The world of marketing is comprised of a range of different techniques that all come with different goals and results. Of them all, direct marketing is definitely something that has stood the test of time. Although social media marketing, content marketing, and even blogger outreach are all fairly new, the likes of direct mail are still just as effective today as they have ever been – if not more, especially when it comes to email marketing. If you’ve been creating newsletters and sending them out with little traction, you may not believe this to be true. So, if you want to get more out of your email marketing, here’s what to do.

Set A Goal

To start with, you’re going to need a goal. This could be an overarching goal for all of your email activity or simply smaller objectives that you set for each general marketing email or newsletter you send. By setting a goal, you’re able to ensure that the content matches up to what it is that you’re trying to achieve. In that way, you have something to measure your results against too.

Use An Appealing Design

Next, you’re going to want to think about the design that you’re using. When a customer or prospect opens your email, they will judge its content in just a few seconds. So, you’re going to want to make sure the design is right. Make sure you check out free email newsletter templates and designs that can help you with this. You should aim to stick with something branded and uniform for most of your emails or a set style for each type.

Utilize Your Analytics

You’re also going to want to make sure that you have analytics set up for your newsletters and email marketing campaigns. You may have this on your email provider’s software or you can add it in. Either way, when you track your newsletter performance, you can see how many people are opening your emails, how many are clicking on your links and what it is that they are clicking on. This data can be extremely useful for improving your results.

Test Away

With this data, you’re then going to want to play around with what works. You should be able to learn the kinds of email titles that get more opens, and the links and content that get more clicks. So, you can then start to work out the best kind of content to put in your emails. You may even want to test different ideas, or even AB Test by sending different kinds of emails out to parts of your network.

Make Your Content Click-Sexy

If you’re not entirely sure what content you should start to test, you’re going to want to make sure it is something that entices your customers and prospects to click on. Whether it’s a link to your podcast, social media channels, or a landing page with more detail, you need to trial different kinds of content to see what your readers prefer. Then, you should be able to get those good looking results.