Email may not be the newest or most exciting tool in the world of marketing, but it is still the one that offers the most value. It delivers a high ROI and an email campaign can be deployed for a much lower cost than many of the other digital marketing alternatives.
While email does have major potential, there’s more to a successful campaign than just sending out a lot of content. There are several strategies that you can employ to increase your ROI and there are some common mistakes that can lead to diminishing returns.
This post will highlight the things you should be doing and alert you to a few of the things you want to avoid when planning your campaign.
An email campaign is really only as good as the quality of the subscriber list. You should make continuous efforts to add new people and grow this list.
You have several options when it comes to growing your subscriber list. You should promote your email list using your social media accounts and add a sign-up form to the homepage of your website. You could also ask your current subscribers to refer friends and possibly offer incentives for referrals.
However, be cautious that you’re still maintaining the quality of information on the list; that means you need to clean your list regularly. You should also verify email addresses as new subscribers join, so you don’t waste time sending emails to false leads.
The subject line is one of the most important parts of any marketing email. Approximately 35% of email recipients say they decide whether to open this type of email based on the subject line alone.
A good subject line should provide the recipient with enough information to compel them to open the message, without giving too much away. If you’re failing to meet this objective, many of your emails could end up going straight to trash before they are even opened.
Depending on the campaign, you could use a number of different strategies for creating attractive subject lines. Personalisation has been shown to provide good results and you also have options like asking a question or using urgency. For example, a subject line announcing a sale with urgency could read: ‘Better hurry! Only 4 days left to save 20%.’
According to the team at https://www.tom-johnston.com/seo-marketing-company-near-me/, marketing emails should be direct and to the point. If you overload the content with unnecessary information or complex design elements, it can be difficult for recipients to understand the purpose of the message.
Keep the information to what’s necessary and try to limit yourself to include just one or two calls to action per email. That way, the intention will be much clearer to the recipient, making them more likely to click.
The call to action (CTA) usually represents the behaviour you want readers to make. If the CTA is obscured by other elements or hard to find, the campaign will struggle to reach its full potential.
You want to make sure the CTA is noticeable and you want to position it where it will be clearly visible. If you can, place the CTA above the ‘fold’. That way it’s in the part of the email that is going to be displayed when the recipient first opens it.
You can’t maximise your ROI if you’re sending the same generic content to every subscriber. Personalised email campaigns see 6x higher transaction rates and also get more unique clicks and opens.
Even something simple like using the recipient’s name can have an impact. But, if you really want to boost your ROI, you should try to deliver content that is relevant to where the recipient is in the buyer’s journey.
As an example, you could use email automation to send emails based on the purchasing history of customers. You could also try a strategy involving cart abandonment emails that are triggered at certain durations after initial abandonment.
You should already be designing your emails to display well on mobile. Close to half of all emails are opened on mobile devices, a trend that is only going to continue to grow. For this reason, you want to design your marketing emails to be no wider than 650 pixels. If you go any larger, it will force recipients to scroll horizontally if they want to see all of the content – which few will be willing to do.
If you are looking to develop emails that will work on different devices, you should try to go with a responsive email design. Your email client may already offer some pre-made responsive templates that you could use for your campaigns, but you can also find free templates that are designed to work with most email services.
These tips can help any email marketer increase their ROI, but this is just the beginning. As is true with any form of marketing, the best results will come from continued efforts to refine your campaigns. Implement these tips now, but keep analysing your results, testing different tactics and looking for new ways to increase your open rates, click through rates and conversions.
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Rae Steinbach is a graduate of Tufts University, USA, and has a combined International Relations and Chinese degree. After spending time living and working in China, she returned to New York City to pursue her career and continue curating quality content. Taktical Digital is a digital marketing agency based in NYC.
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