Agile Email Marketing Part 3: Micro-Efficiencies to Send and Analyze Emails

With agile email marketing, speed is of the essence. But how do you do this without sacrificing quality or facing resistance? Micro-efficiencies. We’ve already talked about the irresistibly small ways you can be more efficient with content and development as well as reviews, approvals, and testing. Now it’s time to add the finishing touches to the new agile email workflow with sending and analyzing emails.

Micro-efficiency #6: Send final email code straight to your ESP

Let’s face it, there’s probably some—or a lot—of copying and pasting going on to get final email code into your sending platform. All of that back and forth between tools is bound to lead to mistakes. Even more so if there are last minute fixes or requests (shakes fist at multiple “final” files). There’s an easier way so you never have to second guess the final code of your email again. And it’s literally one click away.

You can find several tools to help you do this… Did you know we have one, too? With ESP Syncing in Litmus Builder, you can automatically sync your email—and any changes you make in Builder—to your email service provider. No more of that manual copy and paste nonsense. This way, you know you always have the latest version and can hit send with confidence. If you’re already using or considering Litmus, this is a no-brainer.

Micro-efficiency #7: Analyze and share insights

It’s easy to forget about reporting once your email’s sent. On to the next thing, right? And all that data… whew! If you haven’t been keeping up, it can be overwhelming. Instead of trying to conquer it all at once, remember our recurring theme here: small steps.

First, figure out which metrics you need to measure.

The basics—opens, clicks, bounces, and unsubscribes—are a great place to start. These surface-level metrics help you stay on top of email activity, which is critical for email deliverability and inbox placement.

For a more complete picture, though, you’ll want to measure engagement-level metrics, and these differ from brand to brand. For some ideas and to see how others are measuring up, check out our State of Email Analytics.

One way to go beyond the basics? Litmus Email Analytics. You can measure things like how much time was spent on your email, how often it was forwarded, which email clients and devices your subscribers use most, and more. Brands that use Litmus Email Analytics see a 16% higher ROI than those that rely on data from their ESP alone.

So now you know what you want to measure, but wow, it would take forever to get all of that data for your email marketing program. Start with one email. How about the one you just sent? Then continue to collect data for each future email (and you can slowly backtrack and catch up as needed).

Even with one email, you can begin to turn your metrics into action—like optimizing your next email, social post, and more.

And in this new, agile email workflow, you can analyze real-time results, compare with previous sends or similar types of campaigns, and share learnings all at the same time, all within one tool: Litmus. (That’s right—the time-savings don’t stop.) Litmus Email Analytics simplifies getting the insights you need with tags for filtering, aggregated reports for a bird’s eye view, and custom reports to hone in on the data that matters most. Here are some tips on how you can use email insights to power email segmentation and make informed decisions across your entire marketing mix.

With this, you’ve come full circle and can now be more strategic about your next email, continuing with all of the micro-efficiencies we’ve shared. After all, the agile email workflow aims to help you make better emails, faster.

Have micro-efficiencies or “time hacks” of your own you’d like to show off? We’d love to hear them!

Want to see all of the micro-efficiencies plus bonus tips & tricks?

Our ebook, Going Agile: The New Email Workflow, is now available! It includes a detailed agile email workflow process chart you can easily reference, all seven of our micro-efficiency tips, plus bonus ways you can go the extra mile toward agile email marketing.

Get your copy →