Spring clean your email marketing

…and watch your engagement blossom!

After this particularly miserable and cold winter, we’re ready for the spring! And who doesn’t love to do a little spring cleaning? Well, maybe not everyone, but when it comes to your email list, now is the perfect time to get out the dust bunnies and cobwebs to reveal a squeaky clean list, ready for spring.

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Email marketing is not dead! In fact, eMarketer reports that 69.7% of US internet users say email is the preferred method of communicating with businesses. And in a world that stays constantly connected, users are reading more emails than ever on their tablets and smart phones, always increasing open rates.

When you properly leverage the power of email marketing, you’ll be able to converse with your audience and build a trust they’ll associate with your brand. Two simple, yet important, steps you can take to clean up your email marketing include list cleaning and segmenting your subscribers.

List cleaning is an easy way to remove inactive or non-existent addresses from your email list. This is particularly beneficial if you’re paying for your email service provider, since you don’t want to send to users who either don’t use the email address they provided or no longer wish to receive your emails.

There are plenty of programs out there that provide list cleaning services that will save you time and money. List cleaning is an easy, time-saving, cost-cutting solution to reveal a clean list of users.

How are you talking with your subscribers? Do you know them by name? How old they are? Interests? Gender? By asking simple, non-evasive questions when your subscribers sign up for your newsletter, you’ll be able to segment your emails to garner the best engagement, opens and click and bounce rates. Segmenting allows you to target customers through various ways, from interest groups, activity, location, customer type, gender and sign-up date. This provides a more personalized experience for your subscribers, strengthening your relationship and trust.

According to MailChimp data, segmented campaigns saw an 14.05% boost in opens over non-segmented campaigns. Additionally, they received 61.9% higher clicks than their non-segmented counterparts.

Segmenting is so useful because it’s useful for every type of business. For instance, a jeweler can use Valentine’s Day to target men in their list to show jewelry for their special someone, but send a different dialogue around the same holiday to the women on their email list. Or a doctor’s office can create two versions of its monthly newsletter, one focusing on health facts for females, the other for males. By capturing data as simple as gender when subscribers sign up for your email list, you can begin a dialogue that stays relevant and last for years.

Need help with your email list? Contact us — we’re always here to help!