
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The newest ClickMail Marketer hit inboxes this week. And it’s a gem, definitely required reading for anyone in email marketing. That’s because it tackles an issue at the root of email marketing ROI: You have to have good data, and plenty of it, to do the kind of targeted, relevant email marketing that gets results. But how do you get reluctant people to hand over personal information to you?
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Whether you’re filing on time, or filed for an extension, you know what today is: Tax Day. For many, taxes are particular hard to stomach this year because of the bailouts and the recession and the general doom and gloom.

But there’s always a bright side, even in the email marketing world. And it’s our job as an email marketing company to help you think outside the inbox and take advantage of the current economic state of affairs.
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