Showing posts with label Email Marketing. Show all posts

Cost of email marketing compared to traditional mail

We explained earlier several advantages of email marketing, including the cost. This article provides a cost comparison between email marketing and traditional mail.

In my role as marketing manager for the past 7 years, I have run many email marketing and traditional marketing campaigns. Here is a rough comparison of the average costs involved in each channel for sending a single-page flyer/newsletter to 10,000 recipients:

Cost of direct marketing to 10,000 recipients

Item	Traditional Mail	Email Marketing (Own mailing list)	Email Marketing (3^rd party mailing list)
Content and Artwork	$ 1,000	$ 100	$ 100
Printing and Addressing	$ 2,500	0	0
Mailing	$ 2,500	0	$ 2,500
Total cost to reach 10,000 recipients	$ 6,000	$ 100	$ 2,600
Cost per recipient	$ 0.6	$ 0.01	$ 0.26

Cost is not the only factor involved. You should also consider the time it takes process a campaign. Here's a rough comparison of the average time for each channel (again for 10,000 recipients).

Time required for direct marketing to 10,000 recipients

Item	Traditional Mail	Email Marketing (Own mailing list)	Email Marketing (3^rd party mailing list)
Content and Artwork	5 days	4 hours	1 day
Printing and Addressing	2 days	0	0
Mailing	2 days	0	1 day
Total time to reach 10,000 recipients	9 days	4 hours	2 days

You can see the difference is extremely large.Now imagine how much longer it takes if you want to test your campaign on a small portion of your mailing list before sending to all!

Make your email campaigns targeted

Email marketing proves to be extremely cost effective when it is in targeted. With the correct targeting, your return on investment on email marketing campaigns, are higher than almost any other channel.

Here are a few tips to make your emails more targeted:

Registrations forms: Ask your users to enter important information such as their gender, age and profession when they register on your website.
Extract additional information: Avoid asking too much information in the registration form, as it can scare or bore your users. Instead, you can analyze their information to create additional parameters. For example you can use their job title to create different categories such as seniority, job function or department, and whether they are a decision maker.
Segment your database: Don’t send the same email to your entire database. Adapt each mailshot for specific segments of your database. For example you should avoid offering a female-targeted product to male audience, of if you do, you should give it the right angle (e.g. buy this as a gift for your lady).
Don't email too many people in the same company: If you are offering a B2B service or product, target the main decision makers and try not to send emails to too many people in the same company.

What counts as conversion in an email marketing campaign?

Before you decide how to optimize your landing page to increase conversion, you need to define what counts as conversion

While we all like to sell, it is not the only measure of conversion. Here are a few other metrics that can count as conversion depending on your campaign:

The most obvious measure of conversion is when the user makes a purchase on your website.
If email campaign was sent to a third party database, the most important thing is to get the users to register on your database (e.g. to subscribe to your newsletter). This way you will get to email those people for free the next time you have an offer.
In a B2B sales environment, usually sales only takes place after a conversation between the client and the sales team. In these cases, any replies, calls or online chats initiated from the email campaign should count as conversion.
The most successful campaigns, are those which become viral i.e. get forwarded around social and professional networks and generate free additional traffic. If that is what you aim for, you should count likes, shares, and forwards as conversion.
Selling is usually easier when the user has had previous encounters with your website and offerings. So every visit to your website and every additional page viewed during that visit, contributes to future sales and can count as conversion for your campaign.

Here is an interesting article about What Counts as Conversion?

How to optimize your landing page

The last step in an email marketing campaign is to optimize your landing page. You have come a long journey to improve your delivery rate, open rate and click-through rate. At this stage, the user has landed on your website and is engaged with your offer. Here are a few tips on how you can take advantage of this by optimizing your landing page:

Landing Page Content:

Have a clear headline that relates to the email campaign. Don’t confuse the user with a landing page which is not relevant to the email.
Provide something valuable that the email didn’t provide. Do not repeat what was already mentioned in the email.
Provide incentives and reasons why they should follow your call to action.
Personalize content to suit different interests. Don’t use the same landing page for all customers.
Add social sharing buttons for users to share, like and forward your page to their network.

Landing Page Call-to-Action

Your call-to-action should be very simple, clear and visible in the first scroll of the page.
Only offer one action. Don’t distract the user with multiple options.
Make it easy for users to action e.g. by making your registration process short and simple.

Look and Feel of the Landing Page

The users prefer to see a familiar look. So use your corporate colors and logo. Don’t create a landing page which is completely different to the rest of your website.
Avoid using your standard navigation bars as it can distract the user from your main call to action.
Make your page simple and easy to read. Avoid having too much text or too many images. The users should be able to decide whether they are interested in what you offer in a few seconds.
Make sure your page loads fast. Users get bored and lose interest if they have to wait more than 5 seconds for the page to load.
Impress the user with the design of your page.

Testing Your Landing Page

As always test different versions of your landing page with small portions of your mailing list before sending to everyone.
If users landed on your website but didn’t convert, try calling a few recipients and ask them what they thought about the offer. Try to understand what went wrong and learn from it.

Here’s a few interesting articles about how to increase your conversion rate:

Improving Click-Through Rate in Email Campaigns

Earlier we discussed how to increase your delivery rate and open rate for your email marketing campaign. The next question is how to get your users to click on the links in the email to land on your website.

Here are a few tips to increase your click-through rate:

Email Content

Keep your text short and to-the-point
Provide extra credibility for what you offer e.g. by explaining how many other clients are using the same service and perhaps including some well known brands.
Personalize your emails by using the recipient’s name and personal interests
Make your emails as targeted as possible. Only offer your user what you think they are interested in. Do not send the same offer to your entire database.
Give your user a reason to act on your email urgently (e.g. with an offer expiry date, or limited availability).
Don’t give out everything in the email. Provide a catchy summary and leave the rest for the user to read on your website.
Ask your users to forward the email to their relevant colleagues for a B2B campaign, or to their friends and family for a B2C campaign. You can also use a social sharing tool for B2C campaigns.

Call-to-Action

Have prominent and clear call-to-actions. Make sure your links are visible without scrolling, they are bold and catchy, and it is obvious that they are clickable.
Don’t put your call-to-action inside an image. Images usually don’t load unless the user requests.
Tell people to where to click.
Have more than one link with different call-to-actions. Each user might relate to a different text more than others.
Have some links at the bottom of the email

Email Look and Feel

Keep your emails simple. Remove unnecessary images, navigation bar and logos.
If you have to have an image, keep in mind that most email clients don’t load them unless the user requests. So make sure the images have an alternate text to appear when the image hasn't loaded.
Test your email in all major email clients including all versions of Desktop Email Clients (MS Outlook, Apple Mail and Lotus Notes), Web-based Email Clients (Yahoo, Hotmail, and Gmail) as well as Mobile Email Clients (iPhone, iPad, Android, and Blackberry). You should make sure your email is rendered the way you want it and all the links are working.
For testing web-based email clients, use all popular versions of major browsers (Chrome, Internet Explorer, FireFox). Most browsers get updated regularly. You should keep up-to-date on which versions are more commonly used. One easy way of doing so is to check your Google Analytics reports.

Testing and User Feedback

As always test different versions of your email with small portions of your list before sending to everyone.
If your email was opened but no one clicked on the links, try calling a few recipients and ask them what they thought about the offer. Try to understand what went wrong and learn from it.

Here’s a few interesting articles about how to increase your click-through-rate:

Best time to send email marketing campaigns

So far we have covered a two key parameters impacting open-rate of an email marketing campaign i.e. email subject and sender's name. However no matter how good you select your subject and sender's name, if you send your email at a bad time, the chances are your email will get lost among tens of other emails.

The best time of the day to send an email campaign is different for each country and industry. You should always try to understand your user’s behavior by testing and learning. But there are some general trends which can be used as a base line:

Best day of the week for email marketing?

In a B2B environment you should try to avoid weekends and public holidays. Here’s why:

People check their emails during the week more than weekends. So it is likely to get more attention if you send the emails during the week.
People tend to be more busy (or feel more busy) on the first day of the week. They already have some emails piled up from last week and the weekend that they need to attend to. So it is generally not a good time to send them another email. If you have to send an email on the first day of the week, give your recipients a few hours to get settled in their work and clear their inbox.
On the last day of the week, people tend to leave things for next week. So try to avoid sending emails on the last day of the week.

People have more time for themselves when they don’t have work commitments. So in a B2C environment, it could be even better emails just before weekends and holidays.

Best time of the day for email marketing?

In short, the best time to send an email is when people are checking their emails, so your email appears on top of the list rather than in the middle of other emails. According to statistics, people tend to check their emails in the morning and early afternoon.

Here are a few interesting articles about best time to send email marketing campaigns:

Successful Email Subject Line

Choosing the right subject line is extremely important for improving the open rate of your campaign. Like a book cover, it should grab attention and provide some information about the inside.

Here are a few tips which can make your subject line successful:

Choose a catchy subject line that attracts attention and is interesting for your recipient.
Be honest and choose a subject which truly describes your email. If you are dishonest about what you offer, your future emails won’t get opened.
Make sure it is easy to read. Avoid using all-capital or too many dollar signs and exclamation marks.
For regular emails of the same nature, keep the format consistent so users recognize it immediately and know what to expect inside.
Use different formats for different campaigns so the user can differentiate them.
Keep it short so it is readable without opening the email. There is no direct correlation between the length of a subject line and the open rate. But since most email clients only display certain number of characters, it is important to make sure everyone can read the entire subject. It is recommended to limit the subject line to 50 characters including spaces.
Test different subjects and see which one works better for your business. Create different emails and send each of them to a small portion of your database and see which subject line brings you better results.

Here are some interesting articles about successful subject lines:

You might realize there are conflicting ideas about what a good subject line is. This emphasizes the importance of learning the behavior of your users by testing different subject lines and improving your campaigns over time.

Choosing sender’s name for email marketing campaigns

From name is as important as the subject line and will determine whether your email would be read or not. Here are a few tips which successful email marketers use to when choosing their “From” name:

Keep the “From” name as short as possible. Anything longer than 20 characters is likely to be cut by the email client and would not be fully visible in the list of emails.
Don't use an email address. People are used to seeing an actual name in the “From” field rather than an email address. So keep the email address in the “from address” field and don’t repeat it in “from name”.
They tend to open emails from people or companies they recognize. So it is better to use your organization name, brand or an individual’s name that is well known to the recipients.
Keep the same name on all future emails of the same nature so your recipients recognize it and know what they can expect when they see that name.
It would be more effective to use an individual’s name, if you wish to receive a reply (e.g. in a B2B business where you want clients to talk to sales before making a decision). This way, the recipients will feel they have received a direct email from a person rather than a mass email. This will increase the response rate significantly.
If you don’t wish to receive replies on your campaign, don't use a person’s name as the sender’s name of your email. Use your brand or company name instead.
Use different sender's names for different campaigns. This will, for example, differentiate promotional from transactional emails and help get more important emails read.
Test different from names and see which one works better for your business. Create different emails and send each of them to a small portion of your database and see which “From” name brings you better results.

How to avoid being marked as spam?

The first step in the email marketing conversion funnel is to have your email delivered to the recipient's inbox. Here how you can do that by avoiding being marked as spam by email clients and spam filters:

Ask your users for permission to send them emails in the future. If you are using paid databases, only use those with users opted-in for marketing messages.
It is also recommended to use Double Opt-in technique. This means when users register on your mailing list, they will be sent an email with a link to confirm their subscription.
Add an unsubscribe link to all emails and honor the requests you receive from your users.
Remove bounced emails from your database. Also allow users to change their email address when their email changes to avoid having too many email bounces.
Don’t send email campaigns using the BCC or CC fields. Use an email marketing software that send individual emails to each recipient, one at a time, with their address in the to field.
Check your email spam score.Create several test email accounts on Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo and send multiple test emails to them and see if they are marked as spam.
Avoid sending attachments. Some spam filters are triggered with attachments. If you have images in your email campaign, make sure they are hosted on your website rather than attached to the email. Usually a good email marketing software will take care of that.
Talk to your hosting company to get your server optimized for mass mailing. This includes several settings you need to have in place to avoid having your emails blocked by spam servers.
Periodically check if your domain is blacklisted. You can use this tool to check if your server is blacklisted.
Register on prominent email clients as a bulk sender. Here's the link for Yahoo!
Read instructions from prominent email clients on how to send emails in bulk. Here are some instructions from Gmail and Hotmail.

Choosing a high quality mailing list

Earlier we explained the benefits of email marketing over other channels. To take advantage of these benefits, you need to have the right mailing list. If you don't have your own mailing list or wish to expand your reach, you can purchase a mailing list.

There are plenty of mailing lists in the market and you should be very careful where you purchase a database. The types of things you should keep in mind about when purchasing are:

What sources have been used to generate the mailing list?
Have the recipients opted-in to receive marketing emails?
Do you buy the database and send emails yourself, or do they send the email on your behalf without giving you the actual email addresses?
What targeting options are available?
How old is the data? How often do they refresh the list?
What are their typical bounce rate, open rate, and click-through rate?
What personalization options are available?
What is the cost?

Typically, job sites tend to have very good databases because they have a lot of information about their users which can be used for targeting. Also, since they send out a lot of emails to their users, they usually have the right infrastructure and a clean database which enables them to offer high quality email marketing services.

Another good way to find a high quality mailing list is to work with an online advertising agency or a mailing list broker.

Choosing an email marketing software

You need an email marketing software as it would be very inefficient to use your normal email application to send emails to a large mailing list and you won't be able to get sufficient reports once it is sent.

There are different email marketing software available in the market with different levels of complexity and features. When choosing your email marketing software, you should think about the following key parameters:

Reporting:

A good email marketing software should be able to give you reports on the following metrics:

Delivery and Bounce Rate
Open-Rate
Click-Through Report
Conversion Rate

Personalization:

An email marketing software should allow you to personalize all parts of the email for each recipient.

Language Support:

If you are planning to send emails in languages other than English, make sure your email marketing software supports those languages.

Integration API:

If you wish to use your software for automatic transactional emails generated by your website, you would need to make sure the software provides suitable APIs for that purpose.

Integration with Web Analytics:

To be able to track the results of your email campaigns, you should make sure your email marketing software has the ability to integrate with your web analytics tools.

Testing Tools:

Email marketing involves a lot of testing. That includes testing different versions of the email to understand which one works better for your audience as well as testing your email across different browsers and email clients to make sure your email is rendered properly.

Strong email marketing software:

Creating a Successful Email Marketing Campaign

To make sure your campaign is a great success, you need to think about the entire conversion funnel of an email marketing campaign.

Email Marketing Conversion Funnel

There are four parameters which impact the success of an email marketing campaign:

1. Delivery Rate
2. Open Rate
3. Click-Through Rate
4. Conversion Rate

Here is how you can improve each of these parameters:

Increasing Email Delivery Rate

If your mailing list contains correct email addresses, the only thing that could impact delivery is if your email is marked as spam. Read our article on how to avoid being marked as spam by email clients and spam filters.

Increasing Email Open Rate

Even when your email is not marked as spammed and is delivered to the recipient’s inbox, only a portion of your recipients, will actually open it.

The following articles explain, how you can increase the chances of your email getting opened:

Increasing Email Click-Through Rate

Once the users open your email, there are many factors that could impact their decision as to whether or not they should click on the links.

Here are a few tips on how to increase click-through rate for a successful email marketing campaign.

Increasing Email Campaign Conversion Rate

You have come a long way to get the user to open the email and click on the links. To complete this journey, you should have a great landing page on your website which converts traffic to clients or leads. You can read more about this topic on the links below:

Advantages of Email Marketing

Earlier we explained where email marketing can be used. This article discusses why email marketing is superior compared other marketing channels.

Email marketing has six main advantages over other channels:

1. Email marketing is more cost effective

Lord Leverhulme, the father of modern-day marketing, has a famous comment:“I know that half of my advertising budget is wasted, but I’m not sure which half”.

Fortunately, with email marketing that is not the case anymore. Email marketing is the most targeted way of reaching your potential customers.

Email campaigns use databases which store personal information about the profile of every single recipient. You can also add additional information about each individual’s profile and interests once you start sending them emails. It is this information that makes email campaigns highly targeted.

2. Email marketing is easy to setup

You can simply setup an email campaign on your own. Once you install an email marketing software and upload your mailing list, all you need to do is to draft the email and send it.

3. You get immediate result with email marketing

Email marketing immediately draws customers to your website. This is mainly because of the links you can embed in your email, which makes it easy for people to simply click and land on your website. They don’t need to remember your URL, or even your name.

4. It is easy to test an email campaign

You can try different email texts and send them to small portions of your database to test which one works better. This way you can gradually optimize your email campaign before sending it to your entire audience.

5. Email marketing is transparent and easy to analyse

You can track every step of the way and find conversion bottlenecks. Most email marketing software, now offer many useful stats about how many people opened the email, how many clicked on the links, and what they did after landing on your website.

6. Email marketing is cheaper than other channels

Email marketing is extremely cheap in comparison with other channels. To start an email campaign you need a text, which you can draft yourself, an email marketing software, and a mailing list.

Most business have a database of people who have visited their website, purchase something, downloaded a brochure or registered for updates.

If you don’t have your own database, you would be paying anything between $50 to $500 for every 1,000 recipients on a high quality mailing list. Considering how targeted an email campaign can get, this is incredibly cheap.

You should also consider that if you design a successful email marketing campaign, you would have a good number of these people register on your own database after you pay for the campaign. So you don’t need to pay again to target those people.

Email marketing software, tend to start at few hundred dollars and get more expensive as they become more advanced.

See also: Cost of email marketing compared to traditional mail

What is Email Marketing is used for?

Email marketing is very effective tool to generate sales and engage with your existing client. But it might not be the best tool for branding.

Sales Generation

With an attractive message and a targeted list of recipient, you can drive hundreds of high-potential customers to your website within hours, and start selling to them right away.

Customer Engagement

One of the best ways to have returning customers, is to keep them engaged by periodic news and update about your business and what you have on offer.

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