Marketing is constantly evolving. Technological advancements and changing consumer trends require marketers in all channels to develop new strategies to ensure their messages reach as many relevant individuals as possible and resonate with their audiences. Basically, there is always something bright, shiny, and new to capture marketers’ attention.

However, marketers can become so excited about new developments and ideas in the field that they can overlook some of the fundamentals that are among the most important factors in determining  campaign’s success or failure. This is definitely the case in email marketing, where there are some foundational elements to every campaign’s success.

Here are two key fundamentals that email marketers should keep in mind at all times, regardless of innovations in the industry.

1. Email List Cleansing

Email marketers should always maintain a strict email list cleansing policy.

First off, list cleansing is critical in order to ensure CAN-SPAM compliance by removing any email addresses from recipients who have opted out of future mailings.

List cleansing is also critical for efficiency. It is a waste of both time and money for a firm to send messages to email accounts that are inactive or to subscribers who are no longer interested in the company’s products, services or industry.  Emailing to inactive or other ‘bad’ email addresses can impact overall deliverability of current and future campaigns.

With regular email list cleansing, firms can ensure they both honor subscriber unsubscribe requests, reach out only to those recipients who are likely to be receptive to the firm’s messages, and get a higher percentage of emails into the recipient’s inbox.

2. Segmentation

Segmentation is another foundational aspect of email marketing that should be considered and leveraged in virtually every email campaign. Segmentation allows an email marketer to break up email lists into different audience groups, then create messages that are more likely to appeal to these individual groups than to the list as a whole.

The concept of list segmentation itself may not be new or innovative, but there are any number of creative ways to incorporate this strategy into an email campaign beyond the basics.

As you start planning your next email campaign, remember the start with the basic building blocks before you add on the bells and whistles.