How marketers are optimizing their email marketing, according to research

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When most marketers consider how to optimize their email program, they think about writing compelling copy and call-to-action (CTA). Yes, copy and CTA are important. But there's more that marketers need to consider as they work to optimize their email program.

Email marketing has evolved over the decades and remains one of the most useful touchpoints in the customer journey today.

But how are marketers optimizing their email strategy to retain audiences despite inbox flooding?

To help answer this question, Ascend2 and various research partners have done Email marketing optimization survey and a total of 298 marketing professionals participated.

Here are some notable insights from the Asend2 research:

What is email optimization?

Email optimization are all activities that can be measured to improve the relationship between email and your audience and increase conversion rates and ROI.

Possibly the best way to look at ionic email optimization is to look at the toughest challenges marketers face when trying to optimize their email campaigns. The importance of retaining email subscribers with relevant and valuable content cannot be underestimated, as it is at the top of the list of challenges. It is that relevant and valuable content, when matched with email data security best practices, that will help you overcome the second challenge on the list, reducing SPAM complaints.

Chart about difficult objectives to achieve when optimizing email

Maintaining an interactive email list is the #1 hardest goal for email optimization, according to marketers.

Get the fundamentals first

Email optimization begins before an email is sent. Pre-deployment email testing is critical to delivering engaging, high-quality campaigns. Design, deliverability, subject line , subscriber verification, accessibility, sender reputation/SPAM score, HTML validation, and email client device/display are all important items to optimize before you hit submit. The best email copy and calls to action (CTA) are guaranteed to generate 0% conversion rates for those who don't get it. Also, if the design hinders the reader from reading the email, it will greatly reduce your conversion rate.

Chart about the most important element to test in email marketing.

Design is the most important attribute to test email marketing optimization, according to marketers.

Take the time to set up a process and have tools ready to review your emails before they were sent to get immediate positive results from your email optimization program.

Focus on improving

It can be said that if you want to improve any marketing campaign, it starts with the quality of your data. For email, quality data allows marketers to deliver more personalized and targeted content to subscribers. Quality data allows you to segment your list and as a result you can write more specific copy and targeted CTAs. Plus, your automation campaigns become more targeted, and even the types of content you deliver are data-driven, not random.

Chart about the most important characteristic to improve for effective email optimization.

Personalization is the most important trait that needs improvement for effective email optimization.

How to deal with Inactive email

So you've optimized your email campaigns and some of your subscribers are still not interacting with you (how dare they!).

How long should subscribers be inactive before removing them from an email marketing list?

Bar graph that shows when inactive email subscribers should be removed from an email marketing list.

Subscribers that are inactive for 2-6 months are removed from email lists, according to 31% of marketers.

If you're implementing all the best practices with data quality, pre-launch fundamentals, copy, CTA s, personalization, segmentation and testing, and incompatible subscribers. partner with you, it's important to establish a regular process to remove them from your list. Remember, the goal is not your list size, so when your subscribers tell you they don't care about you emailing them when it's inactive, believe them.

You can download the whole Email Marketing Optimization Survey Summary Report for more data, tips, and strategies to engage your audience despite inbox clutter.