By Debbie Weil
Reading time: 2 minutes
Word count: 369
The mantra of email marketing is test, test, test. You might also call it wash, rinse and repeat.
The first thing you should test is your assumptions: is your free e-newsletter delivering an ROI (return on investment)? If you’re spending hours or days per month creating and delivering an e-newsletter whose primary goal is to generate leads or sales... and you’re not showing a measurable bump in either, then stop the presses.
I don’t mean permanently. Just long enough to review how you can improve your publication. Here’s what you should be looking at:
1. Your content/promotion ratio
"Best practice" guidelines recommend a 70/30 or even 80/20 ratio of content to promotion for e-newsletters. But if you’re giving away too much free content and never "making the ask" for a sale, your readers may not be motivated to buy.
Why should they? They’ve got a good thing going and they’ll enjoy it as long as you dish it out.
You might need to tinker with your ratio. Or experiment with gracefully intertwining a promotion with your content. If they’re closely related, readers will want to learn more.
2. Frequency & consistency of publication
It’s all in the eye of your reader. For some people, receiving your e-newsletter once a month will seem frequent. For others, that much of a gap between issues means your newsletter lacks a recognizable punch.
Better to stick to a consistent schedule whether it’s once a week, twice a month or less often. Bottom line, you’ll never make everyone happy...
3. Segmenting your list
The good news; you don’t have to! If you’re itching to send your list more promotions, ask for permission first. Announce that you’re creating a special list, membership or club for those who DO want to hear more about special offers on your products and services.
Tell them you’ll be emailing them as often as once a week with discounts and other goodies that ONLY they’ll have access to. Perhaps, in addition, they’ll get one additional content tip to sweeten the deal.
Keep track of the sales or leads you generate from these additional mailings. Re-compute the ROI of your e-newsletter. Then wash, rinse and repeat. I.e. test and tweak again…
