Email marketing is far from dead, but it has changed significantly over the years. There are email marketing trends that might have been successful a few years ago, but now would prove a turnoff to your audience. There are resources and tools available to email marketers now that might not have been available before. And because of that, it can be hard to know what email marketing strategies will get you the most ROI today.

Email marketing is typically a fairly affordable version of marketing, but not always free — and certainly not effortless. And marketers should always look for a way to get a profit. Today, let’s dive into a few ways for you to get the most ROI from your email marketing.

Set Clear Goals

Before you go into anything, you need to have clear goals of what you want to accomplish. Email marketing is no exception. These goals will help you determine what exactly you want, so that you can focus on those. They will draw you back to your sense of direction. When you have a roadmap, you’re likely to perform better and get a higher ROI.

When setting goals, don’t forget the rules of SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-related. Keep your goals as specific as you can so that you have clear guidelines going into email marketing.

Personalize Your Email Marketing

Email personalization can help to ensure your email doesn’t go straight to spam or get deleted as soon as it’s opened. You may have hundreds or even thousands of email contacts, and it can be impossible to send each one a written, personalized email manually. But with automation, you can address your email contacts by name, offer exclusive deals, and so much more.

Using customer data, your email marketing could send contacts and leads special offers based on their own past interactions with your website. This provides information that is actually relevant to each individual email contact, enhancing the chances that they’ll visit your website and making a purchase.

Segment Your Email Marketing

Another way to make sure that you aren’t just casting a wide net and hoping for the best is to use email segmentation. Segmentation involves breaking up your email contacts into different segments based on demographics, interests, or patterns of behavior. You can send different emails to each segment, ensuring that the relevant information reaches the right audience.

Your email list contacts don’t like to feel that their time is being wasted. If you make sure the emails that you send them are the kind of emails they’ll actually want to read, it will help boost your engagement — and thus your ROI.

Weed Out Dead Leads

Make sure your focus is on generating high quality leads that are most likely to lead to a conversion. This may not be something you can predict every time. Knowing your target audience and how to reach them can help, but sometimes you get an email contact who seems promising but never actually opens your emails.

Some email marketing platforms charge you based on the number of contacts you have. These contacts could be costing you money without actually any chance of raking money in from them. So if you have an email contact that has been inactive for some time and you can’t revitalize their interest through personalized emails, it might be a good time to let that contact go. At the very least, don’t spend too many resources on them. Focus on the promising leads.

Take Steps To Avoid the Spam Folder

Are your emails actually reaching your audience? There’s a chance that they’re getting sent straight to the spam folder. If your emails trigger Gmail or Ymail’s algorithms, for instance, they may get flagged without you or the recipient being any the wiser. In addition, Google sometimes filters emails into the “promotion” folder in Gmail, which also often gets auto-deleted by many email contacts.

Here are a few steps to avoid your emails getting sent to spam:

• Don’t send emails to contacts who didn’t opt in
• Avoid spam trigger words like “while you sleep,” “online business opportunity,” or “free consultation”
• Prune your email list regularly — if your emails are deleted too often without being read, they might go to spam
• Monitor your reputation

Email marketing can be an affordable and deeply rewarding form of marketing for your business — if you know how to use it to your advantage. These tips will help you increase your ROI and hopefully find valuable and long-lasting customers along the way.