Three ways to improve email lists before the holidays

With the holidays rapidly approaching, marketers everywhere are scrambling to ensure they get the biggest bang for their marketing bucks. For email marketers, here are a few tried and true - and possibly overlooked - ways to improve email campaign response rates.

by Kristina Knight

First, take a hard look at your email list. If a consumer hasn't responded to a marketing message in more than a month, remove them. If you have the staff, consider sending a last message with a final offer to these non-responders. Take a few chance but stay within best practice guidelines. If the non-responders still don't reply or engage in some way, remove them and move on. Big lists don't bring in big revenue numbers; engaged audiences do that.

Second, segment. Look at how your email list is responding to different offers. Are there consumers who engage with specific offer types? Are there consumers who only engage with specific products? Behavioral information is very important in email marketing because consumers are habitual; how they reacted last month is probably how they will engage next month. Take that into consideration. Consider creating different campaign messages according to how the list members have responded in the past.

Third, pay attention to how ISPs are delivering messages. If messages are being blocked, consumers aren't getting the full effect. Messages should be optimized for user behavior (a given) but messages should also be optimized according to the ISP. If images are blocked, a simpler message will get the same message across. At the same time, remind consumers to enable images and links so that they get the full effect of your campaigns.