In Parts 1 and 2 of a three-part series on email newsletter best practices, you'll learn strategies and tactics for growing your email newsletter subscriber base, as well as how to design your emails. We covered strategic planning (including goals, target audience, and competitive benchmarks). Newsletter templates that capture the attention of recipients and promote the communication of important news and information about your company. In the final segment of the series, we'll discuss how to utilize A/B testing to improve your email newsletter's performance, target audience segmentation, and future best practices for maximizing your email newsletter's ROI. Outline how to analyze data to inform your efforts.
Refine design and content combinations through A/B testing
To get the most value from your email newsletter investment, regularly evaluate various aspects of your newsletter. A/B testing provides quick testing by splitting your list into at least two groups. Segment A will receive his one version of the newsletter, and group B will receive a slightly different version. As the list size increases, so does the number of segments. However, to produce statistically significant results, each segment must have at least 500 recipients, so your email list must be at least 1,000 emails.
If your list is large enough, here are some of the most common elements for A/B testing.
- Subject (offer, important message, emoji, etc.)
- Design elements (masthead, layout, etc.)
- Content elements (overall length, use of bullet points, embedded media)
- CTAs
- Sending schedule (week, day, time, etc.). Tuesday and Wednesday are the best days to send emails.
Split your email list
Another strategy to maximize engagement and ROI is to further segment your email list. The first requirement of an effective segmentation strategy is to obtain enough data about each subscriber: demographics, past purchases, or expressed interest in purchases by category and by buyer timeline. .
Segmentation can also include expressions of interest in a topic and past behavior on your website or newsletter. Segmentation requires a certain level of data and platform sophistication, so you may want to reconsider once the size, quality, and platform capabilities of your list are worth the effort.
There are many elements that can be personalized through segmentation to maximize opens, reads, and clicks. The following recommendations are worth considering. First, consider warming up your new subscribers by sending them a customized welcome series that introduces them to your brand.
Next, consider categorizing your existing subscribers into categories such as past customers, recent customers, prospects, and website sign-ups. Segment your email list so you can send targeted emails to different groups of people. For example, you can send an email to people who have purchased a particular product or who live in a particular geographic region (this is important for national or global organizations).
Maximize your email newsletter performance
You should leverage the benefits of A/B testing and segmentation to optimize response rates. However, there are best practices to consider that don't require extensive testing or segmentation. Using best practices can further improve your newsletter's performance.
The most important step for CAN-SPAM compliance is maintaining opt-in records for all email newsletter recipients. Be sure to notify all email recipients to add your email address to their “safe senders” list. Avoid junk and spam folders. Another way to avoid unnecessary filtering is to avoid excessive capitalization and buzzwords like “free,” “cash,” and “credit” in your text.
Constantly monitor and track the results of your email newsletter to see what's working and what's not. Use analytics tools to track open, click-through, and unsubscribe rates. Email hygiene is essential for optimizing email newsletter response rates. Maintain a clean email list by scrubbing out bad and old emails that cause hard bounces.
Also, to comply with CAN-SPAM and marketing best practices, always maintain a list of unregistered contacts to ensure your team doesn't accidentally re-add unregistered contacts and further damage the relationship. please.
Finally, benchmark open/read and click-through rate data against available industry information. MailerLite has Open rate sampling by industry and KPI benchmarks Across all industries.
Analysis and optimization
The ROI of your newsletter is determined by closely monitoring your key performance indicators and looking for opportunities for improvement. Some of the most common KPIs for email newsletters include open rate, CTR, and conversion rate. Data should be analyzed 1-2 weeks after each newsletter is sent (to maximize views).
Below are some of the most common factors to evaluate when reviewing email platform reports.
- Trends in open rate, read rate, click-through rate, bounce rate and unsubscribe rate
- High performing links (based on CTR)
- Most active recipients (based on opens and clicks)
- Bounces and unsubscribes should be reviewed for action (updating old emails based on hard bounces or adjusting sales or marketing efforts based on unsubscribes).
Boost the ROI of your email newsletter program with an A/B testing plan to improve email newsletter performance, audience segmentation to boost engagement and CTR, and a standardized reporting infrastructure. Ready to maximize.
Did you miss Part 1, which covered strategic planning (including goals, audience, and competitive benchmarks), or Part 2, which covered strategies and tactics and template design best practices for growing your email newsletter subscriber base? If so, please check it out.
By following the steps above and considering competitor insights, you can develop an effective email marketing plan for your brand that attracts, engages, and converts potential customers. Remember, continuous analysis and adaptation are key to success in the ever-evolving email marketing landscape.
