Tips to Improve ROI from Email Marketing
Digital Marketing is now a must have for most businesses, but not all areas within the discipline are created equal.
Email is a case in point. As social media usage and reliance has increased, and direct mail has almost disappeared, the email has become the new junk mail. Stats are disturbing, with over 70-80% of all emails now spam mail – depending on which survey you read, and exactly when – and the lack of engagement from recipients on an ever-decreasing spiral.
Much of this lack of engagement is down to the ‘batch and blast’ methods so disliked by most people and yet so frequently used by most PR and marketing departments and unthinking companies.
Unfortunately the net result is that fewer
‘newsletter’ emails get opened, let alone read, and so the ROI continues to be very low. The solutions are not new but they do bear repeating:
Tailor your newsletters – not every one has the same requirements, so don’t treat them the same. Yes it takes time to segment your list and send tailored newsletters or individual emails, but the ROI is likely to be much higher than a ‘batch and blast’.
Keep a clean list and keep it clean – have your system set up so that once you haven’t heard from a customer for a certain timeframe, they automatically receive a welcome email (with a discount voucher to use if they return if its appropriate). Also assume they don’t want to hear from you if they don’t return (tell them they will be removed or can ask to be removed if this is the case) and ask them to confirm if they do. Yes, your list will be smaller, but hopefully much more likely to actually trigger sales, and also you will have hopefully have gained an advocate in the person you didn’t continue ‘blasting’.
Keep your emails short – few people read below the fold, especially if it’s a newsletter type email they didn’t especially want to receive, so keep the message short and sweet.
Don’t use pdf attachments – even fewer people open those than read html newsletters.
Do republish your newsletters – use them as news on your website, to gain the SEO and search benefits. It also means you are reaching a bigger audience than just your email list, and many people like to see what you are offering and how pertinent it is before they sign up to your list.
Add social media – far too many business emails still don’t contain the social media links for the companies social media profiles, which is a shame since studies prove that most people on social media follow at least 3 or 4 brands, and that most prefer to receive information via social media rather than via email.
