Your email subscribers are some of your most valuable business assets — and building and strengthening your list should be a top priority for your business.
Here are a few steps to consider before hitting that "send" button.
Planning
- Email Send Date: When does this email need to land in your prospects' inboxes?
- Email Topic: What is your email about? Ex: New ebook, monthly eNewsletter...
- Subject Line: What subject line will entice recipients to open your email?
- Goal: What do you hope to accomplish with this email? Ex: Lead generation, clickthroughs...
- Target Segment / Persona / List: Who did you create this email for? Ex: CEOs at small to mid-size companies in the Northeast.
- Suppression List(s): Who do you want to exclude from your send? Ex: Employees, current customers...
- Personalization: Which elements of your email are you going to personalize for the recipient? Ex: Name, Company Name.
- Image: Will you have any images in this email?
- Call to Action (CTA): What do you want recipients of this email to do? Ex: Download, Watch, Register...
- Link to Landing Page or Other Asset: Which web page are you trying to drive the recipient to?
- Social Share Links or Buttons: Do you want your email recipients to tweet or share an element of your email?
Testing
- A/B Test: Is there a certain element that you want to test? Ex: Subject line, Call to Action, Color, Send date/time?
- A/B Test Results: What were the results? Which variation won?
Results
- Total Emails Sent: How many email addresses did you send to?
- Total Emails Delivered: How many of the email addresses you sent, successfully landed in an inbox?
- Total Emails Opened: Of the email addresses you sent, how many were opened?
- Total Clicks: How many unique individuals clicked a link in your email?
- Deliverability: Total Emails Delivered / Total Emails Sent. Above 95% is ideal.
- Open Rate: Total Emails Opened / Total Emails Delivered. An open rate of 20% would mean that out of every 10 emails delivered, 2 were actually opened.
- Clickthrough Rate: Percent of recipients who clicked a link in your email out of total emails opened.
- Leads Generated: How many new potential business contacts did you get from email recipients filing out the form on your landing page?
