New research undertaken by Adestra, an e-consultancy, shows digital marketers are spending too much time on manual in-house tasks such as administering and producing e-mail campaigns and not enough time on optimization and targeting that will make significant improvements to their return on investment.

The top three ways to improve campaign performance are: optimization, targeting and personalization. Having time to implement a testing program is key to finding what works best for your company. There are a number of steps to undertake to save time:

• Invest in a simple user interface
  Choose an easy to use interface, and consider changing if your present tool is not to your liking.
• Back office automation
  Ask your e-mail partner to conduct an audit of your work flow.
• Templates
  Consider if a library of templates is appropriate.
• Campaign automation
  Review your schedule for campaigns that could be automated.
• Outsourcing simple tasks
  Review your processes, can you outsource? If time can be released to be spent on more productive tasks that achieve an increased return on investment, then this would mean incremental revenue. One way to achieve this could be outsourcing campaign design and management to your ESP.