10 Tips for Boosting Email Marketing ROI

© Mailigen Ltd. All rights reserved 04/2012. Mailigen Email Marketing Solutions

How To Guide APRIL 2012

BesT PracTices in email markeTinG

10 TiPs For BoosTinG email markeTinG roi

http://www.mailigen.com/?utm_source=howto&utm_medium=pdf&utm_campaign=ListManagement

http://www.mailigen.com/?utm_source=whitepaper&utm_medium=pdf&utm_campaign=BoostingROI

210 Tips For BoosTing Email markETing roi

© mailigen ltd. all rights reserved 04/2012. mailigen Email marketing solutions phone: (+1) 718 303 1864

Calculating the ROI for marketing programs has to start with how people are responding to your marketing efforts. Email marketing ROI is about delivering the right campaigns to the right people at the right time. Your investment should drive email recipients to respond positively to your call to action. Email marketing lets marketers track who opens the email and clicked through the links. Low open rates are frustrating and marketers are always looking for ways to increase the return on email marketing efforts.

The best email marketing tools provide robust analytic capabili-ties giving marketers the ability to understand real time results of their marketing efforts. However, it is important to know what to measure, when to measure and how to use the data from the measurements to drive better outcomes. Spend time studying your email marketing analytics and making small tweaks to your campaigns over time to drive incremental improvements.

Once you have set up the tracking ability, you can use some simple calculations to determine ROI to determine which cam-paigns were most effective.

Comparing campaign data can be an exceptional means to improving your email marketing programs. Campaign data can be compared across your campaigns or within the same program to reveal insight. Report data like open and click rates are useful for each campaign, however when you dig in to the results of each campaign and compare those results over time you get real insight. Analyze trends and use com-parison reports to see exactly what works and where you need to improve.

By leveraging comparisons, you can quickly see what con-tent and sending pattern your subscribers find relevant and what leaves them uninspired.

Some suggested comparisons include:

Opens

Clicks

Bounces

Unsubscribes

Spam complaints

Time of day, week, month, year: look for trends by hour, season, event

Call to Action responses

TiP 1: moniTor analyTics TiP 2: comPare camPaiGn rePorTs

Try these ten simple tips to boost your email marketing ROI:

Return on investment: Net revenue / cost

Revenue per email sent: Net revenue / # of emails sent





GooGle AnAlytics ecommerce

In Google Analytics eCommerce, you can gather data about purchases and therefore customer preferences from a Thank You page with implemented tracking code. By using use this feature, you can create and select the segments in Google Analytics and capture visits and purchases from the email. Many marketers also create a segment to link revenue to email campaigns, and then do a comparison analysis between email campaigns or different marketing channels, SEO, PPC and social to find their most effective marketing channel.

GooGle AnAlytics GoAls

Goals are a page view - serving as conversions for your site, like a thank you page. Goals can be used to track newsletter signups, email list subscriptions and contact forms. Goals use “funnels” to design a path you expect visitors to take on their journey toward converting to the goal. Funnels in an ecommerce goal can include landing pages for the checkout process, or funneling a customer to your newsletter sign up form.

TiP 3: inTeGraTe GooGle analyTics

Email marketing reporting tools can only follow subscribers up to the point where they click-though the call to action button and land on the website. Then web analytics takes over. Using Google Analytics can increase the reporting capabilities of your ESP and provide you with more insight on the relevancy and response of your email marketing campaigns. Increasing rele-vancy will ultimately increase your subscriptions and subscriber response rates. Typically, marketers using Google Analytics are better able to gain click through and conversion insight by email marketing campaigns. The data provides better understanding of subscriber behaviors, which allows marketers to specifically target messages to their audience.

Google Analytics will specifically track the pageviews of the subscribers that clicked through the call to action in your email. You can directly measure their behavior after hitting the land-ing page and you will know which converted to your offer, the other information they reviewed and any other action they took on the site. Reviewing the subscriber behaviors will help you develop more relevant email messages and landing pages for a better ROI.

Google Analytics offers several capabilities you can use to boost email marketing ROI. Conversion tracking - eCommerce and Goals are some of the best tools to determine marketing cam-paign revenue. Use conversion tracking in Google Analytics to collect two categories of ecommerce data: transaction data and item data. The transaction data identifies the elements of the overall transaction. The item data specifies the items purchased in the transaction. This data compiles into Google Analytics re-ports. When sending your email campaign through Mailigen, you can create a Google Analytics UTM code and add it to all the links in your email message. Once sent, the information for each click is stored in your Google Account and can be identified by the UTM tags: source, medium and campaign. Once the data is ready, you can create advanced segmentation by using criteria from the UTM tags such as “source = email”. If you have already set up Google Analytics Goal tracking on your website, you may activate segments in the reports and view how much of the seg-ment has reached the goal or conversions.

Using the data elements available, you can vastly increase your segmentation and tailor your email marketing messages based on the preferences of the customer.



TiP 4: oPTimize seGmenTaTion

Not everyone is the same, so use the tools to cap-ture as much data as possible about your subscrib-ers. Use the data to better segment your users into different groups so that they receive relevant emails. Also, use as much personalization as pos-sible in your email structure, mass emailing for large announcements is okay but your really want to send messages that relate to personal interest.

For even better ROI, you can build segments in your list that focus on a specific type of subscriber based on demographics, past campaign activity and behaviors.

TiP 7: Try new THinGs

Don’t be afraid to mix things up every now and then. Try changing the layout of your email, or playing with the subject line. Make sure to have a baseline reading of your open rates and click rates, so you can see the changes in user behavior based upon your edits. You may be surprised that changing a color or italicizing a word could make a huge difference. Incorporate testing methods to validate your hypothesis on each change.

Don’t go too far by changing every email’s ap-pearance. Consistency is important, so make sub-tle changes, and then give it some time so you can gather information on its success rate.

TiP 5: reenGaGe suBscriBers

Inactive subscribers are those contacts who haven’t opened or clicked through your messages over an extended period of time. Determine that time fram by the frequency of your messaging. Subscribers lose interest in email marketing for lots of reasons, but don’t be afraid to reach out one more time and ask them for feedback or give them an update on new compelling messages. By identifying inactive subscrib-ers, you can create a subscriber reengagement campaign. We recom-mend a series of three messages with a very simple call to action.

1) First, send out the first message and review the responses.

2) Next, create a new segment of the people who did not respond and send them the second message making it clear you are validating their interest in subscribing.

3) Then, send the third message to the people who did not respond to the second. Some examples of appropriate messages include surveys, something to download or a reward for subscribing.

TiP 6: use auTomaTion

Set up emails for automatic send. For example, arrange for a wel-come message to be sent when someone signs up for your site and/or list.

Other options include a lead-nurturing (trigger) program in which emails would be delivered to a person based upon their activity or behavior. This allows for messages to be more focused and relevant to the recipient, as opposed to a mass mailing which may not pertain to their interests.

Another option is to cross-promote your products and services based upon user behavior. For instance, if someone clicked on Product A, you may know from experience that they would also like Product B. Therefore, automating an email promoting Product B when Product A is purchased would be wise. Use automation carefully, choose the approach that works best for you and be sure to not inundate your audience with too many messages.

© Mailigen Ltd. All rights reserved 04/2012. Mailigen Email Marketing Solutions Phone: (+1) 718 303 1864





TiP 10: TesT conTenT and call To acTion

Testing your call to action is easy and provides quick response to what works. Since the average time spent reading an email is seconds, have a clear, succinct call to action. If there is any chance the recipient could be confused as to what they are supposed to do, then your email needs some tweaking. Make sure there is only one call to action. If you’re asking someone to do too many things, chances are they will end up doing nothing.

Your subscribers are unique and will respond to your call to action based on the content, their individual needs and their previous interaction with you. Using testing to isolate the variables in the context of the content will give you an idea about what delivers on the campaign goal.

SUMMARY

So why should you calculate email marketing ROI? Because all successful marketing campaigns are based on numbers. ALL. And your marketing campaigns need funding to implement. By clearly attributing revenue to email ROI, calculating the ROI will convince executives and you of the efficiency and cost benefits of delivering marketing through email campaigns.

Mailigen has the easy to use tools you need to generate action with powerful email messages and newsletters and robust analytics for measuring your ROI. If you want to learn more about Mailigen, take it for a test drive before choosing your Email marketing solution, we offer a 30 day free trial!

TiP 9: TesT suBjecT lines and sender names

Don’t be afraid to mix things up every now and then. Try chang-ing the layout of your email, or playing with the subject line. Make sure to have a baseline reading of your open rates and click rates, so you can see the changes in user behavior based upon your edits. You may be surprised that changing a color or itali-cizing a word could make a huge difference. Incorporate testing methods to validate your hypothesis on each change.

Don’t go too far by changing every email’s appearance. Con-sistency is important, so make subtle changes, and then give it some time so you can gather information on its success rate.

TiP 8: TesT email desiGn on diFFerenT clienTs and devices

Set up emails for automatic send. For example, arrange for a welcome message to be sent when someone signs up for your site and/or list. Other options include a lead-nurturing (trigger) program in which emails would be delivered to a person based upon their activity or behavior. This allows for messages to be more focused and relevant to the recipient, as opposed to a mass mailing which may not pertain to their interests. Another option is to cross-promote your products and services based upon user behavior. For instance, if someone clicked on Prod-uct A, you may know from experience that they would also like Product B. Therefore, automating an email promoting Product B when Product A is purchased would be wise. Use automation carefully, choose the approach that works best for you and be sure to not inundate your audience with too many messages.

Test the internal message content and call to action by evaluating responses to HTML vs. buttons, terms used, placement in the design, images vs. none and links.

Utilize A/B testing as an optimization technique that can be used and reused over time to track the ROI.




Mailigen is quickly becoming a leading provider of web-based email marketing soft-ware for any size business, organization or individual. Our product philosophy is simple, make it flexible, easy to use and cost effective. As part of the iMedia family, Mailigen has a dedicated product development team with an eye for building client driven software services with industry leading functionality.

To find out more about Mailigen solutions, please visit www.mailigen.com

Published by Mailigen

Phone: (+1) 718 303 1864

Copyright© 2011 Mailigen Ltd. All rights reserved.

No part of the contents of this publication may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of Mailigen Ltd.

About us

Follow on twitter

Follow on FAcebook

Follow on linkedin

subscribe our rss Feed

Are you just learning or maybe looking for ways to improve your email marketing skills?

We have created this document with best industry practices and helpful tips to be sure your are on the top of email marketing performance.

Download our Guides, Whitepapers, Datasheets, Smart-Tools and much more to take full control of your email marketing campaigns.

SUBSCRIBE TO MAILIGEN NEWSLETTER

twitter.com/mailigen www.facebook.com/Mailigen www.linkedin.com/company/mailigen blog.mailigen.com/feed



www.mailigen.com/?utm_source=howto&utm_medium=pdf&utm_campaign=SocialListBuilding

http://twitter.com/mailigen

http://www.facebook.com/mailigen

http://www.linkedin.com/company/mailigen/

http://blog.mailigen.com/feed/

http://blog.mailigen.com/feed/

Documents

10 Tips for Boosting Email Marketing ROI