How effective is an email marketing campaign?
This would be a natural question to ask if you are considering building an email list, or already have one established and really want to start taking advantage of that growing list of subscribers.
There is no one answer to the question, though. A successful email marketing campaign hinges on so many factors, and we’ll cover a few tips in this post to ensure your email marketing campaigns (either now or in the future) are more likely to be successful.
Email Marketing Is the Best Marketing
Every business that has any sort of online presence should be looking at building a subscriber list. It’s just common sense and almost mandatory in the modern age of the internet. It’s a way of gaining potential new customers and reselling to existing customers. Anyone not list building and promoting to their list is losing money, plain and simple.
For starters, not everyone buys something the first time they hear about it. But they may join your mailing list if you offer them a tasty enough reason to hand over their email address. This is usually done in the form of a lead magnet that offers something for free in exchange for the email address.
Many online marketers claim that every person on the list is worth around $1 per month in revenue to them. That figure is just a figure to work with for estimates, as the value can vary greatly, but it’s a starting point.
In simple math, if you had a list of 1000 subscribers, potentially that list is worth approximately $1000 a month in revenue. Now, imagine you had a huge list and times that figure by 100. Pretty impressive dollars.
These figures are reality. It’s all a matter of first starting a list, growing a list and occasionally promoting to your list. You don’t have to hope these customers will come through your physical or virtual business doors. You can communicate with them directly at any time and they’ve given you permission to do so.
Email marketing is direct marketing, and that’s the very best kind of marketing there is: Not just direct marketing, but marketing to an audience that has already shown interest in your niche and what you have to offer.
Which brings us to our next point.
Always Stay Relevant
Meaning, don’t stray from what your core business is. For example, if someone signed up to your list because they are interested in women’s fashion, don’t then start promoting pet products to your subscribers. Create emails, tips, interesting facts and promotions that are all relevant to your particular business.
There are times when you can cross promote with something that’s not totally relevant, but it has to tie in with your business somehow to give it relevance.
Generally people joined your list because of your particular subject matter, so the more relevant your emails and promotions are, the higher the chance of making sales and money.
Mix It Up
Don’t try to “sell” in every single email you send your subscriber list. Mix the promotions in with other information. So long as it’s relevant, it doesn’t really matter what it is.
Back to the women’s fashion example, you could offer some fashion tips or links to some cool videos you’ve seen online. Send a couple of emails offering up some free content (possibly even a link to your latest blog post), then throw a promotion out there. With retail, offering special discounts available only to those on your list works well. For starters, everyone loves a discount. Secondly, with the promotion available only to people who have subscribed to your list, this makes them feel special and exclusive, making them more likely to buy AND remain on your list.
However, if all you ever do is send email after email trying to sell to your list, your subscribers will start dropping off like leaves in fall. So always mix your sales emails up with other non-promotional content.
Drip Feed, Don’t Deluge
What this means is don’t hammer your list with constant emails. I’ve had occasion where I’ve been sent 5 emails from the one list within a matter of minutes. It’s too much. Even sending an email every days seems a bit too much for me. The only time I think that is acceptable is if subscribers have joined your list to receive a free email course or similar, where the content is promised to be delivered on a daily basis. I certainly wouldn’t recommend sending out daily promotional emails.
Every second or third day I think works best. Aim for 5 or 6 emails a fortnight, with every third one being a promotional email.
There are no hard and fast rules, and often it can depend on your niche, how often it is acceptable (and sometimes expected) to email your list. Experiment a little with the frequency of sending out emails and how often you promote until you find a system that seems to be working best for you.
Just don’t hammer your list constantly or you’ll lose everyone.
Email Subject Lines – More Vital Than the Email Itself
Just because people have agreed to opt in to your email list, that doesn’t guarantee they will automatically open and read every single email your send to them. You still have to hook them, enticing them to actually open the email and read it with interest.
That’s where a good subject line comes into its own. It needs to bait your subscribers into opening the actual email and reading the content.
As email subject lines will get cut off if they are too long (especially on mobile devices), try and keep them short and catchy. Use a call to action or something that will create excitement in the subject line, but never lie or make false promises. This will just piss people off when they open the email and go on to find that your subject line was just bogus.
Try and use a sense of exclusivity and urgency in your subject lines. Make people feel special, or that they have a limited time to take advantage of an exclusive deal.
Your entire goal with the subject line is to get people to open and read your emails, so put some thought into it. Many people fuss over their emails and the wording for hours on end, but then place some totally generic words in the subject line.
The greatest email in the world means absolutely nothing if no one opens it and reads it. This all hinges on your subject line being enticing enough. Spend some time on this all important component of email campaigns.
Only Promote Quality
This is particularly true if you are into affiliate marketing and promoting the products of other companies.
Only promote something to your subscribers that you believe in and that offers good value for the price. Don’t promote anything that is a scam, bogus, or just doesn’t live up to the hype. You will lose the trust of the people on your list and they’ll leave, pure and simple.
The idea is to nurture your list and grow it bigger over time. Look after your email list and they’ll look after you by buying from you. It’s a 2 way street. Make the journey beneficial for everyone involved.
GetResponse Email Marketing
I use GetResponse to help manage my email marketing campaigns. Anyone who wants to build an email list will need to join forces with a platform such as GetResponse to collect the email addresses and to help manage their list and have the capacity to set up autoresponder emails. I’ve been with GetResponse for some time now and am happy with their service and their prices. Plus, they have some great free training in the form of a video series that shows you everything you need to know. Take a look around their website by clicking the banner below.
Best of luck with your email marketing campaigns. If done the right way, just about every email marketing campaign can be highly effective and profitable.
Darren Burton
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Hey Darren,
I’ve been thinking about using email marketing in my site to see if I can boost the conversion rates and sales but I’m abit confused.
The other thing is that I don’t have confidence in myself in doing this alone. Could you please give me a hand with this?
Hi Dave. I hardly classify myself as an expert when it comes to actual email marketing. What would you like to know? The services at places like Aweber and GetResponse have some great training that would show you what to do way better than what I can. They have a bunch of free videos that takes you through the entire process. I will be posting some tutorials about it on here from time to time.