If your email campaign metrics aren’t the best, you may want to re-think your campaign and focus on optimization strategies. Email campaign optimization is the process of refining and improving your email marketing campaigns to increase their effectiveness and achieve better results.
Optimizing email marketing campaigns is a part of the overall email marketing process. If you’ve done all the other steps in the process and you’re in the “test and optimize” stage, here’s what you can do to make your campaigns better:
Define Your Goals and Metrics
The first thing to consider when optimizing your campaign is whether or not you’ve reached your goals. All email campaign goals can be measured by a specific metric. For example, if you’re a retailer and your goal was to inform subscribers of any discounts, then you would measure that with your click-through-rate. If your goal was to get your subscribers to click on a link, then you can measure that through your conversion rate.
Analyze your metrics and determine whether or not your campaign was successful. If it wasn’t, you may need to go back to the previous steps in the campaign planning process. If it was successful but you know you can do better, follow the next steps.
Hyper-Segmentation
If you followed the basic steps of planning an email campaign, then you’ve probably already segmented your list. Segmenting your list is a useful step to ensure that your campaign is tailored to a specific demographic, therefore increasing your odds for subscriber engagement.
However, have you truly segmented your list enough? You can segment your email list based on demographics, interests, behavior, and other factors to send more targeted and personalized messages.
However, you can always do more to segment your email list and be as specific as possible. This is called hyper-segmentation or hyper-personalization, and it’s one of the top email marketing trends we’ll see in the coming years.
One example of hyper-segmentation is sending discount promotions to subscribers who spend a lot of time visiting your sales page. Instead of sending it to subscribers between the ages of 18-24, by sending the information about discounts to people most interested in buying from you, you will improve the outcome of your email campaigns.
Experiment with Sending Emails at Different Times of the Day
Experimenting with different send times is a great way to optimize your email campaign metrics. No matter how good the content you send may be, if it doesn’t arrive in the recipient’s inbox on time, they may not see it.
According to a 2020 study from the International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, sending email campaigns according to a subscriber’s ideal time yields much better results than sending campaigns in random intervals.
Here are steps you can take to experiment with sending email campaigns at different times of the day:
- Identify your target audience: Before experimenting with send times, you need to hyper-segment your target audience and identify their time zone. Determine when your audience is most likely to be checking their email.
- Create test groups: Divide your email list into test groups and send your email campaigns at different times of the day to each group. You can create multiple test groups and test different times for each group.
- Analyze the results: After each test, analyze the results to see how each email campaign performed.
- Refine your strategy: Use the insights gained from your tests to refine your send time strategy. Experiment with different send times and continue to monitor and analyze your results.
- Consider automation: If you have a large email list, consider using automation tools to schedule your email campaigns at different times of the day. This will save you time and ensure that your emails are sent at the optimal timeframe for your audience.
Re-Evaluate Your Content and Campaign Design
Re-evaluate your content and design to see if it truly resonates with your audience. Depending on the type of content you provide, it’s worth consulting with an expert to see how you can improve the quality of the content.
Email marketing, content creation, and email design are three different fields, so if you’re trying to do it all, you may be setting too much on your plate and your campaigns are suffering for it. Hiring or consulting an expert to point out your blind spots can help take your campaigns to the next level.
