Get Lean

No matter how efficient we are with our email marketing efforts, it’s important to make sure that the time we spend has the biggest impact we can create. To make sure you aren’t wasting your breath, here are a few critical concepts for staying lean, mean and effective:

Scrape your lists clean. It’s no use sending to a bunch of people who aren’t going to open your email, and you’re only wasting money when you send to bogus email addresses. Check your reports every quarter and look for email addresses that have bounced more than once and readers who repeatedly don’t open. Don’t be afraid to scrub it clean, there are plenty more readers where those came from.

Have stockpiles. Content is king, so you should have a good bit of it saved up, ready to launch. Having fresh, creative articles, videos, and pictures will make sure that in a pinch you are sending out emails with a strong impact.

Know when to send. 2 AM on Monday morning is not going to be the best time to capture your readers’ attention. To really know the best time to get your readers attention takes some trial and error. Send at reasonable times,  then check reports to see if open rates and clicks increase. When the open rates increase, that is a positive sign, but you want to get both opens and clicks to increase, so you have interaction and not just off-handed curiosity.