Email marketing is as relevant as ever and it is important to make sure you are getting the most value out of yours. According to Statista, in 2020 there were over 306 billion emails sent every day and this figure is predicted to reach over 376 billion daily emails sent by 2025. In addition to volume, email campaigns see an average 38-fold return on investment.
The ubiquity, low cost and ease of access make email marketing a highly desirable option for organisations everywhere; here we will explore ways to elevate your campaigns above the rest and ensure you are aware of any pitfalls.
Growing your subscriber list
Building your initial list of emails is the first step to your email marketing journey, these can come from several sources depending on your business, and it is important to take advantage of what you can.
Creating a sign-up sheet, either physical for your in-person business or digital for display on your website, is a great method of gathering reliable subscribers. Sign-ups originating from your website or business will be from those who care about your brand the most and so will be driving the most engagement, consequently increasing the success of your campaigns.
Likewise, social media can be a good source of new subscribers for you to utilise. Social media platforms are a hub of people eager to learn more about your products and services. Take advantage of this by inviting your social media followers to join your email list, as well as looking to other established communities that may be interested in your business and offerings.
Apart from directly inviting people to join your mailing list, you can encourage them with incentives too. Running a contest or offering a discount for prospective subscribers is a tried-and-tested method of increasing email subscription rates, giving those who may have been on the fence the nudge they need.
Keeping your B2B data in top condition
Making your emails easier to share can also boost sign-up rates. Ensuring every email you send has valuable content and is well presented will encourage people to share it with their friends and colleagues. You can help them along by including ‘share’ buttons that allow them to easily spread your campaign across social media or to others.
For B2B campaigning, email contacts can also be obtained inorganically through B2B data lists if there is a legitimate business interest in contacting them with your offerings. For these, it is best to use freshly researched contact data, as opposed to stale repositories of contacts. This ensures that the contact emails listed will be live and working at the targeted company still. Regularly validating your B2B subscribers’ emails helps to maintain your data list, as business emails will decay through people moving jobs or changing roles.
Monitoring your email analytics
Monitoring your email campaigns once they are running is just as important as getting them going. It is important to check the metrics of your campaigns regularly to see which are under or overperforming and take action to amend shortcomings or leverage high-performing campaigns.
For example, you should be checking the open rate and click-through rate of your emails, indicators of how engaging your titles and email content are. When you are starting off you may have lower numbers than expected, as there will be some wind-up time. According to email sending platform GetResponse, the average open rate of emails is 26.8% and the click-through rate is 1.89%. The rates vary by industry but give a rough indication of the numbers one should expect to see.
Similarly, bounce rate is another important metric to be aware of and high bounce rates can be an indicator of a campaign that has fallen short. These can occur when the content of your emails is amiss, your email reputability is too low, or an email was sent to a dead address.
Bounces can be avoided by reviewing the content of your emails, to ensure that it does not appear too spam-like for the automatic algorithms, ‘warming up’ your email, by sending emails in small batches to build sender reputation, and performing validation tests on emails to ensure that they are only being sent to live contacts.
Not missing out on the opportunities of email marketing
Today many organisations use email campaigns to extend their reach to new customers, maintain relationships with their current customers and help solidify their brand. To miss out on the reach and opportunities that email campaigns can provide is a detriment to the modern organisation, especially considering how many resources exist now to help you start your own campaign endeavours.
