Email Marketing Cheat Sheet [Infographic]

It's time to stop all the guesswork with your email marketing strategy. The great folks at Marketo put together an email marketing "cheat sheet" to help you optimize the effectiveness of your emails and campaigns.

We've touched on some of the key areas and important information below to go along with the infographic.

Email is still the preferred method of receiving permission-based marketing communications, with 77% of consumers to back to it up. This is good news because email communication is still popular and it just takes a well-executed strategy to obtain the results you're striving for.

Top email marketing performers spend more time on strategy than their competition. It's a simple cause-and-effect relationship that more brands need to focus on. Having a strong plan in place will keep everyone on the same page and working towards a common goal. You should be able to schedule your emails and watch the results pour in without scrambling to fix minor details.

Test, test and test again! If you don't experiment with the different elements of your emails, you'll never be able to find the perfect formula. It takes practice and a lot of tweaking to create highly optimized emails. These are the areas you should be focusing your testing efforts on:

• Subject Line
• Message / Content
• Layout & Images / Call to Action
• Day of the Week Sent
• Time of Day Sent
• Personalization
• Landing Page
• Target Audience
• "From" Line
• Mobile Layout & Images

Successful emails have mastered the perfect time of day to send based on their list. A general tip for receiving the best results is to schedule your emails to be sent out during peak open-rate hours. Refer to the infographic below to find the specific opening times and their corresponding open rates.

Mobile-friendly emails need to be a priority because if users can't open the email, they're going to delete it and that's an opportunity lost. Smartphone technology is only getting better and more people are relying on their mobile devices to perform tasks that would normally be done on a computer.

Even after following all these email marketing tips, there still needs to be value in the content of your emails. You need to put effort into what your email is offering and why someone should act on it. Then you can focus on understanding and executing each aspect of your email marketing strategy to maximize its effectiveness.

Photo credits: email