Email Campaign Optimization Tips + Best Practices

With its high ROI (Return on Investment) – anywhere from 3200% to 4500%, according to Forbes Advisor – email marketing is an excellent revenue-boosting tool for all businesses and industries. However, you probably need some email campaign optimization to reach the higher end of that ROI range.

The bad news is that it can be quite a challenge. You’ll need to consider many things – from content quality to technical aspects – to get the best results. 

The good news? We can help you out! Here is our list of tried and true email campaign optimization tips and best practices.

See also: How to Measure Email Marketing Success: a Super Actionable Guide

10 email campaign optimization tips for efficient marketing 

Work on engaging email subject lines

The subject line is the email marketing equivalent of a movie trailer. It captures the reader’s attention and makes your message stand out. That’s why it’s so hard to write, even though it’s just a few words. 

How can you do this well? Here are some tips:

• Personalize your subject lines whenever you can.
• Don’t overuse punctuation (for example, “!” can be a handy tool to draw attention, but “?!” will seem spammy and may have the opposite effect).
• Don’t go too hard on emojis (but don’t shun away from them either!). One is usually enough. Pick something appropriate and relevant.
• Avoid spammy words, especially ones that make exaggerated promises or are easily correlated with something shady (get paid, earn, best price etc.).
• Use evocative language and other tools (e.g., time-limited deals) to spark emotions in the reader (such as a sense of urgency, fear of missing out etc.).
• Be specific in line with the topic.

Personalize content

Direct, personalized emails let you connect with your subscribers on a personal level, encouraging a positive relationship and repeat buys.

However, in the context of email marketing, to reach a specific audience, you first need to identify it. That’s where SEINō’s list segmentation and targeting features come in. With our Data Explorer, you can view all data from your sent email campaigns and group, pivot and filter it however you like. This allows you to focus on data that helps you single out a specific customer group and understand that audience better to create content that resonates with them.

Email list management best practices

Once you’ve identified your audience using segmentation and filtering, you need to ensure you have the correct addresses on your list. Remember that list management is an ongoing process in successful campaigns. It’s also not about removing addresses but rather optimizing your email marketing efforts in other ways:

1. Including a double opt-in – Ask your email subscribers for additional confirmation to ensure you only get addresses of people interested in your content or products.
2. Explaining what to expect in a welcome email – Start your relationships with subscribers with a welcome email where you set expectations (you can also offer a deal to start things off on the right foot).
3. Tracking subscriber behavior at various customer journey stages – You can use SEINō to monitor your subscribers’ behavior, preferences and engagement level. This customer data is important because it can help you segment your audience.
4. Re-engaging inactive subscribers – People who haven’t opened your emails or clicked links inside for at least 12 months are unengaged. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve lost them for good, but getting their attention back will require effort, i.e. a re-engagement campaign.

If you want more information about list management, check out our comprehensive guide: Email List Management: 7 Best Practices for 2024.

Use graphics and media

It’s no secret that content with images and other media grabs attention faster than plain text. According to John Medina – a developmental molecular biologist – people remember around 55% more information when an image accompanies it.

Email marketers can use this to their advantage. Tools like Canva can help you design graphic content (images, infographics and more). 

Improve your writing

“Content is king”. Bill Gates said it first and content marketers have been repeating it since. Well, it’s true for email, too. You can send perfectly optimized campaigns to the right audiences, and you still won’t get far if your content isn’t good enough. If you’re wondering what “good content” means, read on:

• Remember that less is more – Don’t overdo it. Keep the message short and sweet.
• Format the text – Add spacing, use different fonts, bold, italics etc. Ensure it’s easy to glean essential information from your messages at a glance. Highlight only the key information and choose a maximum of 2-3 fonts etc.
• Ensure it’s actionable – Highlight products and services with links, and remember about CTAs.
• Keep it relevant – Stay true to the email subject. Use segmentation to make the messaging fit the audience.
• Offer value – Give your readers something that makes them want to stick around, e.g., useful information or a free consultation.

Make sure your emails are mobile-friendly

According to Statista, the global number of smartphone users reached 4,88 billion in 2024 and is still growing.

These aren’t numbers you can ignore – if your emails aren’t mobile-friendly, they may never get opened. Keep the messages short, ensure they adjust to screen size (test both the portrait and landscape views) and make icons and CTAs touch-friendly. Failure to do so will have terrible consequences for your campaign’s effectiveness.

Include CTAs

Never assume readers will do something by themselves. Sure, it’s not impossible for someone to google your brand after reading an email and then visit your website or landing page. However, a well-placed CTA (Call to Action) makes this much more likely and helps you raise email conversion rates. Here are some tips on how to write CTAs well:

• Usually, one good CTA is enough. If you want to add multiple, make sure they all have the same, clearly defined conversion goal.
• Place your CTAs strategically. They should be easy to notice and click.
• Use clear, concise and actionable language to create a sense of urgency in the reader.
• Be consistent and on brand. Avoid sudden transitions and changes between CTAs and the email’s content – use similar language, colors and imagery.
• Test and improve your CTAs. Try new approaches until you find one that works best.

Here are some examples of good CTAs.

Make unsubscribing easy

As of February 2024, Google requires senders who send over 5,000 messages daily to make unsubscribing easy by supporting one-click unsubscribing and providing a clearly visible unsubscribe link in the message body (usually at the bottom of the email). A clear and concise explanation of what they’re unsubscribing from will remove confusion and allow recipients to receive only the types of email they’re interested in.

Test your emails

A/B testing allows you to base your campaigns on data-driven decisions – and the good news is that SEINō can help you with this. Our platform gives you two options: 

• You can send two campaigns to the same group, allowing you to determine which email campaign idea is more effective.
• Alternatively, send one email to two different audiences to check how their responses differ.

Continuously improve with email analytics

A good email marketing campaign can always get even better. To see the best possible results, you need to base your email marketing strategy on cold, hard data instead of assumptions. That’s what great email analytics tools such as SEINō can help you with.

Our solution streamlines email campaign management and analysis by showing data for multiple campaigns on a single, customizable dashboard. You can generate email campaign reports for whichever metrics you want, set specific targets for each, and use filters to display data for specific times, audiences, campaigns etc. This way, you can focus on information that matters in a given scenario.

SEINō lets you monitor email marketing KPIs (e.g., open rate, conversion rate, click-through rate) and transactional metrics (number of transactions, revenue, average order value etc.) that many other tools won’t allow you to track. This means you don’t need to invest in another analytics tool to get this information.

You can also set up automatic alerts to be notified of significant changes, like a sudden drop in deliverability.

SEINō also makes it easy to export data – simply create a report, convert it into an Excel or CVS file, and send it to whoever needs it.

Conclusion

Email campaign optimization is a complex topic, but we hope our list of tips and best practices has made it more approachable.

Ultimately, the most important tip is to base your decisions on data. It’s done easiest with an email analytics platform like SEINō. It’s a complete toolbox with a customizable email marketing dashboard for tracking all the essential metrics (including transactional ones), powerful filtering and segmentation options, subscriber list development monitoring, A/B tests and practical integration options.

Want to check it out? Learn more about SEINō or schedule a demo! 

FAQ

How to optimise an email campaign?

Optimizing means enhancing engagement and conversion rates. There are several tactics you can use to achieve this, e.g.:

• Crafting good subject lines
• Targeting the audience well and personalizing content
• Optimizing emails for different devices
• Improving based on analytics

What is the email optimization process?

Email marketing optimization improves email campaigns based on previous performance and analytics data. 

You can change content, CTAs and subject lines, remove technical obstacles that impact deliverability and target campaigns more accurately.

What is the KPI of an email campaign?

There are many. You should monitor email marketing metrics, such as email conversion rate, bounce rate, open rate, click-through rate or unsubscribe rate.

What is a good ROI for email campaign?

It varies depending on the industry and the goals for your email marketing campaigns, but a good ROI is somewhere between 3200% and 4500% (which means $32-45 earned per every spent dollar).