Most marketers measure the success of their email newsletters in terms of the amount of emails opened and the clicks they generate. As a general rule, these statistics tell us how well an email newsletter is performing.
If your email newsletter marketing isn’t going as well as you’d planned, here are some suggestions to help you to improve your email marketing efforts and the success of your email newsletters

Frequency of emails
Are you bombarding your customers with too many emails? This is a common problem where you have seen open rates and clicks drop over a period of time.

Content of email marketing messages
Are your offers and articles appealing enough? How does your content compare to the competition? Regular good quality content will help to keep your readers interested and your open rates up.

Relevancy of your email newsletters
This is the biggest problem with most email newsletters and another reason why you may see results drop over time. If the emails you send through have nothing relevant for a recipient why would they click-through?
Relevancy can be resolved in a number of ways including: sending to segments of your database each time rather than the whole list, using past email behaviour to determine interest and using tailored content blocks or dynamic content by using a solution such as Maxemail.

Email deliverability
Quite simply if your emails are not getting into the inbox or being labelled as junk it does not take a genius to work out that fewer people will open the email and even fewer will click-through.
Take proactive steps by ensuring your email provider is white listed and not blacklisted and that your email has been scored in a spam checking tool. If you are sending from an in-house system you may find that an outsourced email newsletter software solution will improve your deliverability.

Rendering of email messages
Many email newsletters land in our web-based email clients inbox looking mangled. Not only does it look unprofessional it is also difficult to read and hence less likely for the reader to be able to find something worth clicking on. Make sure you are not having these issues by regularly reviewing your marketing emails in different email browsers.

Data collection
How ‘opted-in’ are members of your list? Those that might have subscribed while entering a competition will probably be less responsive than those that pro-actively requested your information. If members have ‘bought-in’ before subscribing to your email newsletter you will see this come through in improved responsiveness.

Email creative
In particular what you should look at here would include:

• Call-to-actions – are they obvious?
• Does you message take into account the preview pane and the fact that the top 300 pixels are the most important
• What does your HTML email look like with image blocking enabled?

Covering all of the above will help you identify where you can improve your email newsletter. Of course other brainstorming activities such as looking at what your competitors are doing is also a good place to start.

How to be successful with email subscriber lists

Every time you send an email or newsletter to your subscriber list, one of two things happens.

1. Your email makes a positive impression, and your readers feel you are worthy of their attention and continued interest. Or,

2. Your email is disappointing in some way, and your readers view the next email you send with a little less enthusiasm.

Put another way, every email or newsletter you send will either build on or diminish the relationship you have with your readers. My guess is that most retailers and publishers don’t think like this. I have a feeling that most list-owners view their list as an asset, to do with as they wish. There’s money to be made from that list, and they’ll do what it takes to maximize revenues.
An email list is a very delicate thing
It’s not the list that’s delicate, of course. It’s the attention and respect of your readers.
You have likely experienced all I’m talking about from the receiving end. You probably still receive emails and newsletters from some companies and individuals – but simply don’t open them any more. One day you’ll get around either to filtering them into your junk folder or unsubscribing.
Why don’t you read them any more? What went wrong? At some point you felt it just wasn’t worth it any more.
Maybe the content became repetitive. Maybe the sales pitches became too relentless. Maybe you had learned all that those particular people could teach you.
Pay very close attention to what you send to your readers
I have seen one huge email list become almost totally non-responsive within a matter of weeks. I have seen another email list, with millions of subscribers, end up with an open rate of around 4%.
In both cases this happened because the owners of the lists lost sight of what a “list” really is.
An email list is not a passive asset that can be milked for all it’s worth. A list is a large group of people who signed up because they trusted you enough to share their email address.
The list is not “yours”. It is theirs… one name at a time. As a result, you need to think very carefully about what you send to that list, every single time.
It is understood by your readers that you will sometimes have something you would like to sell them. It’s OK. But you have to achieve a balance. You have to give more than you ask for. Your readers have to feel that they have come out on top in some way.
Concluding thoughts
Before you send each promotional email or newsletter, pause for a moment. Review the contents and make sure you have the balance right.
Make sure there is enough value there. Make sure the value of what you give outweighs the attention you ask for in return.