Get attached to the part of the company that makes money, set up the measuring and politics such that you get credit for increases in the amount of money they're making, pitch a raise for you as the easiest way for them to get a repeat performance in the next quarter. Also, since companies have persistent exploitable inefficiencies about this issue, be prepared to talk to the people who are actually willing to give you a raise. (i.e. it may not be the people you currently work for.)

At a previous job I negotiated an 80% raise and double promotion 8 months after joining. This was at a huge, very bureaucratic, very political company. This made me the youngest Senior Analyst ever at the company. Here's how I did it:

Work portion: I focused my work on what provided value, not what was difficult or what was in my job description. One of my big achievements was saving the company roughly $1.2MM with a week of work.

I also found out who would be responsible for approving my raise/promotion (my boss and his boss) and what they valued. My boss pretty much just valued results and didn't care how long you worked, where you worked from, etc. But his boss cared a lot about office presence, face time, filling out mandatory reports that no one read, work hours, etc. So I made sure to satisfy both of them, even though I could easily accomplish all my work in just a few hours a day.

Negotiation portion: first, I found out when budgets were set, which was in September. Since performance reviews were done in December, that meant that by the time a performance review came about, your raise would have already been decided.

Then in May, I had a meeting with my boss where I told him something like "I'd like to have a meeting to discuss compensation sometime next month." So he knew it was coming-there was no surprise. Also note the timeline, the actual discussion was in June, giving my boss and his boss plenty of time before budgets would be fixed in September.

Then I made two write-ups: one presenting the value I'd contributed in terms my boss would value, and one presenting the value I'd contributed in terms his boss would value. I then made my case to my boss, focusing on the value I'd provided, and asked for the double promotion so that I could fall back down to a single promotion if that didn't fly.

This was not a perfect approach, but even this much was enough to put me in probably the top 95% of engineers trying to negotiate a raise.

I should mention that pretty much the entire approach above came from Ramit Sethi's book I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

This is a tactic that works very well for me:

I go into the room and do lots of listening at the start. I'm told something like a 3% raise. I say that's very interesting.. blah blah and the manager thinks then it's done.

Then I ask to confirm what my job title is, and what my responsibilities are (write them down). Then I go through a list of all the things I've done or am doing in the last year (prepare well in advance) and I get the manager to say if that item falls within my responsibilities, or if it's "over and above" my current title. Also then make sure the manager comments on how valuable that "thing" is. I drag this on.

Eventually, we have a list of 5 things I'm doing that are "expected" and 20-30 things I regularly do that are "over and above" and highly valued in the manager's own opinion.

From there, it's quite clear I deserve a higher raise.

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Another thing I've done is compare the increase in cost of living to my (potential raise) - When the manager told me 3%, I mentioned my rent had increased 10% and gas had increase more than 25% in the last year... so in fact a 3% is actually a salary cut.

I haven't had the opportunity to try it, but a suggestion I liked when I heard it was to go to the person in a position to give you a raise and tell them "in six months time, I would like to be making X$. What would I need to do or show I am capable of doing (actionable, measurable, objective is important here) for you to give me that?"

Then do those things. In six months, remind them about the conversation (I'm sure it'd go better if you had a reliable way to jog their memory, eg email). If you're worried about them backing out, maybe follow up halfway through to see if they agree that you're on course and that they understand you meant it.