As the year draws to a close, it’s not a bad idea to do some cleanup of your marketing assets. The asset most neglected, yet most valuable for the average marketer, is your email list, so let’s look at 5 things you should do with your email marketing list to freshen things up.
De-Crapify
The first and arguably most important thing you should do with your list is to clean it up. Unsubscribe any email address that’s been bouncing, assuming that your email service provider hasn’t done so for you already. Take a look at the addresses and fix the ones that are obviously wrong, such as domain name mixups. ([email protected] instead of [email protected])
Shine a Light
Take some time to identify who your very best members of your list are. Look inside your email analytics to see who always opens, who always clicks, who always shares your email newsletters. If you’re feeling generous, reach out to those folks and thank them for their continued support! If your email service provider doesn’t give you this data, consider switching – it’s that important. I still use WhatCounts Publicaster for this very reason.
Find Your Stars
Look in either your web analytics (assuming that email subscription is a goal conversion) or your email marketing software to identify the top performing conversion points for new subscribers. How are people finding you? What’s working best, and what’s not working so well? Set up some tests as you head into the new year, a testing plan that will help you improve your list subscriptions. For example, I’ve started testing out different kinds of Twitter cards to see if I can get better performance:
Check Under the Hood
Stuff changes. Systems change. If you’re using any SaaS vendors – like Google Analytics, for example – stuff can change a LOT, and in the hustle and the bustle of daily marketing life, things fall through the cracks. This is the best time to do a systems audit. Make sure you’re using the latest tracking codes from Google Analytics, from your email vendor, from Twitter and Facebook, etc. so that you’re measuring everything important.
Take some time to look at your email templates, too. Freshen up your designs. If your main email templates aren’t responsive to mobile and tablet devices, now is the best time to fix that.
Revive the List
The last thing to do is to look at your list and identify those members who have working email address, still receiving email but are dormant, meaning that they haven’t opened or clicked anything in a while.
Get their attention! Consider an outreach program using retargeting and remarketing methods to get them to come back, to get them to either re-subscribe or just pay attention to you again.
These 5 year-end to-dos (and they work any time of year, really) help put you on the path to improved email marketing performance. Give them a try!
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