Introduction
Email marketing for businesses isn’t a new concept. In fact,
compared to other online marketing channels like social media, mobile device
applications, and even search engines, email marketing might seem a bit
outdated.
A lot has been
happening over the past few years with email marketing, and the discipline is
still always in motion. Altered behaviors and expectations by consumers call
for new email marketing methods. Approaches like personalization and
segmentation are transforming company newsletters from anonymous bulk emails
into customized emails.
Today, most consumers read their emails on their mobile
devices, and checking for emails has become the most common activity carried
out by smartphone users. The competition for attention in consumers email
inboxes is forcing more companies to attach increasing importance to well-designed
emails which are personalized and have relevant content, ensuring that the
emails will be opened and read.
Statistics show that email marketing has a broad reach, as
well as being one of the best marketing tactics for return on investment. Just
about everyone has an email address these days, and the majority of users
prefer to receive advertising messages that way.
Plus, with
smartphones, emails are always right in the pocket of consumers and can be
retrieved at any time. According to recent estimates, the importance of email
marketing will continue to grow over the next few years. It’s clear that any
online marketing strategy your company employs should include email marketing
campaigns.
Email marketing
requires more than just sending out the occasional newsletter. Today, marketers
also need to set up and maintain subscriber lists, create and design relevant
emails, and send these out systematically.
For your email marketing strategy to be effective and
successful, it is imperative that you utilize the technical options available continuously
optimize the process through the use of modern analytical tools.
Despite the widespread use of the digital juggernaut that is
email, many entrepreneurs have yet to implement an effective email marketing
strategy for their business because they don't know how to do it or haven't yet
recognized how powerful it can be.
Email continues to serve as the core communication platform
of the Internet and will only continue to grow. Currently, more than 3.7
billion people have access to email, and more than 3 billion non-spam emails
are sent and received every hour of every day.
If your business isn’t already taking advantage of this
powerful and massive marketing channel, you're missing out on an effective way
to reach your target audience.
# 1 – What’s Email Marketing and Why Your Business Needs It
Email marketing is a kind of Internet marketing that allows
the user to send customized messages in the form of an email to their readers
to inform, advertising, or to solicit certain actions from their readers.
There are certain essential components of email marketing
that include:
• Message automation
• HTML responsive layout
• Advance list maintenance
• CAN-SPAM compliance built-in
• An easy integration
• A dedicated IP address
• Help for deliverability
Message
Automation
The message automation is the feature of email marketing
that allows you to send different emails in response to a particular action. If
a consumer just signed up for a discount, they will receive an automatic
welcome message that will serve as a confirmation of the subscription. Message
automation can also be set up to send proof of orders when someone makes a
purchase on your website.
HTML
Responsive Layout
The HTML Responsive layout will allow you to send customized
emails in plain text or HTML format. It also allows you to make use of HTML and
CSS to create responsive templates that can adapt to all devices in the world.
This makes email
marketing campaigns capable of being read on mobile devices. The good part is
that you don’t have to learn how to code HTML because this feature is
automatically loaded with the software.
Advanced
List Maintenance
This feature allows you to add and remove email subscribers
from your list quickly. You can use this feature to automate subscription and
opt-outs. It helps you keep your email lists updated.
CAN-SPAM
Compliance
This is a feature that is designed to check compliance with
the unsolicited pornography and marketing, CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. This act has
given the United States Federal Trade Commission the right to enforce all
necessary standards to protect email owners from unsolicited contents like
pornography.
Easy
Integration Feature
This feature allows for the integration of other services
into your email marketing campaign. You can incorporate your e-commerce website
with your email campaigns through this feature, and you can also include
several mobile apps, loyalty programs, and social media apps to your email
marketing campaign.
You can connect
Google analytics to your email campaign through Easy Integration feature so you
can track the clicks on your email, as well as incorporating product
recommendation features into the email, through the use of this feature.
Dedicated
IP Address
A dedicated IP
address is incredibly essential for the integrity of your email. This IP
address should be one that is solely dedicated to your business, and it should
be the only one used to send emails to potential customers. Your email
recipients will have peace of mind when they receive your emails with this
dedicated IP address.
Deliverability
Deliverability is a
feature that is included in email marketing software that ensures that your
emails are delivered to the right place. If your emails aren't delivered, then
your marketing strategy just won't work. This feature constantly deploys the
tools that you need to track down deliverability issues with your emails.
Why
Your Business Should Implement Email Marketing
Email provides you with the opportunity to send a message to
your audience for any purpose on any day of the year that costs you next to
nothing. This makes email an incredibly powerful way to communicate with your
target audience.
When you are able to
create a solid email marketing campaign and send the right messages to the
right people at the right time, you are sure to build an audience of highly
engaged fans that can't wait for your next message to hit their inboxes.
Additionally, they are ready to buy whenever you have a product or service to
promote. There are several compelling reasons why you need to start
implementing email marketing for your business.
Generates
Massive ROI
A recent study conducted by the Direct Marketing Association
found that businesses will earn an average of $43.00 for every dollar invested
in email marketing.
In fact, marketers
have consistently ranked email marketing as the single most effective strategy
for generating awareness, acquiring leads, generating sales, and improving
customer retention, compared to the other marketing strategies most commonly
employed.
Generates
Long-Term Results
In 2010, the company Market
Beat first started collecting opt-ins for their newsletters. Almost two decades
later a good number of subscribers that signed up during the first year
continue to read their content, engage with their advertisers, and buy products
and services from their business.
Your email list is a long-term asset that will continue to
generate revenue and social capital for your business well into the future.
Most
Customers Want Email from Companies
Marketing Sherpa
conducted a study that showed that 72 percent of U.S. consumers say that email
is their favorite way to communicate with the companies that they do business
with. They also discovered that 61 percent of consumers like to receive weekly
promotional emails from their favorite brands, while 28 percent of consumers
would like to receive promotional emails more frequently.
Additionally, 70 percent of consumers say they will always
open email from their favorite companies, and 95 percent of people who opted in
to receive an email from brands say that the marketing emails they receive are
incredibly useful.
Outperforms
Social Media Marketing
A recent study found that businesses are more than 40 times
likely to create a new customer from email marketing than they are through
social media. When it comes to email marketing, many marketers feel that it
delivers a better return on investment than social media marketing.
Email
is Universal
Almost 87 percent of the U.S. population has access to the
Internet in their home, and 95 percent of consumers use email. With email
marketing, you don't have to worry whether or not your target audience has an
email address or not, unlike social media.
It’s a Resilient Technology
Email has existed in
its current format since the early 1980s, a full 15 years before most homes had
a personal computer and Internet access, and 25 years before the first iPhone
was released. Despite the world's massive amount of technological progress and
the proliferation of smartphones, personal computers, and tablets, the technical
specifications for email have only been updated a handful of times.
While other
communication technologies have come and gone, email continues to withstand the
test of time. When your business invests in email marketing, you know that a
bigger and better thing won't replace it in the next couple of years.
Email
Marketing Is Federated
When you build an audience on YouTube, Facebook or
Instagram, you are at the mercy of companies whose best interests aren't
aligned with yours.
You can put a lot of time, energy, and money into building
an audience on one of these platforms only to have that platform change the
rules in a way that kills the profitability of your campaign. That will never
be the case with email because no one company has control of the technical
specifications for email or control over the technology infrastructure that
allows email to be delivered to the world's six billion inboxes.
Email marketing will continue to be one of the most
effective and most resilient marketing strategies for both brick-and-mortar
companies and digital businesses. It is hard to match the potential ROI offered
by email marketing, and you can rest assured that your efforts will continue to
generate revenue well into the future.
# 2
– Getting Started with Email Marketing
When it comes to starting an email marketing campaign, there
are specific steps that you should follow if you want to be successful.
You need to establish clear goals and objectives, build your
business email lists, choose the type of email campaign that you want to send,
create and design your first email campaign and measure your mail campaign
results.
Establishing
Your Goals and Objectives
Like with any marketing strategy, you need to develop clear
goals and understand your objectives before you dive in head first.
Before you sign up for an email marketing tool, you have to
clearly set out what it is you want to achieve with the emails that you want to
send to your target audience. You want to make sure that your email marketing
campaign aligns with your broader business goals and objectives.
For instance, your
business goals might be to attract new leads to sign up for your branded
products and services, or perhaps to get more attendees to attend your company
events, or maybe you are looking to get more donations for a specific cause.
Whatever your overall business goals are, you have to make sure you take the
time to think about how you are going to use your email marketing campaign to
reach those goals.
Building Your Business Email Lists
After you've established your email marketing campaign goals
and objectives, you can start to create your email lists so you can start
sending out your email marketing campaigns. There are several ways that you can
go about building your email lists. The first option is by importing emails
from known contacts.
These are typically the details that you have on your
existing customers that you can import into your email marketing tool. You can
either manually enter these addresses into your email marketing software, or
you can link your email marketing tool to your email account to automatically
extract the information.
Another option that you may want to consider is to build an
entirely new list of emails from scratch. If you don't have any new contacts
currently, you might want to head over to social media to try and entice people
from your network to subscribe to your email list by providing them with special
discounts or freebies.
You can also utilize your company's website for this as
well. You need to make sure that you write compelling content that will get
your audience to take action, as well as offering an exclusive first order
discount or a freebie for those people who submit their emails from your
website or social media network.
Choose
the Type of Campaign You Want to Send
You can maximize the effectiveness of your email marketing
campaign by following the ten most common and popular formats of emails. These
formats have been tested for years and are practiced by top businesses people
and established companies.
Each format is unique and has a distinctive purpose, which
attracts the interest of different kinds of audiences. Whichever format you
choose, each will generate its own kind of reaction.
Newsletters
Newsletters are used for company information, upcoming
events, etc. The typical format consists of two columns: one narrow column with
a table of contents, logos, sponsors, and feature articles and another wider
column with stories and original communication articles and materials.
If there is more than one article, then it's better to use
section breaks to make it look smart and eye-catching. You can even put a Read
More or Learn More button at the end of each article for detailed information
for readers who are interested to know more.
Events
and Invitations
This type of email is time sensitive, so you have to be
aware of the perfect timing. There should be a buffer of at least a month after
an event/invitation email is sent so that your subscribers can decide and make
time to prepare.
Every event/invitation email must contain call-to-action
buttons, such as a Save to Calendar button, Register for Event button, which
will redirect them to another site consisting of forms and Post-Event Feedback
Survey Form button for your company’s convenience.
You can also send
your audience event details after the event date to all those subscribers who
showed interest in the event email, both the attendees and the non-attendees.
You may have to send dozens of emails before, during and after the event, so
keep your emails short and to the point.
Promotions
This format is used for promotional discounts and special
sales of your products and services. You can highlight Limited Edition or Stock
Limited products in these emails and get a quick response from your customers.
You can also put a call-to-action button like Book Now or Order Now if you are
an e-Commerce store.
Setting a deadline on
the offer in the email gives the customers that extra push to use the offer
right on the spot. Your email marketing campaign will be highly successful if
you can make your customers buy products directly from the promotional email.
Press
Releases
If you want to share
any company information, like the latest business partnerships, new CEO, or new
product launches to the local media, then you have to follow the press release
format of the email. For this kind of email only, you should make a separate
email list where there are just a few addresses for the local media outlets.
Press release emails are different than other formats
because others will use it as a reference when they show this information on TV
or in the newspaper. Magazines and news portals will write an article based on
the information that is contained in your press release, so you need to make
sure that it is full of valuable information and that it is share-worthy. There
are four sections in a press release: the headline, the body, any statement or
quote, and an “about” section.
Announcements
This is similar to a press release, but the audience you
will send these emails to is entirely different. Mainly the customers and those
who are interested in your company's latest updates are the ones that should
get announcement emails.
Announcements could be moving into a new location, product
updates, or upcoming product launch information. Only facts and specific
information are put in announcements emails, so there is no need for any
call-to-action button.
Holiday
Greetings
You can design and use special email templates during the
holidays, such as one for Halloween, Christmas, or New Year's. Nowadays you can
use special HTML or GIF images to make your greeting cards more interesting.
Currently, many ESPs
allow you to track customer's birthdays so you can even send them a birthday
wish email on their special day. This can help to boost your image and prove
that you care about your customers.
Welcome
Note You can set an automated system to send a welcome email to new
customers that have recently registered and subscribed to your email service.
With a simple “Hello X! Welcome to Y” message you can create a friendly
atmosphere with your new customers.
Thank
You Email
When you reach a certain level and have hundreds of loyal
customers that are buying your products and using your services for years, it's
important to show them appreciation. Every year or even twice a year, you should
send out thank you emails to your loyal customers.
Most of the time,
companies send thank you emails on the day when the company itself was founded.
It shows you appreciate your customers and it allows them to feel a deeper
connection with your brand.
Notification/Reminder
Emails
These kinds of emails remind subscribers about any renewal
notifications or service reminder notifications. These kinds of emails
typically don’t require a call-to-action button to be placed in the body of the
email.
Certifications
and Confirmation Emails
You would typically only send this type of email for
verification of certain agreement forms and certifications, which require
step-by[1]step tasks. You must
make these steps as easy as possible by including several call-to-action
buttons. The “I have read the terms and conditions and agree” type of email
falls under this category.
Creating
Your First Email Marketing Campaign
The first step that you must take when you create your first
email marketing campaign is to structure it for easy reading. With adult
attention spans getting shorter and shorter, it is essential that you create
emails that are easy for the average adult to get through. You want to create
precise copy for the sole purpose of driving your audience toward the final
call-to-action.
Next, you are going to want to customize your email
campaign. You can utilize a segmented list or even the third-party integration
that comes with most email marketing programs to personalize your campaign.
To encourage more interaction with your campaign
customization, you want to make sure that you add the individual name on the
subject line to attract the reader's attention, and then create copy that
includes relevant information based on their interests.
You want to make sure that you are using all of the data the
subscriber provides when the sign up to determine the kind of content you want
to send them.
You also need to make sure that your email campaign makes it
extremely easy to convert the reader to a new lead or customers. You need to
ensure that your email campaign is easy to read since more than 40 percent of
readers open their emails on a mobile device. This means it's essential that
your email campaign is compatible with mobile devices.
#3 –
Building Your Mailing List
If you want to
develop a successful email marketing campaign, you will need to develop a
consistent strategy for building and growing your email list. One of the
foundational elements of any list-building initiative should be collecting
email sign-ups on your website.
People who are
interested in your business are probably already visiting your site often.
That's why you should be using your website as one of the primary ways to
gather email sign-ups.
Lead
Magnets
In exchange for
signing up for your email list, you need to offer your subscribers something of
value. This can be a resource list, a discount coupon, or a free report. In the
world of email marketing, this is known as a lead magnet.
Many website visitors are hesitant to enter their email
address into an opt-in form on a website because of the perceived risk of
receiving more unwanted spam email. However, if you develop a compelling and
valuable offer so that potential subscribers will desire your lead magnet
enough to outweigh any possible fear of receiving more unwanted email.
Your
subscribers know that their email address is valuable to you, and you need to
offer them something of equal value in return.
A good lead magnet will help your website visitors learn a
specific skill, accomplish a particular task, or solve a specific problem. The
lead magnet on any given page of your website should be directly related to the
content on that page.
While you may be
required to create multiple lead magnets for different parts of your site over
time, the additional work will be well worth it when you significantly improve
your opt-in rates.
Here are a few common varieties of lead magnets that you can
include to help build and grow your email list.
Free
Report or Guide
These are the most common kinds of lead magnet that are used
to gain new email subscribers. The report or guide that you offer should help
your audience learn about something they are interested in or help them
accomplish a specific goal.
For example, if you had a website about marketing, you might
offer a free guide that helps your audience create their first Facebook ad
campaign. The content of your free report should not otherwise be available on
your website.
Resource
List
A resource list is
merely a list of products, services, tools, and worksheets that will help your
subscribers get started more quickly with what you want to teach them. If you
have a personal finance blog, you might provide new subscribers with a list of
software budgeting tools and resources to help them keep track of their debt,
ensure they have the right kinds of insurance, and determine whether they are
saving enough for retirement.
Free
Trial
If you run a
software-as-a-service (SaaS) company, you might think about offering new
subscribers a 14- or 30-day trial of your service as a lead magnet. Offering a
free trial will get users engaged in your SaaS application and give you the
opportunity to send them marketing content via email.
Downloadable
Software
If your company produces any kind of software that can be
downloaded, you might think about requiring users to enter their email address
in order to download the software.
Discounts
or Free Shipping
Often, e-Commerce stores will offer a one-time coupon for
use on their first order with your company. While providing a discount to new
customers might lower the total price of a customer's first order, it will
significantly increase the probability that they will become a customer in the
first place, because they will be receiving an email about your company's
products and services.
Physical
Products
If having a physical
mailing address for your subscribers is essential, then you can offer an
inexpensive-to-produce physical product as your lead magnet. Small tools like
flashlights screwdrivers and knives are often used as physical product lead
magnets. In order to make up the cost of producing and mailing a physical
product, you can also charge a small shipping and handling fee that will
generally pay for both the product and the shipping.
If you aren't sure
what lead magnet will work best for your website, there are a large number of
resources that are available online that offer specific ideas for lead magnets.
You can do a Google search for "lead magnet ideas" that will return
dozens of pages of articles that contain ideas for lead magnets that you can
model. You can also check out your competitor’s websites to see what kinds of
lead magnets they may be offering.
Messaging
and Copy
After you've determined the lead
magnet that you are going to use, you will need to identify the kind of message
you are going to use to get your potential subscribers to sign up for your
mailing list.
The language that you use on your
opt-in forms will have a significant impact on the number of email signups you
receive. By creating a compelling and relevant offer, and using strong language
with clear calls-to-action, your opt-in rates will be much higher.
While other list-building strategies might
require an upfront cash investment, subscribers that opt-in through your
website are effectively free. If you spend sufficient time writing compelling
copy, creating a highly-desirable lead magnet, and implementing an opt-in form
plugin, your mailing list will steadily grow over time.
#4
– Writing Emails That Will Inspire Your Audience to Take Action
Undoubtedly, you've written
thousands of emails in your life. You probably regularly send and receive
emails from your family, friends, coworkers, and even strangers on a regular
basis. While writing an email to any one person is a straightforward
proposition, sending an email to a large group of people requires an entirely
different set of skills.
You need to be able to craft a
message that not only attracts the attention of a diverse audience, but also
clearly communicates a single object and inspires the readers to take the
desired action, and it all must be done without the use of audio, video,
images, and other dynamic content. You also have to figure out how to deal with
the technical peculiarities of email, avoid spam filters, and maintain compliance
with anti-spam laws. Writing effective emails is both a science and an art.
Understanding
Your Audience
You have to understand who your
audience is if you want to write to them effectively. You need to know how old
your typical subscribers are, what they do for a living, their gender if they
are married, and a ton of other demographics. If you don't know these things,
then you should conduct a survey and ask people to share their information with
you so that you have a better idea of who makes up your email list.
It is highly recommended that you create a
fictional character that epitomizes your typical customer. This is known as an
avatar. By creating an avatar, you will have a better idea of who you are
marketing to, and it will allow you to get inside the minds of your
subscribers.
When you write an email to your
mailing list, write as if you are sending a personal message to your avatar.
Ask yourself what your avatar would like to hear in order to take action based
on your email. When you write to your avatar and use a lot of "you"
language, your subscribers will subconsciously think that you email was explicitly
written to them and they will be more likely to engage with the message. You
need to keep the focus on your subscribers as much as possible, making sure to
make your emails about them, and not about you.
Parts
of an Email
When you are getting ready to put together an
email, it is easy to think that the only thing that you have to worry about is
writing the message body. However, there are several different components of
every message that you send to your list.
If you want your email marketing campaign to
be successful, then you need to put as much thought and effort into the other
parts of your email as you do the main message body. Here are the components of
an email that are key.
Subject
Line
This is the subject of your
message. It is the first thing that your subscribers will see, and it is what
will determine whether or not they open your message.
Preheader
The preheader is the preview text
that is included after the subject line in some email services like Gmail. It
can serve as a second 32 EMAIL MARKETING SUCCESS subject line that should
further encourage the reader to open your email. If you don’t intentionally add
a preheader, most email services will use the first sentence or two of your
email as a preheader.
“From”
Name
This is the name of the person who
is sending the email. You want to use your personal name rather than the name
of your company because most email users are more likely to open an email from
an actual person.
Message
Body
This is the main text of your
email. It will contain the message that you want to convey to your subscribers.
Call-to-Action
This will be a hyperlink situated
at the bottom of your message body that will persuade readers to take a
specific action, such as clicking on the hyperlink.
Signature
You want to keep your email
signature simple. Long email signatures can be a distraction to the main
content of your email. The best signature is your personal name on the first
line and the name of your company on the following line.
Postscript
You may want to consider
periodically using a ”P.S.” below your email signature to serve as a secondary
sales tool after your primary email.
Footer
The footer will typically contain
an unsubscribe link and other information that you need to include to stay
compliant with anti-spam laws. This might include your mailing address and the
name of your company. The footer will likely be the same for every email that
you send out.
Keeping
Your Emails Balanced
While you will send your audience emails for a
variety of reasons, you need to maintain a healthy balance between sending
emails that provide value to your audience and email that take value away.
Emails that contain information
that is helpful to your audience, at no cost to them, such as educational
content, tips, resources, and training videos, provide value to your audience.
Emails that ask your audience to purchase a product or take action that
benefits you more than them will take value from your audience.
You should consider sending at
least two value-added emails to your audience, for every one email that takes
it from them. Ideally, you will provide so much value to your audience that
they respond to your sales and marketing emails out of sheer gratitude for the
value you have already provided.
Writing
Great Subject Lines
The most important words that you will write
as part of your email marketing strategy is your subject lines. If you write a
subject line that is uninspired and doesn't grab the attention of your
subscribers, they probably won't open your message.
According to a recent report, 64
percent of people say that they will choose to open an email because of the
subject line. If you write a compelling subject line, you are guaranteed to
receive higher open rates, which will lead to more click-throughs and more
sales.
A well-written subject line can
often receive double the open rates of a poorly-written one, which will, in
turn, double your click[1]through rates and
double the sales generated by the email.
There are also a number of
techniques that you can use to modify subject lines to emphasize words and to
make unsaid promises about the content of your message.
If you are going to use any of
these various techniques, it is essential that you switch them up from email to
email and don't use any one of the methods more than twice each month.
Subscribers will notice these patterns if you use them too often and will
render them ineffective.
Best
Practices to Follow with Your Email
When you are creating an email,
there are several best practices that you should follow in order to obtain the
best results.
Don’t
Rely on Images
Approximately 10-30 percent of your readers
will never click "enable images" on your emails. This means that you
should never rely on images to convey critical points in your copy. If you do
decide to use pictures, make sure that you use clear and descriptive ALT text.
You can use CSS styling to make your ALT text larger and more visible to
subscribers that don't enable images.
Avoid
Grammar and Spelling Errors
A huge turn off for many email
subscribers is poor grammar, capitalization, and spelling errors. If you want
to speak with expert authority to your audience, then you need to do so with
clear and proper writing.
No one will believe you are an
authority on anything if you can't write a complete, grammar and spelling free
sentence. Make sure you double-check every email you write for errors or
consider having someone else check your email before you send it out.
Include
Multiple Hyperlinks
If you have a specific link that you want your
readers to click on, then you need to add a total of three hyperlinks to every
email. Be sure to hyperlink your main call-to-action at the bottom of your
message, as well as just above your email signature.
You also want to add hyperlinks to
a few relevant words in the first paragraph of your email to direct readers to
the page on your site that you want them to visit. Finally, you need to include
a second call-to-action below your email signature and in any postscript that
you add in the emails.
Avoid
Design-Heavy Emails
Subscribers are more likely to read
emails that come from a person rather than a faceless company. While companies
frequently use templates in their email, people rarely do. You want to try to
avoid using design-heavy templates so that your emails appear more personal.
Only
Use One Call-to-Action per Email
You don't want to try to get your
subscribers to do multiple things in any single email. Each email that you send
out to your list should have a sole purpose and a single call-to-action that
you want them to take. Readers will be less likely to respond if they have to
consider which, if any, of your calls-to-action they wish to take.
Have
a Clear Unsubscribe Link
Don't try to high or obscure your unsubscribe
link. Have a clear unsubscribe link in an average font size. If you decide to
obscure your unsubscribe link, your subscribers may report your message as
spam, which puts you in jeopardy with your email service provider if your
account receives too many spam complaints.
Copywriting is a skill that will
take some time to master. For the first several months, the emails that you
send won't be perfect, and that's okay. Over time your copywriting skills will
improve, and you'll eventually become a great copywriter whose emails get
results.
#
5 – Measuring Results and Optimizing Your Strategy
In order to determine whether or not your
email marketing campaigns are working, you need to analyze the data from your
campaigns. The marketing measures, when all is said and done, always serve to
achieve a pre-defined goal, and whether or not you've achieved that goal can
only be determined by using the proper KPIs (key performance indicators).
The results that you obtain can also help you
to decide whether you can expand your budget for your email marketing strategy.
Also, data analysis is an essential
part of being able to optimize your email marketing campaign continually. The
only way that you'll be able to gauge the success of your email marketing
campaign at all is if you examine and analyze the most critical measurements on
a regular basis.
Delivery
Rate and Bounce Rates
Among other measurements, email marketing
tools will measure the delivery rate, as well as the bounce rate of your
emails. These two measurements are mutually complementary and depend on various
factors such as technical conditions and sender reputation.
The bounce rate of your emails
should always be less than one percent if you want to have a successful
campaign. If your bounce rates are higher than this, then you'll need to do
some maintenance on your list, and determine which email addresses are no
longer valid and remove them from the email list.
Open
Rate
The refers to the percentage of
subscribers who open the emails you send to them. This figure can be based
either on the total number of emails opened, or the number of recipients who
opened the email. The latter number is more meaningful and is known as a
"unique open rate.
Click
Rate
The click rate represents the ratio
between the recipients who click on at least one link in an email and the
number of emails sent out. You can use this measurement to determine whether
your email copy and call-to-actions are compelling enough to get users to take
action. This is the most crucial measurement for you to keep track of in your
email marketing campaign.
Click-to-Open
Rate
This measurement is the ratio of
the number of unique clicks to the number of unique opens. The reference value,
in this case, is not based on the total number of recipients, but rather the
number of recipients who opened the email.
If your click-to-open rates (CTOR) are low, it
could mean that the content of the email isn’t fulfilling the expectations
raised by its subject line. This means that a large number of your subscribers
opened the email, but found the content of the email to be uninteresting and
didn’t click on any of the links.
Conversion
Rate
The conversion rate is the
percentage of recipients that executed the desired action at the end of the
process. This could be anything from purchasing a product, downloading an
e-book, or registering for a webinar. You can use this measurement to determine
the final success of your email marketing campaign.
Unsubscribe
Rate
It is quite reasonable with email subscribers
to unsubscribe to an email list because they don't want to get news from the
company anymore. The unsubscribe rate describes the ratio of unsubscribes to
the total number of emails delivered.
You can typically expect to have an
unsubscribe rate of about 0.25 to 0.50 percent for each mailing. As stated
previously, it is essential that you include a clearly visible unsubscribe link
in every email and to implement an unsubscribe process that is clean and
simple.
Email List Growth Rate
The email list growth rate indicates the net
increase in the number of email subscribers within a given period. This value
is accordingly negative in cases when a mailing list shrinks.
Spam
Complaint Rate
This measurement shows how many
delivered emails were marked as spam. Your spam complaint rate shouldn’t go
higher than 0.3 percent. Anything higher than that and you can expect 43 EMAIL
MARKETING SUCCESS email providers to institute penalties when you try to
deliver future emails.
Return on Investment
Your return on investment (ROI), is the
financial ratio that is used to measure the return of an entrepreneurial
strategy. This measurement compares the profit to the invested capital. When
used in email marketing, the term refers to the ratio of the costs required for
an email marketing measure to the revenue generated by it.
Defining
Your Goals
Before you send out your first emails and
start analyzing the results, you need to determine the goals of your email
marketing and what you are going to measure. You can set goals like gaining new
customers, increasing revenue, or raising brand awareness, or it can be a
combination of goals. In order for you to define concrete goals, you are also
going to need to establish the appropriate KPIs.
Measurements like click rate,
conversion rate, and email list growth rate should always be on your list of
metrics to analyze. However, you also need to specify and track the correct
KPIs depending on the goals you want to accomplish. For example, if your goal
is to gain more subscribers, then you need to focus on the email growth rate,
as well as the subscribe/unsubscribe rates. If your number one goal is to
increase revenue, then you need to focus on conversion rate.
Continuous
Optimization
Analyzing the data associated with
your email marketing campaigns is a never-ending process. They should be used
to uncover potential areas for improvement in your email marketing campaigns
and should immediately flow into planning for your subsequent campaigns.
You will need to compare the measurement
results that are achieved by your different email campaigns to get a better
sense of what did and didn't work.
As you optimize your email
marketing campaign, try different subject lines, sending the emails at
different times, placing different call-to-action buttons, and so on, until you
find a formula that works. If you discover that specific measurements results
aren't satisfactory, then you need to do some digging to find out the cause so
you can further optimize your emails to obtain the desired results.
Conclusion
When you are getting started with email
marketing, you have to pay special attention to your audience. Since each of your
subscribers will have different needs and interests, it is essential that you
analyze your data and effectively create a variety of different strategies that
you can implement to influence your audience to purchase what you have to
offer.
Make sure that you are providing
your readers with exciting, dynamic and relevant content to keep your audience
happy to receive your messages.
Remember email marketing is an
ongoing process to try not to get too frustrated if you don't see immediate
results. Your subscribers are knowledgeable, and you will have to work hard to
provide them with valuable information and make the connection before you can
influence them to make a purchase.
If you make the commitment to implement great
business practices, and the more you deliver on your promises, the more your
subscribers will trust you, this is the best time to implement email marketing
into your overall marketing strategy because information is readily available,
and you have many ways to obtain new subscribers and further promote your
business.
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