Often, the humble email remains a medium that delivers a significant return on investment (ROI) for businesses across sectors.
Here are some insights that prove the promotional power of email marketing:
- Email marketing offers an average ROI of 3,800%.
- The global email marketing market was valued at $7.5 billion in 2020.
- Four out of five marketers said they would rather give up social media than email marketing.
- 74% of Baby Boomers think email is the most personal channel for receiving communications from brands, followed by 72% of Gen X, 64% of Millennials, and 60% of Gen Zers.
It’s clear that email marketing is worth your time and investment. With this in mind, we’ve done the hard work for you and researched what it is that defines a successful email marketing campaign so you can not only focus on improving your key email metrics such as open rate, clickthrough rate (CTR) and conversion rate, but also the hidden metrics that can give you an edge.
Are You On The List?
Before we get started on sending out emails, we need someone to send them to—prospects that are most likely to engage with what you have to say, and offer.
To that end, it is vital to push email signups and to make that process easy. Ideally, you’ll provide a signup box that only requires a user’s name and email address.
You should host signup forms on your website (using a tool like HotJar to refine this user journey), your social channels, and anywhere you have an online presence.
Many retail stores email receipts in order to grow their email lists while others offer samples or checkout discounts to those who sign up. Many American stores will take dates of birth in order to send out birthday emails – many of which contain vouchers.
From there, it is important that an expectation is set – does the customer know what to expect from you? Let them know roughly how often you plan to email and what those emails will contain. Otherwise, you will not turn that email into an open, a click, or a sale.
It is then important to monitor the growth of your list and the rate at which those emails are actually being delivered.
If you don’t know how fast your email list is growing, you cannot measure the success of your email marketing efforts.
Likewise, it is pointless to gather email addresses that are going to dead accounts: make sure to monitor your delivery rate and ensure that your emails are going to live accounts.
What Are You Trying To Do? And How Do You Do It?
Ross Callaghan, the head of digital marketing with insurance giant AIG says that the key to good email marketing is deciding exactly what it is you are trying to achieve with your email marketing efforts.
Or more importantly, what do you want the reader to do with the email? Some emails are pure sales others, like surveys are for customer data collection.
Whatever yours is for, make sure the mail is focused on that.
“There’s two halves: getting people to open it (open rate) and getting people to click (click-through rate). But the key is: Stay focused on what you want the customer to do,” says Callaghan.
But how?
“The main rule I follow is to always test as much as possible: different subject lines, different imagery, or marketing messages.
“For open rates, I personally have seen short subjects are better. One word can be really powerful for getting opens, so can saying something unexpected about your brand.
“The more out there you are, the more opens you’ll get.
“In terms of content, single marketing messages usually increase CTR.
“Use striking imagery where possible but always, always, always use a call to action.”
Monitor Your Mails
As with all digital marketing, analytics play a key role and Callaghan says that it’s the little things that can make a big difference.
“Study your sent history for the best times to send the email in terms of when people are engaging the most. This is more important for the open rate than anything else.”
According to a study from Moosend, the best time to send a marketing email is around 9 am on a Thursday morning (based on an analysis of 10 million email engagements). But, by using an analytics tool, you will discover your brand’s email marketing engagement sweet spot.
Tools like MailChimp give email senders an incredible depth of data about the success of their campaigns. This allows you to test different strategies and work out what works for your customers
And then? Callaghan says that the key from analytics is to turn opens into clicks and clicks into conversions.
“After you send an email, try to follow up with the user based on what they clicked.”
Segment Your Audience
Did you know? Marketers that use segmented campaigns note as much as a 760% boost in revenue. That’s pretty impressive.
In addition to taking an analytical approach to your email list and performance monitoring activities, by using relevant data to segment your email marketing customers into different audiences, you can send highly personalized, value-driven communications to the right people, at the right time.
Here are some tried and tested ways to segment your audience and improve your email marketing performance:
- New subscribers: Consumers you can target with an incentivized welcome email and offer (access to early bird deals, tailored discounts, product recommendations, and members-only content, for example).
- Inactivity: Dormant customers with active email accounts that haven’t engaged with your emails for a while. Here, you can reach out with a personalized deal or incentive.
- Location: Consumers you can target with emails relevant to their locale, culture, and geographically-centric trends or news content.
- Demographics: Customers you can engage with content based on their age, sex, political orientation, vocation, or occupation.
- Interests: Customers you can engage with content based on their personal preferences and interests.
- Behaviors: Customers you can craft personalized emails for based on their past purchases or brand engagements (connecting on social media, entering a contest, browsing specific product categories, etc.)
Improve Your Skills With These Email Marketing Courses
It can seem like best practice is constantly shifting when it comes to email marketing. One of the best ways to keep on top of changes and improve your email marketing efforts is by learning from experts in the field.
With thousands of email marketing courses available online, which ones are worth your time or financial investment?
We’ve compiled a list of the best email marketing online courses. Find out what you’ll learn in the course modules and how each course can help you become a better email marketer.
- For mastering email marketing basics: Google’s digital garage
Google has created its own “Digital Garage”, a full suite of free courses for budding marketers.
Housed in this suite is Google’s email marketing course. It’s aimed at email marketing novices and breaks down the basics of building contact lists, email tech stacks, and campaign analytics.
While it doesn’t have an instructor like the other courses on the list, Google says marketing experts and top entrepreneurs regularly update every course in the suite, keeping all information and strategies as fresh as possible.
As the founder of Gmail, one of the world’s largest email platforms, Google is one of the most credible sources for teaching beginners about the basics of email marketing.
What’s included in the modules and what you’ll learn
- Module 1: Email marketing basics. The first module of the course focuses on the foundations of email marketing. Here, you’ll learn how to build a contact list and why it’s important to create campaigns that are targeted around interests and demographics. This module also teaches the importance of building and nurturing relationships with your email list subscribers.
- Module 2: Email marketing options. A step-by-step walkthrough of the available email marketing tools you can use to build your campaigns. This module explains how tools monitor interactions with your email campaigns, the common features to expect from an email marketing tool, and the benefits of tracking and analyzing user interactions.
- Module 3: Crafting great marketing emails. A quick breakdown of writing engaging marketing emails. This module teaches you what makes a good subject line, how to write body text, and why it’s important to add links and call-to-actions.
- Module 4: Managing successful email campaigns. This section of the course dives deeper into email campaign management and optimization. Learn how to use A/B testing to improve engagement and build landing pages that are tied to your email marketing campaigns.
- Module 5: Measuring success in email marketing. Finally, the course wraps up by explaining why email metrics are important in evaluating campaign success. You’ll be taught how to use five metrics to measure your email performance and take actionable steps to improve future campaigns.
- For growing your email list: Phil Ebiner’s Udemy course
If you want to grow your email list, check out Phil Ebiner’s course on email marketing.
While Ebiner’s background is in video production, he’s been teaching students how to be more engaging marketers and content creators for nearly a decade. He has taught over two million students content and online marketing basics and how to build email funnels.
This course focuses on one thing: building up your email list so you can reach more people.
What’s included in the modules and what you’ll learn
After a quick introduction, the course opens up into four core modules.
- Module 1: The basics of list-building and getting email subscribers. Learn about list-building, the most popular tools marketers use to grow their subscribers and free tools to get started.
- Module 2: The perfect lead magnet formula. Ebiner teaches the importance of enticing people to sign up for your list using lead magnets. Learn how to create simple lead magnets and connect them to an automated email.
- Module 3: Create high-converting opt-in forms. Like lead magnet forms, opt-in forms are also an excellent tool for growing your email list. This module teaches you how to create opt-in forms, following a proven formula to convert more web visitors.
- Module 4: How to get more web traffic. The course wraps up with a simple walkthrough of how to get more traffic on your website through content and social media.
- For the digital marketing allrounder: CXL’s basics to best-in-class
If you want an email marketing course covering everything from high-quality copywriting to design and optimization, check out CXL’s basics to best-in-class.
It’s taught by industry expert Jessica Best, Barkley’s VP of Data-Driven Marketing. CXL’s course explains why tying data to email marketing campaigns is vital for any serious marketer. They also describe in depth how to track engagement and list behavior.
What’s included in the modules and what you’ll learn
- Module 1: Email marketing basics (The good, the bad & the WOW). Best walks you through the five things you should always do in email marketing and the five strategies you should always avoid. This module also explains how to optimize emails as well as some of the basics around privacy and spam laws.
- Module 2: How to optimize your email marketing list growth. Learn how to use permission-based strategies to grow your list and what not to do. This module also includes examples of organic tools and which channels work best for this type of growth.
- Module 3: Optimizing email marketing copy and design. Here, you’ll learn how to incorporate rich media into email marketing campaigns. You’ll also learn why you need to pay attention to trends and accessibility when designing any email you send.
- Module 4: Using data to drive email marketing relevance and results. Finally, the course wraps up with a data module. Here, Best shares the setup she uses for data-driven email success and details what types of data you need to be focusing on. You’ll also get to see examples of successful marketing automation and how to use data to talk directly to your list.
- For a quick, detailed introduction: Pipedrive’s email marketing 101
If you only have an hour to spare and want a quick, but detailed, introduction to email marketing strategy, Pipedrive Academy’s email marketing 101 course is a great place to start.
What’s included in the modules and what you’ll learn
- Module 1: Welcome to email marketing 101: how to be exceptionally good. How to avoid the spam folder, understand GDPR when it comes to email, and more.
- Module 2: What is email marketing and how does it work? Why you should be using email marketing.
- Module 3: Comply like a pro, or why permission is key. Why complying with CAN-SPAM and GDPR is best for everyone.
- Module 4: How to build a healthy email list. How you can improve your list hygiene.
- Module 5: Divide and rule: how to segment your list. How to send emails your subscribers will be happy to receive.
- Module 6: How to plan your email campaign. How to decide which type of email to send.
- Module 7: Email design: how to engage subscribers. How to make your email attention-grabbing.
- Module 8: How to write an email: tips and tricks. How to use open-ended questions and thought-provoking statements.
- Module 9: How to know if you did a good job: email tracking. How to analyze email marketing campaign results and key metrics to measure.
- Module 10: Get better every time: how to act on performance. How to act on performance and optimize your email campaigns.
- Module 11: Why aren’t your emails always delivered? Practices that impact deliverability.
- Module 12: Time to send your campaign. Wrapping up the course.
