Good for those big players with their data-driven automated solutions – they can boast about their huge revenues driven by email marketing or other marketing campaigns. But what do you do if you are a small business, do not have any BIG data or money for super smart solutions and still want to begin with something? The answer is – start with one of the cheapest means of marketing – email marketing.

Below is a cheat-list for improving your campaign or at least move it in the right direction.

1. The very basis of your email marketing campaign is your subscriber list. To get to know your subscribers, do an analysis of who they are – gender, geographical location, age, interests, do they tend to pay or not, etc. Separating people and campaigns based on their differences allows you to personalize emails and send relevant information that recipients tend to engage with.

2. Keep in mind that 53% of all emails are opened in mobile devices, so a mobile-friendly/ responsive design is crucial for your campaign. Using responsive email templates that adapt to the recipients’ screen size will ensure that your recipients will see exactly what you want them to see. If they can’t read or see your content – they will probably delete it without reading.

3. Once you have the contacts and you know you need mobile friendly email design, look for an email marketing tool that will send your emails. You may say – I can send emails on my own. But please, don’t do this for several reasons:

– Your email address can be treated as spam.
– Promotional emails/ newsletters should have an UNSUBSCRIBE option.
If you do either of these, you can spoil your online reputation irrevocably.
Moreover, email marketing software will allow you to analyze your subscribers, understand what works best when promoting your product as well as build a more loyal customer base.

“Using the right software is more important today than ever before; because of the increasing amount of information being generated as well as the reliability of service providers, the chances that your message arrives in a recipient’s inbox is melting.” – says Rytis Lauris, the founder of “Omnisend” – Email marketing platform for e-commerce.

Detailed statistics about your campaign are one of the greatest benefits of an email marketing service. Opens and Clicks are standard data for most email marketing software. Don’t rush your campaign and dig deeper to see what buttons your recipients click, what devices they use, etc. Monitoring these analytics you will get valuable insights.

4. Think about visuals. You can’t deny the fact that nice photos do a big part of the work for you to engage with email recipients. Here I can’t refrain myself from sharing a recent blog post which describes how to easily design your visuals making them look trendy!

5. Think about the frequency at which you will send your emails. There is no strict rule to follow. Different audiences like different frequencies. But keep in mind that too many emails could be the reason some people unsubscribe.

6. Do A/B testing. This means splitting your segments into two groups and trying to send the same email but with different subject lines or email designs. This way you will find out what works best.

Some email marketing solutions even have a feature for a kind of A/B testing. With Newsletter booster you can send the same email for the same recipients but with different subject lines. The Opens increase significantly.

7. Want your efforts to turn into conversions? Link your email recipients to the exact page/ form to make it quick and easy to complete.

All in all, sometimes you don’t have to have big data for making smart insights. It is more important to know how to use properly your SMALL data to reach your goals. Good luck with email marketing!

A guest post by: Karolina Jasvinaitė, Content Marketing Manager & Blogger at Omnisend Email marketing blog for e-commerce