Email Lists – How to Get the Most From Your Email Lists

Email mailing lists can be a hugely valuable business tool. But if you don't use them the right way, your subscribers can quickly become "blind" to your emails, ignoring them when they see them in their inboxes or, worse, unsubscribing forever. If you want to keep your subscribers interested then you need to constantly test the way you do things. Here are a few of the most important elements you'll want to test. 1) When To Send Your Emails Believe it or not, it makes a huge difference to your results depending on the time of day you choose to contact your email mailing lists. You may have heard experienced marketers saying things like "never email on weekends", "Tuesdays see best results" or "people don't respond on Mondays". While it's useful to read their experiences, every single list is different. For example, if your list is a hobby niche targeted towards working parents then you may find they open their emails more in the evenings and weekends. If you're targeting work-at-home internet marketers, however, then weekday daytime emails will work best. 2) How Often To Email There's huge debate when it comes to how often you should email your lists. However, one thing is for certain, make sure you do email them! It sounds simple, but so many people are scared of overwhelming and annoying their email subscribers that they fail to email them at all! Again, this is another thing you'll want to test. Make sure you check in at least once a week to keep your name on your subscribers' radars – other than that it's up to you how often you email. But don't take unsubscribes to heart. It's not the end of the world if someone unsubscribes: it's unlikely they would have stayed a subscriber for much longer anyway. 3) What To Email Another thing marketers are afraid of is scaring away their customers with too many promotions. It's true that you need to be careful about what you are promoting, but what constitutes "too many promotions" is different for all email mailing lists. For example, your customers may have opted into a "special offers" newsletter, in which case they're going to expect promotions! The best way to know what they want and respond to – and remember, that's what's important here – is to mix purely informational emails with your promotions. You may find your customers ignore your informational emails, or you may find they ignore the promotions unless you mix them in with something free. You'll never know until you test! How To Test Most email marketing services have a number of features that allow you to test what works best. At the very least, keep track of how many email opens you get, how many people click your links and, if appropriate, how many people buy. When you've tested one way of doing things, test the opposite and record your results until you know what works best for your subscribers. Other testing strategies to try include sending surveys to your subscribers or simply listening to their feedback – but remember that many of them, no matter how much they love your email newsletter, won't bother to respond at all. All email mailing lists are different, which is why testing – as well as learning from successful marketers – is absolutely vital to the growth of your business.