You probably know that email marketing should be a big part of your online marketing strategy right? After all, your own inbox is likely full of emails from brands that you purchase from.
In fact, you may already be sending out emails to your customers and leads! Today, I want to ask you…- How are those emails performing?
- Are you seeing month-over-month growth in list size, open rates and click-through rates?
- Is your email marketing growth driving more website traffic and conversions?
Keep a Close Eye on Email Growth
It goes without saying that continued growth of your email list will often lead to increased visits to your website as well as increased conversions (as a byproduct of increased visits). While you don’t need to see positive growth every single month, though that is preferable, you don’t want to see any big drop offs. If you start seeing big drop offs you should increase promotion of your email list. One great, and usually inexpensive way to advertise your email list is through Facebook ads. You can set up an email signup tab on your Facebook page and then run CPM (cost-per-thousand views) based Facebook ads to encourage people to sign up. If you start seeing your email list size decreasing due to a lot of unsubscribes you have a real problem on your hands.Unsubscribes mean one of two, bad things:
- The people who signed up aren’t receiving what they expected
- The people who signed up aren’t liking what they are receiving
Analyze Your Open Rates & Subject Lines
Another important aspect for keeping your email list growing and healthy is the need for analysis on your campaign open rates and their subject lines. Email marketing software, like MailChimp, will tell you what your campaign open rate is compared to the industry average open rate. Ideally your open rate is at or above the industry average. If it is not, you should strongly consider revising your subject lines. Speaking of subject lines, it’s always a good idea to keep an eye on what the subject lines are for your email campaigns that have the highest open rates. When you find a subject line formula that seems to work really well you should try to continue using it. I always advise clients to a/b test their subject lines if they have a list size that is big enough for testing.Look For Patterns in Click-Through Rates
While your open rate is a really important metric for email marketing campaigns, another crucial metric is the click-through rate. Your email marketing software should automatically show overall campaign click-through rates – and if you use MailChimp it will also show you this stat in comparison to the industry average. While the overall click-through rate for the campaign is really important, I like to dig deeper and look at the click-through rate for each link within my email. MailChimp will allow you to do this using their reports. I like to see which type of links get clicked most often. For example, when working with a pet care company I noticed that over a four-month period articles about pet food got more clicks than any other article type in their monthly newsletter. Trends like this can help you decide what kind of content to include in future emails.Use Data to Drive More Traffic to Your Site
Once you are able to identify patterns in your email marketing data, you should absolutely use this information to create more engaging future emails. For example, once I noticed the trend with articles about pet food, I started creating more blog posts about pet food and treats for the pet care company. This not only boosted email traffic and conversions, but gave me insight into what the target audience is most interested in. I can use this information for future marketing campaigns outside of email marketing. In fact, I have already started doing so – I can creating a lot of social media content around pet food and treats as well. As predicted, these social posts are generating a lot of engagement.]]>
TJ has worked in the digital marketing space since 2006. He has worked at a number of agencies and and helped hundreds of clients grow their business through SEO, PPC, Social Media and Content Marketing. He currently lives in Lehi , UT and enjoys spending time with his family.
TJ Welsh
TJ has worked in the digital marketing space since 2006. He has worked at a number of agencies and and helped hundreds of clients grow their business through SEO, PPC, Social Media and Content Marketing. He currently lives in Lehi , UT and enjoys spending time with his family.
