Email continues to grow as businesses look for less expensive alternatives to postal mailing for customer retention, lead generation, public relations and acquisition. But because email is so inexpensive do we overuse email and spend too little time on the creative skills and strategic planning required to make it work for maximum profit?

Try these three big ideas and improve the effectiveness of your email promotions as your open rates, click-throughs and conversions increase in a big way!

Email Marketing: Three Ways To Improve Your Strategy

1. Implement a segmentation strategy – many businesses do not use any form of segmentation choosing rather to blast out the same message to every name. It is important to be relevant to the recipients of your email messages. If you cease to be relevant you will cease get emails opened or clicked upon. If you don’t have any account profile data to target interests etc. then you could at least try segmentation on recency (you are sure to find your most recent email names are the most effective). Other easy segmentation ideas are to isolate frequent openers and/or clickers.
2. Coordinating email promotions with other channels and marketing initiatives. If you send out a catalog or postal mailing you should send out an email to give a “heads up” or a “sneak peek” to build anticipation and get your mail opened. Also, you should promote your social media presence in out-going emails.
3. Don't send too many emails – too many businesses send too many messages that say the same thing. Yes we need promotions to drive sales but its hard to make an endless stream of “50% off” sales stand out from one another. You may want to try a monthly news oriented email that gives value-added content. It’s a great way to engage customers and can also carry an implied sales message.