Email marketing campaigns have long been touted as one of the most profitable marketing strategies you and your digital marketing agency can use to grow your brand or sales. And the numbers backing up that claim are impressive, with companies getting $36 for every dollar they spend on email marketing—a 3,600% ROI. But what that number doesn't say is that high ROIs are reserved for carefully thought-out, well-managed email marketing campaigns that have already been stress-tested and optimized.
There's a lot of work that goes into making sure your communications are actually generating the engagement and sales you need.
To reach that point, we recommend that businesses take a few critical actions:
Once this basic housekeeping is complete, the next step is to start thinking about your email marketing campaigns more strategically. See where these three strategies fit into your playbook for the rest of 2024.
The first—and arguably most important—strategy you can use to maximize your email ROI is to change how your team organizes the campaigns and content themselves. For many small businesses, the gradual increase in complexity of your email campaigns is entirely organic.
You may have started with emails that everyone gets: emails about big promos, emails about new products, and so on. But, depending on the online store functions you offer, you might have built out new emails based on triggers: reminder emails for abandoned carts, thank-you emails, delivery emails, and more. You might have a separate, smaller list of new customers, for business partners, and for loyal referrers.
All of this leads to a convoluted maze of email protocols and manually created messages. One of the best steps you can take now—both to increase revenue driven by better emails and reduce costs due to less manual work—is to create a more structured email infrastructure that prioritizes personalization, segmentation, and automation. Here's how those three concepts can radically change your email campaigns:
Make sure every email includes personal details, but go beyond first names. This can include their loyalty reward points in the corner, personalized suggestions based on past purchases, and unique compliments. Robust email marketing tools can pull in these details for you based on subscriber and customer profiles. Sephora, for example, personalizes emails with names and VIP status.
All of your customers are different, but many of them are also likely to be on completely separate tracks. It simply doesn't make sense for everyone to receive the same emails or the same types of emails, and when consumers receive irrelevant emails, they're far more likely to treat them like annoying spam. So, instead of taking the risk, create diverse segments for the major types of groups on your email list. This could include:
Tomlinson's Feed uses segmentation to both power communications and build shopper profiles. Segmenting is good for shoppers, but it's also good for your team. You get a clearer read on actual engagement metrics, can zero in on subscribers that resonate with email the most, and cut down on separate, repetitive email lists.
If you switch to robust segmentation tools, you probably will already have automation options at your fingertips. You can set up triggers so new shoppers already receive the first message of a drip campaign, set up an automatic sequence of post-purchase emails, or even cue up birthday messages.
Once you're using technology to make your email processes hum along nicely, it's time to start tweaking. The difference between an ignored email and a sale could be the color of a button, the exact wording of an email title, or when you time the send-out of each message. But you won't know until you experiment.
But this process can be very time-intensive without the help of the right software and a digital marketing agency. Here's how relying on outside support can help:
Finally, the most strategic thing you can do is take a step back. It's easy to get caught up in creating dozens of segments or lots of email campaigns with drip-style messages and constant outreach. But focusing on just increasing the number of touchpoints will add busy work to your to-do list and frustrate your subscribers.
Instead, make sure every message is providing real value—even if that means sending out fewer messages. For each of your segments, make sure the emails match both their historical interests and their current behaviors.
Don't just send an email for every holiday—match up the messages to what your audiences are doing in the days leading up to a holiday or event. This core idea should wind through all of your client-facing communications, from social media management to newsletters.
Remember: metrics, tools, and A/B testing are all tactical-level changes. When you're piecing together new email campaign strategies, especially as we head into the holiday shopping season, you can differentiate yourself by sending emails your audiences will actually value.
Creating the right infrastructure and content for your email marketing campaigns is a big undertaking. Partner with Decographic, a local inbound marketing agency and web development service that can help you shore up the technical aspects of your marketing engine and your core messaging.
Reach out today to get started!