In these times of recession, email marketers are under more pressure than ever to get the best return from their email marketing campaigns. So it’s tempting to crank up the frequency in which you hit your list or lists.

As email marketers we’re under increasing pressure to maximise the ROI from email marketing campaigns and in the short term there may well be a lift in sales or website visits but how much long term damage could this do to your overall reputation? You risk potentially doing more harm than good if you increase the frequency in the number of emails you send, you could end up bombarding your subscribers with more emails than they are happy to receive from you – don’t forget you’re not the only one sending them emails!!

So what can email marketers do?

Well sometimes less is more! A well targeted and timely email campaign will yield far better results than an untargeted blast to your entire file.

Segment your list

I’ve known companies (and I’ve done it myself) segment to the most very basic level, for example, if your database contains people who have bought different products from you, then email people who have bought product A promoting product B. (not forgetting to make sure you exclude anyone who already owns both products!)

You could send a targeted offer to the male and female readers of your list; it could even promote the same product but with a different message that appeal to that demographic.

Depending on how much you know about your subscribers there is so much you can do. If you don’t know much about your subscribers (perhaps you have only collected the most basic information) then you can ask them, run a questionnaire or poll on your website and find out more about them, these can be targeted to your business needs, then make segments based on the feedback and email accordingly.

Timing your email campaigns

Timing your email campaign is critical to its success; I have learnt this from bitter experience. I’d recommend thoroughly testing the day and time that you send your email campaigns to see when you get the best response. From experience it tends to be Tuesday to Thursday, between 5 & 9 in the evening. Of course this may be different for your industry and also for your market, for instance those in a B2B environment may notice that’s it better to send early in the week opposed to sending on a Friday afternoon when people are winding down for the weekend.

Of course a timely offer is a great way to increase the response of your campaign. Email campaigns around a specific event work well. If you know the date of your subscriber’s birthday you could do a special offer available on that day. Or its known event coming up (mothers day, Valentines Day or the kids going back to school)

As with all marketing test, test and test again.

Run split campaigns against creative to see which works best and if your as not testing subject lines on EVERY send you should be!