No doubt you have heard proclamations of the death of email as a useful marketing tool. Such claims have arisen primarily because of the continued growth of other vehicles. With more ways to get in front of your customers, each tool—including email—has come to find its own unique way to be successful.

Statistics from Express Pigeon indicate that email marketing delivers an ROI of a whopping 4,300%. Yes, that’s right—4,300%. However, this does not mean that every email campaign will yield such results. As with any marketing campaign, proper execution is key to achieving optimal results.

How to Make Email Marketing Really Work

There are some relatively simple ways that you can turn your marketing emails into sales drivers for your business. Following are six tips to help you get on your way to that 4,300% ROI:

1. Make it Mobile

Expect that your emails will be read on smartphones and plan accordingly. Make sure they display properly on a small screen and all links go to pages created with responsive CSS to keep users engaged and moving on with you.

2. Craft the Right Catch

Your subject line must spur people to open your message. Some terms that yield the best open rates include news or new, alert, bulletin, sale and video. Ensure also that the body of your message follows through on the promise made in the subject line. Cutesy or quirky subject lines designed to get emails opened but that do not relate to the main message should be avoided at all costs.

3. Time it Right

Monthly emails are too infrequent and make people feel they are being delivered “old news.” Additionally, too much information crammed into one email because of infrequent sending allows readers to tune out or skip important messages.

4. Do Your Housekeeping

Clean your email list regularly—at least quarterly—to ensure delivery to your most qualified prospects. Remember that it is the quality of recipients, not the quantity that matters most.

5. Design Less, Test More

Simplify your design process and spend more of your time testing and optimizing messages. A simplified and problem-free process is what takes people through the sales cycle.

6. Follow Up

Collect and review all metrics—and use your data to plan and execute future email campaigns.

Many tools exist to help automate and streamline the creation and sending of marketing emails, as well as the capture of analytics. Taking advantage of these email marketing benefits can offer great advantages to companies.

Instead of listening to messages from extremists and throwing out email marketing altogether, find the way to integrate email into your overall marketing mix. Wise use of a variety of marketing vehicles and tools is ultimately the best recipe for success.