Tools & Tips for Successful Email Marketing

1. 1. Success through the right e-mail marketing strategy
2. 2. Define a target group
3. 3. Building and expanding an e-mail list
4. More information about different newsletter tools, as well as their advantages and disadvantages, can be found on our new OMR Reviews platform.
5. Relatively new is also our weekly OMR Reviews Newsletter, where we present you with our articles as well as news from the software world. After all, a lot exciting is happening there.
6. In addition to the subject line, you should also pay attention to the preheader and your sender name, as even their content can significantly increase the open rates of your newsletter.
7. In our daily newsletter, we decided to address our readers as personally as possible. That's why our editors make the intro very personal, and introduce themselves, including a photo. We also incorporate so-called newsbites, short exciting current news, into our daily newsletter. This has resulted in us receiving significantly more feedback on our newsletter and the unsubscribe rate has dropped.
8. Try it directly or get more opinions on a tool of your choice. On our review platform, you'll find information and reviews on 1.000+ business softwares.
9. The eye doesn't just eat, it also reads. So pay attention to a consistent design in your newsletter that matches your corporate design. This also includes that your newsletter is clear and gives the recipient orientation. Subheadings can be useful for this, for example.
10. This means you send two different contents to two different groups each and afterwards compare the success of the two variants. This way, you will know for the next newsletter what resonates with your readers and what doesn't.

Nobody reads newsletters anymore these days? That's not true. On the contrary, a well-made newsletter is super effective and helps your company stay in dialogue with existing customers and get in touch with new customers. We at OMR have also redesigned our daily newsletter a few months ago and enriched it with exclusive Content. There's also now weekly info about news in the software market in our OMR Reviews Newsletter.

We'll explain to you in ten steps how to build a newsletter yourself, what you need to consider and which E-Mail-Marketing-Tools, like GetResponse can help you, so that the next newsletter will be a total success.

1. Success through the right e-mail marketing strategy

Even with a newsletter, strategy is everything. Firstly, you should think about what you want to achieve with the Newsletter. Do you, as an Online-Shop want to introduce new products and thereby increase sales, or are you a SaaS company that wants to drive up your engagement metrics? Do you want to win new customers or strengthen relationships with existing customers and their trust in your brand? These questions you should be able to answer definitively before you proceed to the next step.

2. Define a target group

Next, you should think about your target group. What do the profiles of customers look like with whom you can achieve the goals you defined above? And what is this target group interested in? A clearly structured target group analysis can help here, for example by creating buyer personas, like we know them from other marketing areas.

3. Building and expanding an e-mail list

Moving on: Do you have your contacts already in an e-mail list or does the recipient pool need to be built up? For each new registration, it is important that you get a verifiable and explicit consent of the recipient. This is best controlled via a Double-Opt-in process. Whether you are building up the recipient pool from scratch, expanding it or just managing it: At this point at the latest, it makes sense to integrate a suitable software.

Tools like Cleverreach, GetResponseBrevo (ehemals Sendinblue), , Inxmail, Klick-Tipp or RapidMail

can take over your subscriber management. The mentioned softwares are all hosted in Germany, which contributes a great deal to meeting GDPR requirements. But also non-European e-mail marketing providers are doing a lot to enable the corresponding tools to be used in Germany and Europe. Depending on the pool size, different tools may be suitable for you over time. We have, for example, just switched from Mailchimp to ActiveCampaign

because our data volumes were getting bigger and bigger and ActiveCampaign is therefore now better for us.

More information about different newsletter tools, as well as their advantages and disadvantages, can be found on our new OMR Reviews platform.

4. Choose your newsletter amount and shipping times

Consider how often you want to send your newsletter. The rule here is: Quality over quantity. The frequency definitely depends heavily on the topicality of your newsletter topics. There is no general answer for the right frequency. Consider what content you have in your newsletters and how often it is updated. Based on this, you can determine a newsletter frequency that does not annoy your readers and at the same time does not make you forgotten.

At the OMR, for example, we have a daily newsletter, in which we introduce our daily article and present other small "newsbites" meant to enhance the added value of the newsletter. In addition, there's a weekly newsletter, which includes a "Best of" of the daily newsletters and thus appeals to customers who find a daily mailing too much. And then we have a monthly newsletter, providing an overview of our activities. So we are addressing different customers with different frequency preferences.

Relatively new is also our weekly OMR Reviews Newsletter, where we present you with our articles as well as news from the software world. After all, a lot exciting is happening there.

5. Choose an exciting newsletter subjectNow let's cut to the chase: Not only the whole surrounding, but also exciting newsletter contents are of course crucial for the success of the newsletter. And it starts with the subject, because the first impression always counts. If it's not catchy enough, most recipients won't even open the newsletter. So it's worth using a good subject. Consider what could motivate your subscribers - at best immediately - to click on your newsletter. Try making the readers curious by, for example, addressing them by their first name or asking a question that you then answer in the newsletter. Or use a Call-to-Action

, like for example "Get 10 % discount now".

In addition to the subject line, you should also pay attention to the preheader and your sender name, as even their content can significantly increase the open rates of your newsletter.

6. Build suspense in the newsletter text

Now we come to the content of your newsletter text. Here too, the first words and sentences are decisive. If they bore the readers at the beginning, they will probably not read your newsletter to the end. Here again: Consider what interests your target group, how you can offer added value or how you can build suspense. How about images, for example, that appeal emotionally to the recipients? Or topics that make them think?

In our daily newsletter, we decided to address our readers as personally as possible. That's why our editors make the intro very personal, and introduce themselves, including a photo. We also incorporate so-called newsbites, short exciting current news, into our daily newsletter. This has resulted in us receiving significantly more feedback on our newsletter and the unsubscribe rate has dropped.

7. Carry out a target group segmentationExciting content, of course, is not the same for all readers. To still provide all subscribers with relevant content, it is recommended to split your target group into different groups. This is called segmentation in E-Mail-Marketing

.Brevo (ehemals Sendinblue)A fitting software can also be super helpful here! , or MailjetBrevo (ehemals Sendinblue) offer the possibility for segmentation. On our OMR Reviews platform, Gesine from the BTN mail order company GmbH writes about

, that the target groups can be easily selected by self-explanatory filters or file uploads from the shop system.

Try it directly or get more opinions on a tool of your choice. On our review platform, you'll find information and reviews on 1.000+ business softwares.

8. Finding a consistent newsletter design

The eye doesn't just eat, it also reads. So pay attention to a consistent design in your newsletter that matches your corporate design. This also includes that your newsletter is clear and gives the recipient orientation. Subheadings can be useful for this, for example.

9. Carry out A/B tests for optimizationWe're nearing the end, and yet we still have a few useful tips & tricks up our sleeve. If you are uncertain, for example, about which content, subject line or call-to-action is better received by your target group, you can integrate an A/B-Test

and test different versions.

This means you send two different contents to two different groups each and afterwards compare the success of the two variants. This way, you will know for the next newsletter what resonates with your readers and what doesn't.

10. Create a newsletter KPI reportingLast but not least. In order to optimize your newsletter continuously, you should implement regular Tracking and associated reporting of relevant performance indicators. Use KPIs such as opening rate, click rate, unsubscribe rate etc., and interpret from them how well your newsletter is received and optimize it if necessary. Here too there are numerous tools, from Acy Mailing over Yesware to Zoho Campaigns

, that can support you with this. Measure, measure, measure and never stop improving.We hope our little newsletter guide supports you in the creation of your next newsletter. If you'd like, feel free to leave us a review on OMR Reviews for a tool you've used before whether from the E-Mail-Marketing, CRM, Influencer Marketing