Following the best email marketing tips and practices can help create successful email campaigns that keep readers engaged and eager for more, but it won’t matter how optimised your emails are if you aren’t tracking the results.

When sending an email, businesses should review the purpose of their email marketing and figure out which metrics they will need to track to determine how they’re progressing toward their overall goal.

Open Rate:
The open rate is the percentage of recipients who opened your email. By tracking this, you get an insight into how engaged your subscribers are. Your subject line is the most important factor affecting your open rate so if your open rate is particularly low you might want to re-examine your subject line strategy. Using a compelling or creative subject line will make readers want to read the content. Don’t settle for overused lines like ‘February newsletter’; use language that will engage readers to read further. Decent open rates range between 15% and 25%.

Click-through rate (CTR):
An email’s click-through rate is the percentage of email recipients who clicked on one or more links contained in an email. To calculate an email’s CTR, businesses need to divide an email’s total clicks by the number of emails delivered. CTR lets businesses quickly calculate the performance of every individual email they send. CTR is an important metric for all businesses engaging in email marketing to track, as it provides a direct insight into how many people on their email list are engaging with the email’s content and are interested in learning more.

Conversion rate:
An email’s conversion rate is the percentage of email recipients who clicked on a link within an email and completed the desired action, such as downloading a newsletter or purchasing a product. An email’s conversion rate is tied to the email’s call-to-action, and since the email’s call-to-action is linked to the overall goal of the email campaign, the conversion rate can help determine the extent to which a business is achieving its objectives.

Bounce rate:
The bounce rate is the percentage sent emails that could not be successfully delivered to the recipient’s inbox. There are two types of bounce rates businesses should track; “hard” bounces and “soft” bounces. Soft bounces happen due to problems with valid email addresses, such as an inbox being full or an issue with a recipient’s server whereas hard bounces are due to invalid, closed, or non-existent email addresses. It is critical that businesses immediately delete hard bounce addresses from their email list as internet service providers (ISPs) use bounce rates to determine an email sender’s reputation. A sender with a high hard bounce rate will look like a spammer in the eyes of an ISP.

Unsubscribe Rate:
The unsubscribe rate is the percentage of recipients who have unsubscribed from your emails. Tracking this will allow you to see how relevant your email marketing is and if it is keeping audiences engaged. A good way to discover the reasoning behind a subscriber leaving is to add a question or short survey for when people unsubscribe. This may help to improve your email marketing and reduce further people unsubscribing.

Set realistic and actionable goals

Businesses should set realistic and actionable small goals which they can work towards, rather broad goals which provide no direction. Setting broad and unrealistic goals is demotivating and makes any progress made seem insignificant. Every person in the business should be given a target to meet over a reasonable timeline which contributes towards achieving a larger goal.

Establishing standardised and automated processes

Small businesses can make the mistake of ‘doing things as they come’ but this means that as business grows, adjusting to high scale tasks is difficult. To avoid this, business should standardise all processes of work. Any individual placed into a role should be able to follow standardised procedure and yield a product which is of similar quality to the previous one. Investing money into automation tools is worthwhile for this procedure. This can include automating management of social media, email, and customer relationships. Both of these will contribute to creating structures which support growth.

Identify competitive strengths and weaknesses

Recognising the strengths and weaknesses of one’s business is essential. Strengths will allow businesses to hone in on unique qualities they possess which give them a competitive advantage. Weaknesses will reveal which areas require growth so that changes can be made before upscaling takes place.

Network

Businesses should continue to develop relationships with service providers, sales channel partners, suppliers and customers. Keeping an open mind about partnerships or potential collaborations could open up different avenues of business growth.

Acquiring new customers can often be simpler than retaining existing customers. However, loyal customers give your business a higher chance of succeeding.

Unhappy customers stop doing business with you, negatively affecting your business’ growth. The rate at which your business is losing customers is called churn rate. It can be crucial to address this churn rate to keep it from lowering your revenue and profits.

Consider using the following strategies to reduce churn and improve your customer loyalty.

Analyse churn causes

This is a simple but important step in understanding why your customers are leaving your business. A high churn rate can be explained by a variety of causes including being offered better value elsewhere or simply low levels of connection to your brand. Consider talking to customers who have not returned to understand why they cut ties. This can act as a double-whammy from not only finding out the reason, but also in then showing customers that your business cares about losing them. This can be through phone calls, emails, website and live chat interactions or even social media.

Accessible information

You may find that your customers are having trouble with the functionality of your website or your product. Consider providing free information, training, video tutorials and product demos that are easily accessible to your customer. This can make your product more user-friendly and help customers feel more comfortable – which can be the key to retaining them.

Categorise your customers

Some customers are more likely to leave than others, and need to be categorised into an “at-risk” segment. These are the customers who may have asked for a quote or more information, and were not given direct answers. These can prompt customers to lose interest in the business, so proactive communication with the ‘at-risk’ segment is crucial in retaining them.

Improve customer engagement

Customers wanting to contact you should have minimal trouble accessing your website or contact details. It can be beneficial to ensure that there are no broken links within your website, and that your address and contact information is updated. You may also want to consider setting up a live chat or a mobile app for your business to improve response rate with your customers. This makes it easier for customers to interact with your brand and purchase your products – which can give you the competitive edge.

Having exclusive promotions and offers can help inspire customers to purchase your products, but consistent communication efforts and implementing changes that address the root causes for leaving is key to keeping your new customers happy and onboard longer.

A career mentorship program involves partnerships between employees to develop professional skills and gain industry knowledge. Career mentoring programs are often seen as powerful development tools for cultivating both leaders and employees within a business. Whether you are a small business owner or a multinational corporate leader, the implementation of a mentorship program will always be profitable for businesses as not only does it create a harmonious workplace culture, it also helps to attract and retain employees.

As straight-forward as career mentoring sounds, there are a few key tips to keep in mind when building a mentorship program for your business:

Make sure your mentoring program is clearly defined:
To create a successful mentoring program, both mentors and mentees should have a concise understanding of their roles and what they would like to gain from the mentorship. By succinctly outlining the purpose of the mentoring program, mentors and mentees are more likely to keep organised and communicate respectfully with the guarantee of mutual rewards.

There should also be short-term and long-term goals established for all parties involved, including the business. These goals could be the narrowing of particular skill gaps or creating a more open workplace culture. By having these goals set in stone, both mentors and mentees and have a clear direction to work towards.

Personalise the match-making process:
Often times, businesses will match a mentor and mentee together depending on their skill-set and position within the company. While on paper, this may appear to be an efficient process, but the lack of chemistry between a mentor and mentee may prove to be devastating for the workplace environment.

As a result, be sure to involve both mentors and mentees in the match-making process and take into account personality traits. You could do this by asking employees to take a personality test to ensure compatibility in career goals, personal interests and preferred communication methods.

Be involved as a third-party:
Lastly, it is the responsibility of the business to check-in on the progress of mentorship programs in order to understand how mentors and mentees can grow together and what improvements can be made to the program. Remember to always refer back to the long-term goals established and consider the feedback provided by mentors and mentees from the program.

A simple yet often overlooked method of improving your business is to build an engaging website. Many business websites act as a product information dump rather than an avenue to attract clients and reinforce business goals. To ensure you fully utilise your website, here are a few website-building tips you can implement.

Get the basics down
First note that a business website needs to:

• Provide basic information about your business, products and services,
• Answer typical questions and concerns,
• Motivate people to buy or use your products.

To make sure your website is able to fulfil its fundamental duties, there are several must-haves to include:

• Name of company, personalised website domain, tagline hours of operation. Display your business name and website address prominently and on every page you have to ensure potential clients can find through search engines
• What you sell or do. Make it very clear what your business does and provide an accurate description of your products or services.
• Photos and graphics. Graphics are a must-have to make sure your website is visually appealing. Examples of graphics include your logo, photos of your products or place of business, a photo of yourself or key employees. In the case that you’re struggling to obtain original images, consider adding stock images that are for free and public use.
• About Us. Your website needs at least one page with background information on your business and the key people who run your company. This is important to include so that your clients are able to gain a better understanding of your business purposes and goals before supporting you.
• Contact Us. Provide your potential customers with an email address and phone number and link your social media accounts to your website. Also, provide a physical address so customers can visit if necessary.

Recommended features to add
Three features that are also helpful to add to your website include:

• FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions). Save yourself some time by answering common inquiries. Also, many people are reluctant to call or email with questions so an FAQ may help clear up some concerns and motivate them to do business with you.
• Testimonials. Do your current customers love you and tell you so? Testimonials and reviews are powerful selling tools and improve your credibility.
• Press and awards. Positive reviews from the media and awards similarly add credibility to your brand and reinforce consumer confidence.

Additional industry tips
eCommerce websites making sales directly from their website can include information about:

• Product details. You’ll need in-depth information about the products you sell online, including photos wherever possible.
• Security practices. Let your customers know that you are keeping their information secure
• Shipping. Indicate how quickly you’ll fill orders, shipping prices and options. Keep your clients updated with delivery information.
• Return policies/guarantees. Make these very clear.
• Customer service hours.

For businesses with a physical location where customers come to you, include:

• Hours you are open.
• Location and directions. You can add a map from an online map service and provide helpful directions for your customers.
• Photo of your place of business or interior.