In order to increase email marketing conversions and revenue and generate maximum results, you need to spend a lot of time running tests and optimizing every aspect of your campaign. This takes a lot of time and effort, but for those with a large email list, the increase in conversions is worth it.

For those of you who don’t have a lot of time and effort to spend on email marketing, I recommend that you hire an agency to help you, or start by attacking the low hanging fruit of email marketing.

Look at the Stats

I wouldn’t put this on here if I didn’t speak with people on a regular basis who think they can fly email marketing by the seat of their pants. You don’t know what converts your subscribers until you have tested, tested again, and tested some more to confirm the results. What you do on other media (i.e. TV, radio, print, or search) isn’t guaranteed to work in email. Spending just a few minutes looking at the results of a campaign a week after it was sent can help you get a feeling for what works and what doesn’t — even if you aren’t running comprehensive email marketing tests.

Fewer Images

Your favorite brand sends you awesome, trendy emails that typically consist of a bunch of images and no HTML. While it may work great for them, chances are that it won’t for you. Take another step out of the conversion process for your subscribers and build your message with more HTML and fewer images. At a bare minimum, keep your calls to action as text so they are visible even if your email arrives without images enabled.

A/B Testing

I’m sure it sounds intimidating, but it really isn’t. An A/B test can be as simple as building an email and sending it to half of your list with one subject line and the other half of your list with another subject line. Check the statistics a week later and see which version had a higher open rate.

Learn more about A/B testing email marketing.

Deliverability

Monitor the delivery of your emails to make sure they are getting into the inbox. If more than 5% of your messages are being blocked or moved to the junk or spam folder, you have a problem. Work with your email service provider or agency to identify the cause and formulate a strategy to fix it or improve your reputation.

Learn more about message delivery and deliverability.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to optimizing email marketing. If you’re ready to dive in deeper, I suggest you read these earlier posts from our staff.

Seven Steps to Growing Revenue From Email Marketing

Email Marketing Is Changing – Don’t Get Left Behind

Tracking Email Marketing Revenue Generation and Conversions

7 Ways to Increase Email Marketing Conversions in 2011

Image provided by iMaffo on Flickr.