Why Email Marketing and Automation Needs to Become a Priority Channel To Further Grow Your ROI

To start with, the ROI of Email Marketing sounds like someone is quoting made up numbers, it’s that impressive. Yet these stats are both typical and very real, with industry data informing us performance results are growing, year on year.

The ROI for every dollar spent has moved up from $38 to $44 over a 12 month period.

In the Age where Social Media is thought to be the ‘holy grail’ in the Channel mix, statistics confirm that email marketing generates 174% more conversions than social media; that people are twice as likely to sign up to your email list, than interact with you on Facebook.

These are figures that would be foolish for any business to ignore.

 

Email provides you many more opportunities to connect with your target. It supports building Brand Awareness, and the very important ‘Know, Like & Trust’ relationship dynamic between the subscriber and your brand/company. Via your email marketing campaign, you increase qualified traffic back to your website/landing pages. If they have been engaging with your email marketing content, they have shown they are interested in your brand, increasing the probability of conversions and sales.

Automation & Personalisation

The automation side of email marketing refers to the tool you use to send out the emails.
With automated tools, not only can you preset the emails to go out to your list,
you can segment your lists so that they receive emails based on their user behaviour, and data attributes.

If your subscriber opens an email but doesn’t click, they receive a different email next time.
If they open and click, but do not purchase, they also go into a different ‘bucket’.
And if they do not open at all, they may receive a targeted email to encourage them to open.

 

 

Automation allows you to collate data about your subscriber, as well as seek further information (nothing beats asking openly and directly, once you have built a solid relationship with your subscriber), such as age range, interests, birthday, and so on. This allows you to further segment, and personalise.

Email personalisation has shown to lift transaction rates and revenue per email six times higher than non personalised emails.
Yet it is estimated (Experian Study) that 70% of brands failed to personalise their email messages.
Personalisation also shows to have a 29% higher unique open rate and 41% higher unique click through rates.
Personalising the subject lines deliver 26% higher unique open rates, overall.

The evolution of personalisation we are seeing in 2018, is where the recipient feels like each email they receive in their inbox is one-to-one with them, as an individual.
This is known as Humanisation.

With the incoming European GDPR (General Data & Protection Regulations), email marketers will legally be required to respect personal data. Whilst your business may not currently be reaching the European marketplace, the impact of GDPR and the changes email marketers will need to make, are thought to be global in influence. Making  businesses more accountable to act from a place of integrity when collating and working with personal data.

Email Marketing & Automation Strategy
Like with most things in life and business, there are best practice approaches to achieve optimal results.
With the starting point being creating a first class email marketing & automation strategy.

Such a strategy should include a review of your current situation (data & heuristic); understanding you brand’s personas; setting astute, measurable email marketing objectives and goals that complement your business objectives.

Then it is about developing detailed strategies to reflect the needs & opportunities for your business. As with a strong EM&A Strategy, it is never about ‘one size fits all’. Today, individuals are looking for humanisation. That they are ‘seen’ by the business, and their thoughts and preferences have been noted.

A starting point is naturally an Acquisition strategy, which many businesses can improve on, to ensure that you are getting a strong opt in rate onto your email list. This involves the landing page copy, the ‘value exchange’ that you’re offering in exchange for their details if they are coming onto your email list as a prospect vs. customer, and ensuring that the page is relevant and consistent with expectations.

There is also a distinct strategy for those that come straight on as customers, to lessen any potential buyer’s remorse, so they feel valued and open to purchasing from you again. All of your emails out to all of your sub category lists, are to reflect a distinct personality and voice that matches the brand. You follow copy guidelines of how your emails are structured – this differs too with the type of email that goes out i.e. on boarding, promotional etc. The emails out need to have a consistent look and feel inline with your branding, as do any landing pages that you are driving traffic to, from your list. There are specific strategies for on boarding (when they are new to your list), and nurturing (when they are still to purchase/purchase again). Strategies are developed based on behaviours, whether they open emails, click through,  watch/read content you are sending them to.

Your promotional strategy would be different to your onboarding and nurture strategies, and typically is rolled out using the broadcast (versus autoresponder) feature in your Automation tool.

It’s important to develop a Clean-up strategy for those on your list who have been there for a while and are yet to take any desired action. You may be keeping them there, in the hope that one day they will purchase, yet when you review their (lack of) behaviours, you can see that the space they take up on your list, is in fact negatively impacting your stats. An Unsubscribe strategy should also be a well thought through approach, along with many other additional integral facets of a robust EM&A Strategy. All of this culminates into the creation of your roadmap, and the implementation of your plan, to then review, test, refine, on an ongoing basis.

Testing & Refining
This is an important point for a business to be cognisant of…  

Email marketing & automation, it is not about setting & forgetting. It is about testing & refining.  

What defines the success of one programme over another programme, is the A/B testing of their emails.

By testing: From Names, Subject Headings, Email Content (single change, or two different versions), you can assess and improve Open Rates and Click through Rates. Testing provides your business with factual data of what works best for the many segments of your lists.

You can test offers, promotions and media (Video, PDF, Blog Post)
to gauge what works best for your list segments, allowing the business to replicate,
scale and test for other list segments.

 

Email Marketing Landing Pages
Email Marketing does not stop at Emails, it is important that the Landing Pages that you drive the traffic to, offers continuity of expectation and experience, and they’re reflecting landing page best practice to support a frictionless user experience, and achieve desired conversions.

Like with A/B Testing of your emails to optimise results, it is recommended that you also A/B test landing pages,
to further improve conversions, whatever the major milestone or destination goal is for that page.

Prioritising EM&A
The bottom line with Email Marketing & Automation, is that it is a powerful Marketing Channel to enhance your bottom line. In relative terms, it is more cost effective than other Channels, providing a significantly higher ROI.

 

For all the reasons laid out in this article, which offers a taste of the measurable benefits a first class email marketing and automation strategy and programme can provide your business, we encourage you to not leave money on the business table, and make it a priority channel in your marketing planning.