Within your list you will have a number of different groups; there will be the regular openers who trust the quality of your campaigns and will subsequently open virtually every email as they have a genuine interest. 

Then there’s the occasional openers who pick and choose when to look at your emails.  These people are more likely to be affected by relevance of email, timing of email, enticing subject header etc.

Finally there is the dead email addresses.  People who have only opened your email once, twice or sometimes never. 

Understanding what makes these people tick is the key to unlocking the full potential of your whole mailing list.

Firstly, the advocates of your company.  These people are already delighted with your company and it’s email campaign.  The key for them is to keep up what you are already doing.  No sharp changes in your format or direction of your emails will keep your core subscribers happy.

The occasional openers will require a little more research.  You need to look back at your previous campaigns and see where you had high open rates and then look at the factors which may have caused it.  An ideal thing would be to carry out A/B split testing on your list to see which factors encourage or discourage opens. By constantly testing your campaign you can get those occasional openers to at least become more regular.

Now for the dead emails.  This is always a tough decision for an email marketer to make but sooner or later you’re going to have to ask yourself “when is it time to remove them from the list?”

We have a customer who is currently going through this question with a sizeable list.  The first thing to do is try and eliminate all possibilities before believing that it is a lost cause.

Try changing the format or style of your email.  If it is quite a graphical email, there’s a chance that some of them are just not receiving the email. 

Another alternative could be that that you have never managed to entice them in.  In this case maybe offering these people a decent sized incentive to open the email will tempt the recipient back into the loop.

Eventually though, if you’ve tried these ideas and still had no response it may be time to part with them.  Some of them may have just signed up to enter a competition or entered in a hardly ever used email address just because they didn’t want their own inbox swamped.

Either way, with each passing campaign that you send out and they ignore, it will be getting more dangerous for you to keep sending to them.  The last thing you want is to have your reputation affected by someone who opens up the email after a year and has forgotten who you are.  Though your list will look less impressive, you will at least be able to concentrate your efforts on your active subscribers.

The subscribe and unsubscribe process can often be overlooked.  People can sometimes just be so desperate to get those names into their database that they forget about actually putting some detail and effort into their sign up process.

Understandably, you don’t want to  put off the potential sign up by asking reams of questions to make your email marketing life simple but you can add a bit more in there that will work wonders for your campaign.

If you’re worried about putting them off by asking questions, why not have different emailing lists based on where they have signed up.  For instance, if they have signed up through a purchase from your company, you can send a campaign to them offering new products and discounts knowing that they already have an interest within your products.  If you have obtained their email address through a competition, you can feel pretty safe that you know that prizes and freebies will be a large motivator to them, and you can use that to drive them to the site.

Asking questions though will really help you in achieving a successful long-term email campaign.  Probably the best time to ask a couple of questions will be just after they have purchased something.  At that point, you know that they are receptive to you and will probably be quite happy in that post-purchase feeling so will be more likely to answer what kind of emails they would like to receive.

At the other end of the scale, you could avoid a lot of unsubscribes if you just ask a couple of questions on the unsubscribe screen.  Give them the option of what they want to receive and even how frequent they can receive it.  They may not want to receive latest product updates but are still open to a discount or a freebie but as you haven’t given them the option, they’re just going to unsubscribe from the whole lot.

Both these techniques can be used to help build and maintain a healthy mailing list that will keep you and your recipients happy in the long run.

This article will have links to previous posts I have created throughout it that go into further depth about certain subjects.  I hope this helps!

1. Your open rate is low

Okay, so your campaign is stumbling at the first hurdle.  You need to ask yourself the following questions:

How was my recipient list created? 
If the answer to that question was “it was bought” then you can’t be expecting miracles.  If you’re receiving opens of around 10 – 15% I wouldn’t be that surprised.  If your list was self built, I’d expect your open rate to be between 15 – 30% as a minimum. 

Is your email subject enticing them in?
It’s all well and good having amazing offers and content in the email, but not letting the world know about it in the subject line is a cardinal sin.  The subject line needs to be a very short summary of what they can expect inside.  Scrap the “March 2008 issue #1” and go for “15% off of selected items with this email” or “deliverability articles and tips”.  That way you can entice people who are interested in the content in. 

If you are doing this but are still receiving low opens you have to ask yourself “am I putting in subject lines that might be specialised to only a group of my recipients?”  By no means is this a bad thing. In fact, it could improve your eventual sales as you’re targeting areas of your list.  Just because you’re getting an open rate of 15% doesn’t mean that the same people are opening your emails; you may have an active readership of 30% but your emails don’t appeal to all of them.  Just remember not to stick to one area though or the other subscribers will switch off.  The best thing to do would be to segment your list into several lists and then send targeted emails to each of them.

Are you receiving a high level of bounced emails?
This could be a deliverability issue.  Firstly, is there a large amount coming from a certain server?  If so, you could have been blacklisted by them.  You will need to contact the postmaster there and sort out the issue with them before sending again.  To prevent this from ever happening though, make sure you have a decent list hygiene routine in place.

If your list is predominantly business addresses opposed to webmail addresses, the likelihood is it is your content that is causing the blocking.  The problem with business addresses  is that there is no standardised reason for getting blocked by them, some filters block tracking links within the email, some block it because of words within the email and some just don’t get along with html altogether.  It really will be a case of trial and error.  Be prepared to compromise on your design and content though.  You may have to lose your tracking facilities to increase the success of your campaign.
 

2.  My link click-through rate is poor

Your open rate seems fine but your click-through isn’t.  The good news is your list are at least still listening to your message but for how long we don’t know.  This can be attributed to the content of your email.

Content
You need to be clear and to the point.  Don’t go over the top with content or you risk losing the recipients attention.  IT could be that the recipient just isn’t interested in what you’re writing about.  In which case you need to look at what you have previously promised, or done.  That subscriber may have initially signed up as you promised to give away special offers exclusively to your email subscribers.  Now though, you’re just updating them on developments about your company and informing them of new lines of clothing….but where’s the offer? 

Design
Maybe you’re keeping to your promise of content but you’re still not getting those click-throughs you desperately want.  Well the finger can be firmly pointed towards your design and layout.  Is your offer tucked away near the bottom of the email?  Is it bold and stand out enough?  You need to make sure that your recipients eyes are directed to wherever your “call to actions” are.  Do this and you will see those click-throughs rocket.   It could though, be that your email just doesn’t look that nice.  People make judgements within the first few seconds of looking at an email and if they don’t like the look of it, they will not even bother with the content (which is also another reason for having your call to action in an eye catching place).

3. My Conversion Rate is Poor

This is probably the most important indicator of your campaign.  If you have so far followed the advice on this article (and the rest of my blog) you should be seeing a good level of conversions now.  If that is still not the case then there could still be a couple of issues that need resolving. 

Firstly, are you directing your recipients to the exact page they wanted to go to.  If they wanted to see the offers on some of your products don’t go and send them to your index page.  Having to look for the product they want will turn them off of the idea. 

Secondly, make sure that your campaign matches your websites branding.  There is a lot of spam on the internet (you may have noticed) that is still hindering people’s confidence in e-business.  It is your job to minimise this, and the best way to do so is by having a consistent branding throughout your communications with the public.

Well, that should have your campaign back in working order now.  If you’re still having problems, email me with your problem and I’ll try and give you a hand.

I know I keep going on about this but I do feel it is really important to keep your list well maintained.  This article by Wendy Roth outlines some great pointers for you to keep your list in tip top shape.

I know it may hurt to get rid of some of your subscribers.  Especially if it is a self-built list but sometimes you just have to do it so that the subscribers that are interested in your product still receive your email in their inboxes.

Why not also get some feedback from your campaigns whilst going through the re-activation process?  If you can see what some of the less frequent readers of your campaigns are interested in, you could start to refine your campaign to be more universally appealing.

mailingmanager is a full e-marketing solutions company that also offers spam filter analysis on its customers email campaigns.  Visit the website or contact the company on info@mailingmanager.co.uk