Every marketer wants to achieve a high email marketing ROI. However, the business world is getting increasingly sophisticated and email marketing is no exception. Which means that a great ROI is absolutely realistic and achievable. Of course, it won’t come without a bit of elbow grease.

Several aspects contribute to achieving amazing results for your email campaigns. However, certain parameters matter more than others. Just like the Pareto principle, a small number of factors will dictate much of the overall outcome.

Here’s a list of the top 5 things to look out for in making your email campaigns successful. We chose these five because of how much they impact the success of your email marketing.

We explain what each of these 5 factors mean. Next, we discuss why they are among the most important factors in email marketing. Finally, we show how you can go about improving them. 

Towards the end, you’ll find an infographic on the important activities of email marketing, along with statistics.

Let’s begin!

1. Increased email open rates

What is email open rate

Email open rates measure the percentage of subscribers who open an email campaign.  

A high email open rate tells you that the subject line appealed to your subscribers. More subscribers opening your emails means you have a better chance to engage them.

Many other factors influence your email open rates. Some of them are:

• relevance of the topic,
• timing of the campaign,
• list segmentation, and
• engagement history.

For instance, the emails that you send at odd hours – say 1 AM in the morning – might see low open rates. Or the audience that had opened your last few emails are more likely to open your next email.

Why email open rates matter

The first reason why email open rates are important is that your subscribers can only engage if they open your emails. Hence, engagement rates are directly related to the open rates of your emails. 

Moreover, by tracking email open rates, you’ll know who on your list is active. You’ll find out which kind of campaigns are working and which aren’t. Finally, you’ll be able to figure out what are the best times of a day to send out campaigns.

How to improve email open rates:

The five important factors to improve email open rates are:

1. Subject line: Improve your subject line. Make it attention-grabbing, relevant, and compelling.
2. Sender reputation: Work hard to maintain and improve your sender reputation. Follow best practices.
3. Email list quality: Clean your list at least once a quarter to remove expired or undeliverables emails. Do not use purchased lists.
4. Consistency: Maintain a frequency of how often you send emails. Emails that arrive as per schedule are more likely to be opened.
5. Expectations: Deliver what you promised – better if you can deliver more than what you promise. 

2. Better click-through rates (CTR)

What is click through rate

Click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of recipients that click on a link, image, or button in an email. 

CTR shows you what percentage of your subscribers are interested in your offer in a particular email.

Why CTR matters 

A high CTR indicates that your email is relevant and engaging. It means the email is effective in communicating your message to your audience. A good CTR can lead to:

• Increased conversions: If people are clicking on your links, they’re likely to take action: a purchase, webinar and or downloading a resource.
• Improved ROI: A higher CTR means you’re getting better returns for your money. That could be by way of generating more qualified leads, starting more conversions, or even getting better visibility.
• Targeted list: A high CTR suggests that your email list is composed of targeted subscribers whose interests are aligned with what you share.
• Enhanced credibility: A bigger CTR can boost your sender reputation. That’s because it indicates, your emails are valuable and relevant to your audience.
• Increased deliverability: A high CTR can also improve your email deliverability rates, as it shows that your emails are being opened and engaged with by your recipients.

On the other hand, a low CTR can indicate that your emails are not resonating with your audience. That’d lead to poor engagement, low conversion rates, and ultimately, a lower return on investment (ROI).

How to boost click-through rates

Here are 5 tips to improve CTRs:

1. Craft compelling offers: Give your subscribers a strong ‘Why’. Why should they click? How does your offer stand from the hundreds they see daily? Why now?
2. Use clear and concise calls-to-action: Make it easy for recipients to understand what action to take.
3. Optimize for mobile: Ensure your emails look good and are easy to navigate on mobile devices.
4. Use eye-catching visuals: Add images and icons to make your emails more engaging. Provide links to videos; do not attach videos directly.
5. Test and refine: Try different subject lines, CTAs, and visuals to see what works best for your audience.

3. Enhanced email deliverability

What is email deliverability

Email deliverability refers to the percentage of your emails that successfully reach your subscribers’ inboxes. 

Email deliverability, also known as inbox placement rate, tells you if the recipient email server trusts you enough to place your email in the inbox.

Why email deliverability matters

Good email deliverability is crucial for successful email marketing, as it:

• Increases the likelihood of your emails being opened and engaged with
• Boosts your sender reputation and credibility
• Helps to maintain a positive relationship with your subscribers

But first and foremost, people almost never read emails that land in their spam folders. So your only chance to engage and convert a prospect is when your emails qualify to fall into the inbox. Which is precisely why email deliverability is so vital to your campaign success.

How to improve email deliverability

The following actions will help improve email deliverability:

1. Authenticate your emails: Use SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication to highlight the authenticity of your emails. This is also one of the new Gmail, Yahoo requirements of 2024.
2. Clean your email list: Remove undeliverable, not-safe-to-send, and poor quality email addresses
3. Avoid using purchased lists: Send emails only to subscribers who have signed up for your emails. 
4. Use a strong subject line: Experiment with different styles: statistics, questions, humor, … figure out what your audience loves the most.
5. Monitor your email metrics: Keep checking to learn what’s working and what’s not. Regularly adjust your strategy. 

4. Stronger subscriber relationship

What is subscriber relationship

Subscriber relationship refers to the degree of interactions between your organization and your subscribers. This relationship is built over time through repeated email campaigns, engagement, and personalization. 

How to measure subscriber relationship

Unlike the other metrics on this list, there’s no universally accepted way of measuring your relationship with your subscribers. That’s partly because your relationship is a measure of not one but several metrics like open rate, CTRs and more.

Why subscriber relationship matters

Strong subscriber relationships are essential for successful email marketing, as they:

• Increase engagement: Subscribers are more likely to open, read, and respond to emails from brands they have a positive relationship with.
• Improve retention: When subscribers feel valued and connected, they’re more likely to stay on your list and continue engaging with your content.
• Boost loyalty: Positive relationships foster brand loyalty, encouraging subscribers to become repeat customers, advocates, and ambassadors.
• Enhance feedback: Subscribers with strong relationships are more likely to provide feedback. This not only provides you great testimonials, but also helps you refine your content and offerings.

How to improve subscriber relationship

To build strong subscriber relationships:

1. Personalize content: Tailor messages to individual subscribers’ interests, preferences, and behaviors. 
2. Segment your list: Divide your list into groups based on demographics, behavior, or preferences to ensure relevant content.
3. Communicate consistently: Maintain a consistent tone, format, and frequency of communication to establish trust and familiarity.
4. Respond to feedback: Engage with subscribers who respond to your emails, show appreciation for their input, and make changes accordingly. 
5. Show appreciation: Offer exclusive rewards, discounts, or early access to new products or services to valued subscribers.
6. Monitor and adjust: Regularly track subscriber behavior, sentiment, and feedback to refine your strategy and improve relationships.

By prioritizing subscriber relationships, you can create a loyal community of engaged subscribers who will drive long-term success for your email marketing campaigns. Just in case you didn’t know, you drive up sales by listening to the customer’s voice.

5. Automated email workflows

What is email workflow automation

A workflow automation in email marketing refers to the feature or ability to trigger sending the email in response to a certain action or at a certain time in the future.

For example, you may schedule to send an email immediately after someone downloads an ebook. That is an example of a trigger when a user takes a certain action. On the other hand, you may schedule to send an email exactly on the third of the next month. That would be an example of scheduling an email at a certain time in future.

Why email automation matters

By automating workflows, you:

• Increase efficiency
• Save time and resources
• Enhance customer experience
• Boost engagement and conversion rates
• Don’t need to remember sending emails manually

How to make the most of email workflow automation 

If you’re working with a decent email sending platform, automation shouldn’t be a hassle. 

However, in order to truly benefit from the features, you’ll need a bit of homework. Here are the steps to build a strong workflow for email marketing:

1. Define your goals: Identify the purpose of your email marketing campaign and what you want to achieve. 
2. Segment your audience: Segment your email list based on demographics, purchase history, engagement, or other relevant criteria.
3. Create a content calendar: Next, plan and schedule your email content in advance using a content calendar. 
4. Set up automated email sequences: Use automation tools to create email sequences that trigger specific emails based on action or timing.
5. Use conditional logic: Wherever possible, you can use conditional logic to personalize your emails based on subscriber data, such as name, location, or purchase history. One of the best things you could do is to reach out to people who ditch their shopping carts at the last moment. Check out these great examples of abandoned cart emails to inspire your own!

A word of caution for email automation:

• Keep it simple: Keep your workflow simple and easy to understand by breaking it down into smaller, manageable steps. Avoid complexity and keep your workflow flexible.
• Continuously improve: Continuously monitor and improve your workflow by gathering feedback from subscribers, testing new ideas, and refining your strategy over time.

Statistics on the important activities of email marketing: An infographic

Here’s an infographic on email marketing that captures the statistics of its vital activities.

Here’s what to do next

As we said at the start, it’s not difficult for an email marketer to realize all these aspirations but it’d need a bit of work.

The question that remains is: Where do you begin? What’s the first step a marketer needs to take if they wish to achieve the amazing email marketing ROI that we all keep hearing about?

The answer lies in your email list. No matter how small or big your email list, it’s important to keep it clean and accurate. By clean, we mean it should be free from invalid email addresses. By accurate, we mean the list shouldn’t have email addresses with typos (like ‘gmali’ instead of ‘gmail’). 

Without a clean and accurate email list, you’re going to see too many hard bounces.

So take the first step and validate your email list. Our free email list verifier will separate out the good emails from the bad. You will have separte lists of valid, deliverable email addresses and the invalid, not-safe-to-send emails. Once you have a cleaned, verified list, you will see much better results.

Go ahead, sign up now and validate upto 3,000 emails for free every month!