When it comes to email advertising, strategy is essential. If a company tries to run an email marketing campaign without clear direction and planning (i.e email campaign management), it will almost certainly fail to yield significant results.

Recently, Ross Kramer, CEO of a leading marketing firm, spoke with Chief Marketer, offering several key tips for achieving a successful email campaign.

1. Promotional pop ups

One tactic Kramer recommended for improving email acquisition and increasing average costs per order is the offering of promotions. As numerous industry experts have highlighted, is incentivization is an elemental aspect of all marketing. Without an easily perceived incentive, consumers are unlikely to take action. Businesses must give existing and potential customers a reason to perform the desired task.

For encouraging email acquisition, for example, Kramer advocated the use of modal pop-up windows offering discounts. Businesses can customize their websites so that when individuals visit, a new window pops up offering a slight discount off of their next purchase, in exchange for providing her email address.

“This can double your email address file within a year,” said Kramer.

2. Targeting

Another key to successful email marketing, according to Kramer, is targeting. Specifically, he recommended that organizations present discounts and special offers that relate to site visitors’ behavior.

As an example, he presented the case of a person who visited a winter clothing company and, after browsing the snowshoe page for a while, added some equipment to her cart. However, she ultimately did not make a purchase and did not return to the site for some time.

In this case, he argued that the company should send targeted email marketing messages that reflect this person’s interests. By offering discounts on snowshoes, for example, the company has a far greater likelihood of gaining a customer than it would offering a generic, site-wide discount.

This advice echoes that offered recently by John Hayes on Business 2 Community. Hayes argued that when a company segments its list to account for its potential and existing customers’ varying interests, it is likely to experience far greater success than through nonspecific email blasts.

To achieve this level of list management, Hayes recommended that companies contact everyone on their email lists and, while providing incentive to respond, ask them to identify their interests and concerns. While this will certainly yield a less-than-perfect response, any information accumulated greatly improves the likelihood of future email campaigns proving successful.