Did you know that 66% of consumers have made a purchase online as a result of an email marketing message?
If executed correctly, email marketing can be the most successful sales tool that you have. Consumers prefer this type of relationship with brands, it brings a bigger ROI than anything else, and it’s the biggest driver of leads. But if you’re just starting to build your email list, then it can be difficult to achieve all of these benefits.
Don’t think that buying a list of data will help put you ahead of your competitors, because it won’t. These lists are not targeted to your audience and it’s not something that we allow our platform to be used for. What you need to do is put the hard work in, and build up a list of highly targeted contacts…
So we’ve put together this blog post, to give you 5 ways in which you can build an email list that is focused on increasing your return on investment…
1. Create the right kind of hook
When building an email list that is heavily focused on ROI, you need to remember that sometimes less is more. Don’t just try and target anybody in the hope that you’ll gain some names. You need to be putting your efforts into attracting your target audience. The perfect place to gain targeted subscribers is from your own website. They’ve come to you first, so chances are, they are interested in what you have to say.
What you need to do is give them a reason to sign up.
By offering your target audience something that is of value to them, you will increase your chances of sign ups. You really need to consider who your audience is here, but for example if you are targeting B2B then offer them an free e-book. Or if you are targeting retail, offer a discount on your products.
In addition to offering a ‘freebie’, it’s best to tell your audience what they can expect from your email marketing. Entice them with promotional offers, exclusive discounts, valuable content, a newsletter – or anything else that will give them a reason to click subscribe.
2. Be strategic with your campaigns
So once you’ve started to get people signed up to your list, you then need to think about your marketing campaigns. The first thing to consider is the people you are sending your emails to – your audience. Think about why they signed up to your emails and use that as a way to plan your campaigns.
Don’t just start sending continuous sales emails in the hope that they’ll boost conversion. You need to engage with your database, and offer valuable content whenever possible. You could cover news topics, talk about interesting events within your industry, or send out ‘how-to-guides’. By providing your audience with useful content, you’ll begin to build up their trust.
When you do send out promotional emails, make sure that you tell your audience that you have sourced these offers, exclusively for them. Let your email list be the first to know about new products and give them first dibs on your sales, in order to create a feeling of being in your V.I.P.
3. Choose the right tone and style
The next step is to choose the tone and style of your emails. When creating the graphical style of your emails, consider your brand and keep it simple. A strong image to go alongside your copy is advised. If you don’t have design skills, then choose an email platform that comes with a template builder.
The tone of your email is crucial to getting people to click through to your landing page. Using your brand as a guide, create compelling copy that makes it impossible for your reader to not click though. Some of the best tips for writing copy that sells include:
- Keeping it personal – include the customers first name in your email
- Use automated triggered emails to thank the customer for signing up, or for purchasing your product
- Keep your content short and use plain language
- Be clear with your headlines
- Entice the customer with your subject line
- Be consistent and give your customers a reason to trust you
- Always include a clear unsubscribe link
4. Analyse and learn from your data
This is an important aspect to increasing your ROI as it will help you pin-point where you are succeeding and where you need to improve. A decent email marketing platform will offer insightful details including delivery, open rate, how many people clicked through, bounce rate, social shares etc. Once you have this data in front of you, you can then make improvements for future emails.
If you can’t decide on which subject line to go with, or which product should be the main focus then split testing is a great option for this. You’ll be able to see which content is better received, and adjust emails that are due to be sent out at a later time, to the most preferred template.
Integrate your email platform with Google Analytics, and you’ll be able to measure ROI using conversion tracking, and even track links set up within your emails.
5. Be responsive on all devices
There’s nothing more frustrating than trying to access a page on your mobile, only for it to be completely unresponsive. With 47% of emails now opened on a mobile device, 2014 is the year of mobile and these figures only look set to rise. What you need to make sure is that your email works on every single device – whether it’s a mobile or a desktop, your ROI will suffer if you are not tackling these issues.
Before you send your email, test it out using platforms such as Litmus, so you can see how your template will look and be sure that it will work on every device. This will also help you find out which content appears above-the-fold, so you can be sure to put the most important messages at the top of your email. And you can also test emails to make sure they don’t land in the junk folders.
Try Instiller…
A comprehensive email marketing platform is the key to helping you increase your ROI, which is why we built Instiller. Created especially with agencies in mind, we provide all features mentioned above including template builders, reports, analytics, integration with Litmus, image hosting, split testing, device tracking, data management and more.