Coming up with the best email newsletter for your email marketing campaigns is vital.  However, how do you know if you are doing your best or if you are just average? Well…it’s all in the data.

The best email newsletters have about a $40 to $1 Return on Investment (ROI) according to the Direct Marketing Association.  In addition, according to iContact, the best email newsletters get their subscribers to spend 83% more than non-subscribers.

If your email marketing campaigns are not hitting these numbers, then this infographic below is for you.

Based on the data presented so nicely in the infographic above, in order to create the best email newsletter you must do the following:

1. Break your email list into multiple customer segments. Once you segment your email list, then you must personalize each email newsletter specifically based on the characteristics of the people in each segment.  In a recent post, we showed that customer segmentation increases revenue by 24%.  This is a huge deal.

2. Target your inactive and window shopping email subscribers. One customer segment you should immediately create is a list of inactive email subscribers.  This is like gold mining.  These are the people who have not yet unsubscribed, but are tuning you out.   It’s much easier for you to create an email newsletter with an incentive to reactive these subscribers than to go out and find new subscribers.

In addition, you probably have a list of people who click links but don’t buy.  Put these subscribers in a separate email list and send them an customized incentive as well.

3. Use consistent branding across email newsletters and every other customer touch point.  The best designs are consistent designs.  Customers will trust you more if your email newsletters have a consistent design with all other customer touch points (website, social, print).  There is a high correlation between trust and revenue.  By increasing trust, you will increase revenue.

4. Optimize your email templates for mobile.  If your email template hasn’t been updated to look nice on smartphones and  tablets then you don’t have the best email newsletter.  A 2013 survey from Blue Hornet showed that 80% of respondents delete a mobile email that “doesn’t look good” and 30% will unsubscribe from your email list altogether.

The takeaway here is simple. If you want to have the best email newsletter that gets you at least a 40 to 1 ROI and gets subscribers to spend 83% more than non-subscribers, you must at least do the 4 things listed above.