This is part 2 of our 3 part series is designed to help you improve your email marketing program over the next 90 days. The key is to implement small changes on a regular basis to test and track each change in your program.

6. Provide Value
Ultimately, your goal is to make money with your list. But in order to do that, you’ve got to provide value to your subscribers. This means that not every email is sales pitch, but a mix of content that your subscribers find useful, entertaining, etc. Ideally, you’ve developed a unique persona with your audience that keeps them tied to YOU. Let’s face it… there is no shortage of “content” on the web. It’s how that information is packaged and who is delivering it.

7. Survey Your Audience
Provide frequent, SHORT, surveys. This allows you to make sure your message is on point AND, more importantly, provides data points that you can use to segment your messages so you’re getting the right messages to the right segments of your audience.

8. Use Preference Centers
Let your subscribers set their own preferences in terms of types of content and frequency. For example, maybe they don't want the deal of the day, but are happy with a weekly roundup. Maybe they want product updates on a product they’ve purchased, but not new offers. You can do this in a way where product updates are combined with soft sell cross promotions. They just may not want sales pitches stuffed down their throats every day.

9. Subject Lines
This is your first chance to engage the subscriber with a particular campaign so spend some time crafting effective subject lines. Keep them short (generally less than 50 characters) and straightforward, but enough to pique the interest to entice them to click through to the message. Consider questions, “results”, a call to action, benefits, etc. Consider split testing subject lines and/or resending the message with a different subject line to non openers 24-48 hours later.

10. Review Your Email Marketing Plan
We’re going into the last month of Q1. If you don’t have a plan for the rest of the year, it’s time to put one in place for the remaining 3 quarters. This will help you plan around holidays and special events, affiliate promotions, launches and more. Fill in big launch dates first, then key holiday promotions, and then follow that with affiliate promos and smaller promotions and quality content drops (see #6).

Coming soon, part 3!

For over a decade Heather Seitz used email marketing to build successful companies and had to solve the biggest barrier to consistent profitability: deliverability. Today she is the Co-Founder and CEO of Email Delivered.

Check out the 15 Tips to Improve Your Email Program in 2016 (1 of 3)  here http://www.emaildelivered.com/improve-your-email-program-part-1. Remember to sign up for the FREE Email Delivered Pulse newsletter for articles, tips, and recommended resources for email marketers.

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