Mia Papanicolaou, COO at electronic messaging specialist, Striata, says the success of an email campaign is measured by the achievement of the required customer response, whether measured in open and click rates or attributed sales. “Every company’s customer base will react differently to an email campaign. In order to achieve the best possible response rate, campaigns should be tested on samples of the base to assess what works best, before embarking on the full campaign,” she says.

Papanicolaou stresses that marketers can improve the effectiveness of their email campaigns by pre-testing them. This can be done by sending two different emails with the same core message to a sample of customers. If one element proves stronger than another, the more effective one gets incorporated into the final campaign. “This will ultimately result in a higher customer response rate. The immediacy of the results is one of the many benefits of email marketing.”

Email allows marketers to track open and click rates. The insight gained from pre-testing will allow marketers to gauge the effectiveness of:

• Subject lines
• Creative layout
• Best day and time to send

“A ‘one size fits all’ approach has no place in electronic marketing.” says Papanicolaou. “Each company is unique and each customer base will react differently according to the message being communicated and the relationship they have with the sender.

“Marketers must embrace flexibility and adjust campaigns in response to the behavior of your customers. Industry standards are important for bench-marking, but rather base improvements on lessons learnt from your own campaigns,” Papanicolaou concludes.