You’ve sent your emails, seen an increase in sales and are now sold on the power of email marketing. But what comes next? How do you improve your engagement, outreach, clicks and opens? How do you continue to leverage your emails and improve your campaigns? Below are three next simple steps you can take to supercharge your email marketing efforts.

1. Create sub-lists for targeted emails: One of the best things you can do to increase the success of your email campaigns is to break down your contact list into a series of sub-lists based on various key factors. Most lists have two types of customers – active and inactive. Active customers are people who are opening and clicking your email, taking the action you want them to take and in many cases purchasing your products or services.

Once you’ve sent a few emails, you can begin to divide your list into these two groups. The active customers should receive regular emails with information about your company, products, new releases etc. But, don’t ignore the inactive customers. Instead, you want to try and engage them through short, to-the-point emails, often containing an offer that will appeal to them. Want to learn more about segmenting lists? Check out our blog post, “Improve Your Email Response Rates with List Segmentation.“

2. Experiment with email styles: Now that you’re getting comfortable sending emails and communicating with your customers, it’s important to test your emails. Testing keeps emails fresh, helps you to find the best way to communicate, and allows you to discover top content, copy and design your customers are craving. Try creating emails with fun offer codes or unique holiday deals. Test various images and attention grabbing subject lines. And don’t forget, sharing your emails and updates on social media is one of the most important ways to extend the reach of your messages and engage with a larger audience.

3. Time your emails: There are a lot of studies that tell you which times get the best results when sending emails. This infographic from KISSmetrics goes into detail and provides some good starting points, but all businesses aren’t the same and neither is your customer base. It’s important to send emails at various times and look at your data in depth to see which times and for which emails (newsletters, promotional emails, etc.) are getting the most opens and clicks. Once you’ve found the best time(s), you want to continue testing to make sure that time is still the best and that your open and click rates are either increasing or staying consistent.

Now you’re ready to start optimizing your email campaigns. Use the above tips to also fine-tune your messaging, style and voice. Hone in on your customers’ actions and learn the best ways to keep them reading, buying and coming back for more. You’ve already harnessed the power of email marketing, now it’s time to put it to work for your business and truly get the bang for your email marketing bucks!

Want more marketing tips and tactics? Sign up for the free VR Buzz.

© 2014, Contributing Author. All rights reserved.