The folks on your email list are your best prospects, but if the HubSpot study is any indication, subscribers are getting bored or emails are becoming irrelevant to them as time passes.

So how do you create emails that everyone enjoys? The answer is you don’t… not really. What you do instead is set up a campaign that delivers a series of messages at certain intervals while sending other messages solely to a specific group or segment of your list. This way, you’re able to target your emails for newbies or seasoned subscribers.

If you’re stuck on what content to progressively provide, here are some suggestions…

For The New Subscriber

This is when the subscriber will be most engaged with your emails. They just signed up so you know they’re excited and interested in what you’re doing.

You should send:

• A welcome email – thank them for signing up and introduce them to important people and places on your site, such as where to look at products/services and FAQs, and who they can contact for assistance.
• Coupons – get them to make the switch from “just a subscriber” to “subscriber AND customer” by offering coupons and bundle deals exclusively for email subscribers.
• History – have an interesting story about how your company got started? Share it with your subscribers.

How to do it: These messages all work as part of a follow up series. The welcome usually goes out immediately and then the rest can go out at the intervals you determine.

This is the time when you can expect open and click rates to be the highest, so if you have anything important you want to say, say it now!

After The First Month

At this point, subscribers are comfortable with your business and have probably already purchased something from you. Now’s the time to try for repeat business.

You should send:

• Cross sells – if you have a product that complements something someone purchased, like an accessory, share it with those customers. You can offer a discount or just talk about why they would want that product.
• Up sells – did they just purchase an item that could be upgraded to a more expensive item? Let them know what they can upgrade to and why it’s a good idea to do so.
• Industry news – if there’s something hot going on, your subscribers will probably want to hear about how it affects them. Be a source they can count on for up-to-date information.

How to do it: Cross sells and up sells work better as one-off messages you can send to a segment. If you’re tracking who’s purchasing what, you can easily send a message only to subscribers who purchased product X. All of your subscribers may find industry news interesting, but if your new subscribers are still receiving your follow up campaign, you might want to leave them off the list.

After A Few Months

Subscribers may be nearing the end of their lifecycle on your mailing list or they might continue to enjoy your emails and keep buying. Either way, finding out more about them can help you as a marketer.

You should send:

• Polls and surveys – learn what subscribers want to see more of and what they’ve had enough of. You can then change your strategy based on the results.
• Requests for referrals and testimonials – encourage everyone to write a review or pass your information on to a friend for some word-of-mouth marketing.
• Encourage social media discussions – get set up on the big platforms like Facebook and Twitter and nurture your audience there. Chances are people will stay social media fans even if they unsubscribe from your emails.

How to do it: You can send use a survey service such as SurveyMonkey or a simple GoogleDocs spreadsheet for polls and surveys. You can then tweak the introductory emails you send out (and everything else) based on the results of these surveys.

To spark referrals and social media discussion,  just add a line or two in the footer or postscript telling how to leave a review or follow the brand on Facebook, giving everyone the option to participate.

As long as you take the time to realize subscribers’ needs will change over the time and adjust your campaign accordingly, you’ll have subscribers that are excited about your business and think of you positively. Check your campaign and make sure you have emails prepared for subscribers in different phases.

It’s almost summer, and that means it’s time to change up your emails. Why’s that? Tailoring your emails to the season will help you meet your subscribers’ current needs and acknowledge you care about what’s on their mind.

We’ve got some content ideas that will help you with meeting seasonal needs, but you can also use these ideas to spice up subject lines, provide bonus resources or ignite social media conversations.

Here’s what you can do by season:

Summer

What’s on their mind: summer vacation, BBQs and fun outside.

How your email campaign changes:

• Offer solutions: activities for kids, best places to visit, summer recipes.
• Since people take vacations, consider lightening up your own workload and send less frequently.
• Use juicy, vibrant colors to capture the mood of the season.

Fall

What’s on their mind: It’s back to school time! Fall also brings cooler temperatures, falling leaves and shorter days.

How your email campaign changes:

• Offer solutions: healthy eating, managing busy schedules, getting the house ready for upcoming holidays.
• Start sending your holiday offers and deals — people start shopping early!
• Consider using earthy colors, like browns and oranges, to match the season.

Winter

What’s on their mind: This season is filled with holidays. From Christmas to Valentine’s Day, gift-giving will be on everyone’s mind while they’re tackling the colder temperatures and snow.

How your email campaign changes:

• Offer solutions: stress management, gift guides and weight loss.
• Focus less on selling to subscribers and more on helping them — they’ll appreciate it this time of year!
• Holiday colors and templates can be used to put subscribers in the holiday spirit.

Spring

What’s on their mind: better weather, gardening, and for some, final exams.

How your email campaign changes:

• Offer solutions: studying tips for students, spring cleaning and gardening.
• Get subscribers excited about upcoming launches, deals and industry developments.
• Switch to a pretty pastel palette.

Remember: Not everyone in the world will be in the same season as you! If you have a global audience, make sure you send your seasonally-minded emails to the appropriate group.

Make Your Business More Human

People like to hear from people. When you do things like change your emails to reflect the season, you’re giving your business a human quality that people can relate to.

After all, it’s much easier to relate to a business that commiserates on the woes of planning a summer BBQ than it is to one that sends generic, corporate emails year-round.

Email marketing especially relies on numbers. Click-through rates, open rates, bounces and more are piled on to the list of metrics to watch. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by all of these stats, so you need to prioritize. What numbers really matter and what ones can be set aside?

Here are the most critical five numbers for success in email marketing.

Bounces

If an email doesn’t make it to the recipient’s inbox, it bounces. An email can bounce for a number of reasons, but it’s usually because the email address is no longer active. These bounces can negatively affect your deliverability, making it harder to get your emails to the people who are active on your list.

A few ways to lower your bounces:

• Require subscribers to confirm. They need to be able to access the email address they used and click a link in that confirmation email.
• Ask subscribers to add you to their address book. This is called whitelisting and ensures that their email service won’t block you.
• Remove inactive subscribers from your list. Depending on how often you send, start trimming your list of people who haven’t opened a message from you for a while. For example, if you send weekly, erase subscribers that haven’t opened in a month or send an email asking them if they still wish to be on your list.

Clicks

You want subscribers to take action. This action can be something as simple as opening your emails (and if this is the most important, that number will be more important), but usually it involves clicking on a link back to your website. If you have a high click-through rate, you’ll have a high open rate, since readers need to open the email to click the link.

So how do you get subscribers to read and act?

• Make your message compelling to open. Ask a question in the subject line, use a teaser or make a promise (that you keep).
• Entice readers to click. Get to the point right away and let subscribers know why they need to click by answering “what’s in it for me?”
• Make the link easy to access. Don’t bury your link or button in loads of text; make sure it stands out right away!

Monthly Subscriber Growth

Ideally, you’ll have a large list and more subscribers keep coming in. The actual number of subscribers you have shouldn’t be top priority; it’s quality over quantity. However, you still want to see your list grow. Checking out your monthly growth rate can help you see if you are on the right track. Use a graph so you can get a visual of what’s happening.

Here are three tips to help grow your list faster:

• Focus on providing great content. Stellar content will help more than just your growth, it will also increase click rates, decrease complaints and increase overall revenue. The more people like your content, the longer they’ll stay on your list and the more likely they’ll be to share your information with others.
• Test your offer. Try a different incentive to see which one brings in more subscribers. You can include a bonus for signing up, such as an e-book, podcast or video you created.
• Learn from your unsubscribed. Look at what message subscribers are unsubscribing on and note any patterns.

Complaints

If someone marks your email as spam, that’s considered a complaint. These complaints can negatively affect your deliverability and growth. Complaints typically occur when there is some type of miscommunication between the sender and recipient.

Here are three ways to avoid complaints:

• Set expectations. Tell subscribers what they’ll be getting, how often and how it will help them.
• Include unsubscribe information at the top of the message. Subscribers shouldn’t have to hunt for a way to get off your list if they don’t want to receive your emails anymore.
• Stay consistent with sending and design. If you have long periods of time between messages, subscribers can forget about you. If you change the look of your emails every time, subscribers won’t recognize you.

Revenue Per Email

If your marketing goals include bringing in more revenue, then you want to know how your email marketing campaign performs with regard to this aim. You’ll need to track how many purchases come from email. This will give you an idea of what the return on investment is for your email campaign.

What can you do to make more money with your emails?

• Make your call to action stand out. You want to explain to readers what you’re offering, why they want it and provide an easy way for them to get it.
• Create a premium email campaign. Have readers pay to subscribe (like a magazine subscription) if you have content you can sell.
• Use segments. Sort who has showed interest in what and send targeted emails based on previous interest or purchases.

Now clear your head and get back to your spreadsheets… to look at the numbers that matter!