Email marketing remains an effective tool for connecting with your target audience, despite its distinct role as the digital marketing dinosaur. Now in its 40s, email still manages to outpace its younger, more social counterparts like Facebook and LinkedIn in many situations.
Maybe it’s the fact that an email’s promotional info is almost always more interesting than whatever project your contact is supposed to be doing at work. Maybe it’s because email sometimes has a less “noisy” feel than social media and it’s easier to grab the spotlight. It might just be that email’s format mimics a personal letter and people still like to get mail. Whatever it is, email marketing works.
But perhaps this hasn’t been quite your experience with email marketing. Your response rate is lackluster, click-throughs are rare, and your list has been stagnant for months. You could be seeing some issues with your content, such as material that’s too brand promotional or subject lines that are click-bait and discourage future opens.
What many companies overlook when trying to uncover a faulty email campaign is their list. It may be that your emails are great; you just have the wrong people receiving them.
This is particularly likely if you’ve been using purchased lists for your campaigns. With a purchased list, the recipients may not have any interest in your product or service, so they’re much more likely to pass right by your email, despite its valuable content. In fact, the list you’ve purchased may not even come with a guarantee that the addresses are real. If much of your list is filled with fake addresses, you’re also likely to get blackballed as a spammer.
It’s time to turn things around. In order to do that and increase your email return on investment (ROI), you need a different kind of list. You need an audience that has opted-in to receive your emails. This helps you develop a list of real addresses that represent true potential leads who have indicated that they are interested in your product or service and they’d like to hear from you.
Start With Your Website: A good starting point is to think about the existing content on your website. If you write a blog, offer an opt-in for your email as the call to action at the bottom of your email. You can tie it to access to a coupon or another piece of content such as a popular how-to guide. Offering a perk in exchange for an email address is a practice that most of your audience will be familiar with, because it’s so commonly used to solicit email addresses.
There are other places you can seek out email contacts. If your website features a resources page, you can include a sign-up for more tips and tricks through your email newsletter. If you spend time promoting your brand on social media, use your posts to highlight the valuable information you send out via email and post the link for the sign-up.
Don’t Forget Purchases: When your customers make a purchase, be sure to require their email address. You can include a check-box where they indicate whether they are willing to receive promotional items. If nothing else, you’ll have the opportunity to thank them for their purchase, let them know when they can expect it to arrive, and offer them one more chance to sign up for your emails. You already know they’re interested in your products, so take the opportunity to encourage additional purchases.
If you are not seeing the results you want to see, try setting aside those purchased lists and curate your own list of recipients, all of whom can’t wait to hear from you. We would love to help you get started on a new campaign.