Simple Steps to Optimizing Your Email Marketing Campaigns

 

Four Tips for Developing Engaging Emails That Result in Increased ROI

By Joseph Brady, October 2015

 

As the world of business increasingly focuses on mobile marketing and social media, email marketing has come to be viewed as somewhat "old school." Even so, studies continue to prove that email can still be quite effective.

 

For instance, did you know that by 2019, the number of global email users is expected to increase to more than 2.9 billion? That's a tremendous amount of opportunity.

 

The reality is that if your business is not investing in email marketing, you are missing prospective customers and leaving money on the table.

 

Unfortunately, many business owners simply do not know where to get started in order to develop an effective email marketing campaign.

 

The good news is that by following a few simple steps, you can develop an email marketing campaign that will succeed in driving sales and boosting your company's revenue.

 

Before we delve into what you need to do to inject some power into your email marketing campaign, let's take a look at exactly why email marketing is so effective.

 

Why Email Marketing Is an Effective Marketing Tool

 

Email marketing boasts an incredible number of benefits that simply are not possible with many other forms of marketing. Compared to offline direct marketing, email marketing provides the ability to save both time and effort. Email marketing also gives you the ability to personalize your marketing messages.

 

Customization for User Segments

 

Many traditional forms of advertising fall into the "one-size-fits-all" category that can make it difficult to speak directly to your leads. Email marketing presents a far more dynamic opportunity to customize your marketing message with your customer's name as well as other information such as purchase or sales history. The inclusion of such information can serve as a powerful attention-grabber.

 

With the ability to segment customer and user database information, you gain the ability to send highly targeted marketing campaigns using email marketing. Such campaigns can result in increased conversions due to their specificity. By using your customer database, you can ensure the most relevant messages are sent to the customers on your list who are most likely to respond and take action.

 

Ease of Testing

 

Email marketing also allows you the benefit of communicating more frequently with your customers. Of course, it's never a good practice to bombard your customers with email, but you can take advantage of the opportunity to communicate with your customers in a more timely manner.

 

Testing marketing messages is also incredibly easy and efficient with email marketing. You can test everything from headlines to graphics to colors to determine which elements your customers prefer. Simply send one email version to one segment of your list and a second version to another segment. Through the use of email tracking tools, you can easily determine which message was more efficient in terms of user actions of conversions.

 

Cost Efficient

 

Email marketing can also be quite cost efficient. There is no need to involve multiple staff members or spend a lot of money on designing and printing. In fact, you can use email marketing to put effective copy in front of your customers for very little money, making email marketing an ideal tool for companies of all sizes, including startups.

 

Additionally, email marketing offers an incredible opportunity for tracking both sales as well as user engagement. Tracking information can include the number of people who opened your email, how many people clicked on a link contained within an email, number of spam complaints, how many people unsubscribed and the number of emails that were actually delivered.

 

This type of information can prove to be invaluable in tweaking your email marketing campaigns to make them even more powerful and effective.

 

As you can see, there are certainly numerous measurable benefits offered by email marketing. Of course, in order to take advantage of all of those benefits, you need to know how to develop an effective email marketing campaign.

 

How to Improve Your Email Marketing Campaigns

 

Effective emails contain several critical components. Below, we explore how to incorporate those components into your emails to improve your marketing campaigns.

 

Subject Lines Matter

 

One of the most important steps you can take to improve the success of your email marketing campaigns is to pay careful attention to your subject lines. Sidekick reports that 33 percent of people open an email based on the subject line.

 

Clearly, an engaging subject line is of critical importance in ensuring that your email will actually be opened. Let's look at some things you can do to create an engaging subject line:

 

• Create a sense of exclusivity or urgency through the use of words, such as sale, alert, or daily
• Personalize your email by including the name of the recipient
• Keep the subject line to 30 characters or less

 

Don't Ignore the Body of Your Email

 

When composing an email for your next email marketing campaign, there may be a tendency to focus on everything that you want to impart to your customer. Even so, you need to ensure that the body of your email is both concise as well as compelling. Ramble on too much and you will lose their interest.

 

The goal is to set the right tone to convince the reader to click through and take advantage of your current offer. Focus on making your offer clear and describing exactly why it is so valuable and why the reader should take action right now.

 

Remember your value proposition.

 

Keep your copy concise, yet interesting. Most people today are pressed for time and only scan emails. With that in mind, make good use of bullet points and short paragraphs to break up the text.

 

Use a Call-to-Action to Convert

 

One of the most common mistakes that many people make in their email marketing campaigns is simply not telling readers what they want them to do. The goal of an email is to convince your customer to click through and convert.

 

A call-to-action is one of the most important elements of your email because it encourages the reader to take action. This is where the conversion actually occurs. To increase the chances that your readers will take the desired action, be clear about what you want the reader to do and ensure your call to action is positioned prominently in the email.

 

Whether you use a link or a button, make sure the call-to-action is distinctive and stands out from the rest of the email. Remember to keep your call-to-action located "above the fold" to ensure readers see it if they choose to stop reading before the end of the email message.

 

 

Include Social Sharing Links

 

As effective as email marketing is today, we cannot ignore the power of social sharing. Leverage that trend by including social sharing links in your email marketing messages.

 

The goal of this strategy is to make it as easy as possible for your readers to share your message with their acquaintances. This strategy assists you in expanding your reach and ultimately in generating new leads. Remember to include multiple options, as not everyone is active on the same social media platforms, so include links for Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.

 

The Bottom Line

 

Email marketing, when used correctly, offers tremendous potential for boosting both sales and revenue. In fact, in a study published by VentureBeat, users reported an average ROI of 222 percent on their email services.

 

If you are not already taking advantage of the benefits offered by email marketing, now is definitely the time to launch your own email marketing campaign using the steps outlined above.

 

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