Immediately knowing the success of a marketing campaign once it’s out the door is a huge benefit of using a service provider for your email marketing. But when you get the metrics back, do you know what they mean or how to improve them?  

You can start by looking at benchmark metrics to see how you compare with others in your industry. Chances are good, though, that you’d rather learn how you can get more people to open your email to increase their exposure to your brand, more people to click on the links within the email to take advantage of your offerings, and more people to forward your email so they can spread the good word about you.

Surpassing your current email marketing results can be achieved in three steps.  

Step 1: Know what your subscribers care about
It’s about what, not when. Often I am asked when the best day/time to send is. You don’t have to keep up with the magical and ever-changing “best” send time if your content is interesting to your subscribers. The more targeted your messages are, the better chances will be that your emails will be open and read. If you have your subscribers sitting in just one or two general lists, you’re not doing target marketing.  

How can you know who in your audience is interested in what? Can it be done without having a customer relationship management system and/or tracking all of your customers’ past interactions with you? Yes, and in fact, it’s simple – just email your subscribers one quick online survey.

Whether you send the survey as its own separate email or include it as part of an email you already plan on sending, you can learn straight from the horse’s mouth what your subscribers’ interests/preferences are, what specific products/services they are interested in, how often they use your services, and some demographic information if that would help you to be more relevant. (Here are some sample survey questions you can use to segment your list.)

Are you worried about bothering your subscribers with a survey? Put that fear to rest; the reaction is quite the opposite. They will be glad you care and that you’re using their opinions to send them only emails that are relevant to them. Just explain in the survey invitation why you are asking for this information. Something like this should do the trick: “I want to know what you’re interested in. I don’t want to waste your time. Your time is valuable. I only want to give you what you care about.”

With these survey results in hand, you’re one step closer to achieving more exposure for your organization and more business from your current and prospective customers. Next time I’ll cover the second step – how you can easily use the results of this survey to directly impact the success of your email marketing. Comments, questions? Just click the comment link below. Until next time, happy growing!