Email is still one of the most effective marketing tools available to businesses big and small. Nearly every American checks their email multiple times a day, and the cost of sending marketing emails is extremely low relative to the exposure and revenue those emails brings in.
According to the Direct Marketing Association, Email marketing has an ROI of 43,000%, far better than any other online marketing channel (search, social, etc.)
So what are you waiting for? If you haven't already started using email to grow your business, start NOW. If you already utilize email marketing, here are ten ways to do it better:
1. Sweepstakes
You can't do email marketing without a list of emails to market to, and you can't just buy emails off the shelf. You need to convince people to sign up for your list. There are a variety of ways of generating email subscribers including adding a subscribe checkbox when people buy your product online or throwing up a pop-up subscribe form on your website, but sweepstakes are great for generating a large number of email sign-ups in a condensed time frame - I've seen giveaways that have generated 30,000 emails in less than a month.
This giveaway generated 6,000 emails for my client.
There are 2 important steps to running an effective giveaway: the prize and the promotion.
The prize: The first step in running an effective sweepstakes is finding something to give away. It could be a physical product (iPad, iPhone, etc.) or an experience (all-inclusive vacation). You can purchase the item you want to giveaway, or better yet you can dip into your company's inventory to reduce the cost. If you're a clothing retailer you can raffle off one of your popular items.
The promotion: Now comes the hard part - finding an audience for your sweepstakes. If you have the budget to do so, Facebook Ads can be a good way to go. You can pay-per-click, and if you are able to generate a lot of clicks per impression your cost-per-click will go down. Since you'll be giving a way a super alluring prize, there's a good bet your CPC will be low.
The sweeps strategy I have found to be most effective is working with partners: Offer to share your sweepstakes email sign-ups with a partner company of your choosing - ideally a company whose consumers are similar to your company's consumers. In exchange for the email data, the partner company must commit to promoting the sweepstakes to their audience.
Insider Tip: Check out DojoMojo, an amazing sweepstakes platform where you can partner with major brands like Hearst, General Assembly and New York Magazine. I've signed multiple clients up for it.
2. Mailchimp Subscribe
This tip also falls into the "How to Get Subscribers" category. Mailchimp Subscribe is Mailchimp's iPad sign-up form app. If your company holds events, festivals, conferences or is a brick and mortar store, Mailchimp Subscribe is ideal for building your email list.
Email savvy businesses normally ask people to sign up for their newsletter with pen and paper. This is still a useful technique, but if you have a spare tablet Mailchimp Subscribe is a much better option.
The biggest issue with people signing up for an email list with a pen and paper is their handwriting is often illegible, especially when people are in a rush or are skeptical about handing out their contact information. When people type their email in on a tablet, neatness is not an issue. I would guesstimate that, out of every 100 people who sign up for an email list, 10 to 30 emails addresses are "salvaged" if typed into an iPad rather than illegibly scribbled on a piece of paper.
Besides salvaging email addresses, you save substantial time with Mailchimp Subscribe. You don't need to transcribe each email, one-by-one, into your email list platform. Mailchimp Subscribe syncs the emails simultaneously. And if you use another email platform you can easily export the emails into an Excel spreadsheet.
By the way, Mailchimp is one of ClickBoost's Preferred Partners.
3. Cart Abandonment
Cart abandonment will only work if you have an e-commerce store - so if you don't have an e-commerce store move on to tip 4.
Cart abandonment is simple: Anytime someone tries to buy an item from your e-commerce store, but leaves your website before checking out, they will get multiple emails reminding them to checkout their remaining cart items. These emails are proven to work. If you don't use cart abandonment, you are essentially leaving money on the table.
Insider Tip: CartHook and CartStack are two very affordable cart abandonment platforms. For example, CartStack charges $29 for up to 100 cart abandonment emails. For just $50 a month CartHook will recover up to $1,000 from its cart abandonment emails.
Check out an example of a great cart abandonment email below:
E-commerce site Fifty Three's cart abandonment email is eye catching but simple.
4. a/b Testing Subject Lines
Of all people, Barack Obama proved once and for all that subject lines can have a huge impact on open rates and website conversions (in Obama's case that meant contributions). Obama's 2012 campaign pushed the envelope, but never crossed the line, in testing out odd yet intriguing subject lines like, "Would love to meet you?" and "Join me for dinner?"
According to the Obama campaign's director of digital analytics, the campaign performed "extensive A-B testing...on the subject lines and the amount of money we would ask people for." The subject lines that worked best for the Obama campaign were ones that appeared to come from acquaintances.
Graphic: New York Magazine::Photo: Larry Marano/WireImage/Getty Images
In controlled a/b tests, I regularly see huge boosts in one of my client's email open rates when I use subject lines with "re:" at the beginning, all lower case letters and short and informal phrases (i.e. "re: look at this awesome wine event").
That's not to say using informal subject lines that confuse people into opening your emails is right for all companies. Some people find these subject lines deceptive, and they have a point. But a/b testing subject lines is always fair game. Some email service providers, like Mailchimp, allow a/b testing of your email content as well.
5. Find Design Inspiration from the Internets
You've built a big email list and you've figured out how to get people to open up your emails. Now it's time to create engaging email content so you can drive up your click-through rate. Two great resources for helping you create impressive and engaging email layouts are Really Good Emails and Inspiration.Mailchimp.com. Mailchimp also has a super simple email design guide.
Check out this compelling email design from a Paperless Post campaign:
Credit: Really Good Emails/Paperless Post
Another helpful tip is to use animated images, also known as GIFs. Because people checking their email have a limited amount of time, and are often on their cell phones, they don't want to scroll down past numerous images and paragraphs; with an animated GIF you can combine multiple images in one graphic. If you don't know how to make GIFs in Photoshop (which is much easier than you would think), try GIFMaker.me.
One other note: make your emails mobile responsive. This shouldn't be an issue these days, as most if not all email service providers offer responsive templates by default. Nonetheless, make sure you test your emails on mobile when you first start sending them out so you ensure they are easy to read. Most people check their email on their phones, not their desktops/laptops, so this is very important.
6. Segmentation
If you're a baseball fan who signed up for the MLB newsletter, and your favorite team is the Mets, how much more interested in an MLB newsletter would you be if the subject line mentioned a big trade the Mets were thinking of making - compared to a subject line about the Padres' latest hot prospect?
That's the power of email segmentation - it allows brands to hone in on their subscribers' interests and then take full advantage by getting higher open rates, more engagement, and often more conversions/sales.
Check out this graphic from Lyris Annual Optimizer Report about the benefits of email segmentation:
Setting up email segmentation is very simple; here's an example: If you're a restaurant, and you have 300 email subscribers, run a survey (use a free tool like Wufoo). Ask all 300 subscribers what their 5 favorite restaurant dishes are (at your restaurant or in general). Next time you want to run a special, center the deal around one of the frequently named dishes.
To take it a step further, email all 300 subscribers about the special, minus the subscribers who picked the special meal as their favorite; email them separately, tell them you read their survey results and you created a special dish/meal/discount just for them.
Imagine how happy they'll feel that you are featuring their favorite dish and that you did it because of them. They'll probably feel like VIP's, tell their friends, come to your restaurant to eat, and keep coming back (assuming your food is good)!
7. Autoresponders
Autoresponders allow you to email subscribers special messages in advance. An example of an autoresponder that all ecommerce sites use is the purchase confirmation email: When someone buys a product they almost always get an email confirming their purchase with relevant details.
But there are many ways you can use autoresponders for marketing purposes. The simplest autoresponder technique is to send a "welcome" email to new newsletter subscribers. The "welcome" email should feature graphics, images, copy points and links that will most appeal to subscribers while also bringing in revenue for you. This is your second impression - the first impression was whatever got them to sign up for your newsletter - so you want to exploit this opportunity to sell.
You can also create an educational series of emails that automatically goes to new subscribers. For example, you can send them your 7 most popular blog posts everyday for 1 week. If they are going to find any of your content interesting, it will likely be your most popular, well-liked content.
For more easy to understand autoresponder advice, check out this simple autoresponders guide from Mailchimp
8. Facebook Lead Campaigns
If you have the budget to run an advertising campaign to build your email list, you should look into Facebook Lead Ads. A Facebook Lead Ad allows you to advertise an email newsletter sign up form to Facebook users. You can target Facebook users using Facebook's standard ad platform, so you can exclusively target female New Yorkers between 30 and 50 who are interested in wine, or whatever demographic you prefer.
See a Facebook Lead Ad demo below:
A demo of a Facebook lead ad
You can really boost your engagement and conversions when you combine a Facebook Lead Ad with an autoresponder. After Facebook users sign up for your newsletter through the Facebook Lead Ad, you should set-up an autoresponder through your email service provider. The autoresponder email can include a discount offer, or just a link to a product, event or service you are focused on promoting at the time of the Facebook Lead Ad.
10. Conversion Tracking
At the end of the day, all that matters is the revenue your business generates. Your email list could have a 70% open rate and 50% click-through rate, but if none of your subscribers are buying your proucts, it's all for naught. Conversion tracking will tell you if your emails result in revenue generation.
I recommend you setup conversion tracking in Google Analytics. Here's a comprehensive but still easy to understand step-by-step tutorial from the Smart Passive Income blog on setting up Google Analytics conversion tracking.
Once you setup conversion tracking, you will be able to pinpoint exactly which emails generate the most revenue for you and which emails are duds.
