Do you have an answer to that question? If you don’t you are not alone. Tracking the ROI of your email program can be difficult if you don’t know where to start. So, where do you start? What will you track and how do you determine the results? What is the value of an email subscriber? How much do I spend in time and money to use my email service provider? These are all things you need to know to understand the ROI. Here are a few examples of how to get started!

First of all, the easiest way to...

By now, there are enough “Big xxxxx” doing the rounds: Big Business, Big government, Big Chocolate, Big Oil, Big Science, Big Tobacco and Big Media. A recent addition is Big Data, which broadly refers to the humungous amounts of information that gets generated in this digital age.

Naturally, Big Data is complex and unwieldy. In fact, it is defined as “a collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using on-hand database management tools or traditional...

Of course it does. Was there ever a doubt?

No, but here is a heads up. Plenty of email marketers continue to work under a bunch of assumptions and end up with a pace of email list growth that can compete with, well, a snail.

“My subscribe page looks OK” is the biggest of those assumptions.

An OK-looking subscribe page is one that appears satisfactory with two main elements in place – clear call to action (subscribe/opt-in) and clearly stated what’s-in-it-for-you.

Such a page may have been good...

Keeping your audience in your email list is one of the major challenges faced by every email marketer. With your competitors vying for their attention, an ill-crafted or irrelevant email campaign can easily make your audience lose interest and click the unsubscribe option. Mentioned below are some ways by which you can reduce unsubscribe rates:

Targeted segmentation: Perform a better list segmentation so you can send relevant and customized mails to your subscribers. When the content is specific...

Each day email marketers think outside the box to make their emails reach target customers. But are your customers actually receiving your email? Email Spam filters are becoming smarter in keeping inboxes free of emails which they consider, “Spam”. Therefore, it is imperative for marketers to devise ways to bypass the spam filters and reach their customer's inbox. Here are a few tips:

• Clear and relevant subject line: To entice your customer to open your email the subject line should...

As a marketer, you have to be careful about the emails you send. With aggressive Spam filters everywhere, your email can easily land in the Spam folder. Your reputation as a sender is critical in authenticating your emails, ensuring its deliverability, and increasing your open and click-through rates. Here are a few tips to ensure your emails reach your reader's inbox and not the Spam folder: 

Maintain Your Email List: Having a big database is not enough. You should periodically run an email...

Email marketing is attractive because it is a budget-friendly marketing tool in our Net-connected world. Among several channels, the ROI from email is at the top, almost twice that of its nearest rival – search marketing. This means email continues to be a marketer’s best bet for connecting with customers and prospects. And if customer is king, all your email recipients are the prospective heirs-in-waiting, right?

This brings us to the rules that apply to customer service. You must have heard...

You have nicely segmented your email list into smaller lists. You have used your judgement and evaluated available metrics, user preferences and habits to categorize the main email list. Now you know, your next task is to customize your email message to target each separate list, so that the content, the timing and the frequency suit the identified characteristics of each segmented list.

Segmentation gives a great impetus to the responses from your recipients and the numbers will show up in the...

Yes, I’m talking about Email List Management. In this age of data, acquiring accurate information (email addresses, names, etc.) is crucial. The more accurate information you have about your subscribers, the better you can segment them and send them relevant emails they will respond to.

Cleanliness is just as important. How many times has a subscriber signed up for a mailing to never actually open the email received? How many times has a subscriber opened a message only to quickly delete it and...

A great email program is centered on sending relevant content to the right audience, correct? How do you define your "right audience"? 

Why? 

Many organizations are probably randomly defining their audience. Some may be seeing results because they got lucky, but others may still be struggling to see satisfying email open rates, email click through rates, etc. Creating personas is a way to start sending more relevant messages to a targeted audience. 

How to Start? 

A good place to start creating...