Email Marketing is all about quality, not quantity

In a recent analysis by Forrester Research, sixty percent of marketers are not utilising the power of email marketing because their efforts are mainly concentrated towards growing databases and sending out the information to the maximum number of users, thereby ignoring the fact that it is not the quantity, but the quality that matters, and we are not talking about the quality of the email addresses, but the strategy that is implemented while blasting out mails. The best strategy in this regard would be to segregate your mail addresses in accordance to the data being sent, and this is particularly important for those involved in the email marketing domain for external clients. For instance, depending on the age demographics, you might prefer sending sports goods' mailers to only young audiences, a step that would also reduce the bounce rate of the host site drastically, besides increasing the click-through percentage. Another example would be in case you know the geographic locations of your potential customers as well. According to this location, you can send them mailers specific to their location (Of course, you would not be selling sweaters to someone located in Africa!)

The most imperative precaution while gathering your email database is to capture as much (accurate) information about the user as possible. Based on these, you can start off by defining targets for a better analysis of both your strategy as well as your approach. Even a simple segregation like male/female can bring about a whale of a difference in terms of click-through. Further, in case you own a website offering the facility to the user to subscribe to promotional offers, discounts, etc., make sure you take as much information without being too taxing on the user or taking too much of his time (both are basically the same thing for an average user). A side-point here would be to keep updating your database in case a few users unsubscribe every now and then. This is also important in case you are running mailers for diverse verticals or products, since a user interested in sports goods might not be wanting to receive offers on sweaters (quoting the above example)!

In the end, all that matters is how you play with the number of mail addresses you have, and send out mailers at the appropriate timings to the right audience. There is no set formula for this, and everything is trial and error. However, the upside to this is that once you hit the right strategy, all you have to do is to blast the mails, and get revenues the click of a button.