Email marketing

While some say that email isn’t an effective marketing tool anymore, research shows that it still has the highest ROI of any online marketing tactic.

One reason is that email is still a dominant avenue of communication in business. In fact, 91 percent check their email daily. Email subscriptions to websites for updates and information is growing at the fastest rate ever, with 74 percent of consumers actually preferring to receive commercial communications by email.

We talk with several companies that are doing email marketing, only to find out they’re missing out on some significant opportunities. If you’re wondering how your company stacks up, read the checklist below and evaluate your email marketing.

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I read a timely report on Marketing Charts this week. It was timely because I was speaking with someone who commented, “we tried email and it doesn’t work.”

I’ve heard that “email doesn’t work” several times (just like I hear “we’ve tried paid search and it doesn’t work, or just about any other marketing tactic).  Perhaps you’ve even thought the same thing or had your own struggles with email.  It’s certainly not uncommon.

Another popular criticism of email is “I don’t want to spam my prospects or customers.”

My conclusion is that people say or think these things because they may have tried email marketing but didn’t send something that’s relevant to their ideal customer.

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With social media, mobile marketing, and other newer and sexier marketing alternatives, a lot of people say that email is losing its luster. The fact remains, however, that email marketing is still one of the most effective online marketing activities that your company can engage in. The Direct Marketing Association says that for every $1 a company spends on email, they get $40.56 in revenue. 

Today we are going to look at some rules, that when followed, will make you an exceptional email marketer, and will help you get more ROI from the email you’re sending.

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Segmentation can help you make sure your emails don’t end up in customers’ spam folders.

As we alluded to in this post on the best times to send emails, timing isn’t the only factor that you could be–or should be–testing to get more ROI from your email marketing. In fact, segmentation is a fantastic avenue to explore.

Segmentation offers a whole slew of benefits. According to data from Lyris, by using email marketing segmentation:

• 39% of marketers increased email open rates.
• 28% lowered opt-out/unsubscribe rates.
• 24% experienced greater revenue.
• 24% increased sales leads.
• 21% experienced greater customer retention.
• 18% reported a greater number of transactions.

Why pass up the opportunity to make your marketing more effective, generate more leads and close more sales?

So, let’s dive into email segmentation. Here are 4 ways that you could segment your emails and how each method has benefited real-life businesses.

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As Scott Stratten pointed out on his Unmarketing blog, it seems like a study is released each week that tells you the best time to send email. For instance:

• This study tells marketers to send email between 12am and 3am.  (Personally, I have never tried this, but it seems like a bad time to me.)
• This one seems more reasonable to me — send email between 8am – 10am or 3pm – 4pm.
• Then there’s this study that suggests 6am – 7am is the best time to send your marketing email.

Confused yet? Probably so.

As a marketer, you’re trying to stay on top of trends, and knowing when to send email marketing promotions is a question marketers have been chasing answers to for years. We’ve even written about it several times on this blog.

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Are the leads coming in, but you’re not sure how to move them from prospect to customer? Are you stumped by thinking of how you can move leads out of early-stage research to a call with your sales team—but without seeming too pushy?

Lead nurturing holds the key to unlocking the true potential of your online marketing efforts.

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