Tag Archives: email marketing campaigns

Email Marketing Response Rates and Car Mileage

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Nearly every week, I get asked, or I see someone ask, “What email marketing response rate can I expect to get?” Or, “How many clickthroughs should I see in my email campaigns?.”

It’s perfectly OK to want to know how you measure up, or whether your rates are “good” or “bad.” The truth is, it depends.

Your mileage may vary

The mileage you get on your car will vary based on what sort of car you have, how fast you drive, the condition of your brakes, whether you drive in the city or on the highway, and many other factors.

Something similar happens with email marketing. Each campaign, and each offer, is different. Some campaigns get better results during the work week, or even on a particular day or time of day.  Others perform better over the weekend when visitors have more leisure time.

One company’s campaigns might do well with a conversion rate of 4%.  Another business might boast conversion rates of 10%.  That doesn’t necessarily mean that the second business is earning more money.  The first one might be selling a more expensive product.  The second could be measuring based on open rates, rather than an actual sale.

Why conversion rates differ

Conversion rates can go up or down based on a hundred different variables.  For example, a Star Wars Halloween mask, will sell more readily (and quickly) than an industrial pump. The mask is cheap, simple, and doesn’t require a drawn-out research, bidding, or procurement process.  The pump probably does.

A free offer will get more responses than an offer that costs money. There’s no obligation and no monetary risk involved.

Responses can also differ based on the copy, the benefits of the product, the format, the quality of your offer, how will it fits your audience’s needs, and a hundred other factors.

It can even vary based on how you count conversions. Is a conversion an open? a click? an inquiry? or a sale?

Yes, you can compare your rates

There are lots of general email marketing reports showing breakdowns by industry, time of day, and day of the week.  They show open rates, click-through rates, deliverability (how many messages get where they’re supposed to go), conversion rates (how many people fill out your lead generation form or buy your product or ask for a meeting – whatever the purpose of the email is). Here’s the latest email marketing metrics report from Mailer Mailer. These reports can be useful to give you a general idea of how your business compares to others in your industry.  Just apply the appropriate quantity of salt when you look at them.

Your results are what matters

It’s nice to know how other people are doing, and reports are great as a general guide.  What really matters is how you’re doing.  Compare  your campaigns against each other.

Which emails had the highest open rates?  Which ones got the most clicks?  Have you tried to write  better headlines (subject lines)? Or testing one headline against another?

Watch your deliverability statistics and your unsubscribe rates.  If you have a large number of people leaving your list, find out why people are unsubscribing from your emails.

How to Write Email Subject Lines That Get Opened

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An email subject line is like the headline in an ad. It’s the first thing you notice – and the most important part of the entire message. It’s even more critical with email than with an ad.

If someone sees your ad, they may miss or ignore the headline, but be attracted by a photo or a sub-head.

With email, everything else is largely hidden.

If the subject line doesn’t say “open me!,” you’re sunk.

A writing tip from David Ogilvy

Whether in print or online, spend most of your time on your headline. To quote David Ogilvy (who never saw an email but knew a few things about headlines):

On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar. -David Ogilvy

Good, bad, and ugly subject lines

Here are some sample email subject lines:

Stocks Set to Rebound After Yesterday’s Fall

The problem with this headline is that it tells you the entire story. There’s no need to click and read the entire email. I already know the market went down yesterday, and the headline tells me that they are expected to rise today.

Here’s another take on that same headline:

The Five Stocks That Survived The Market Slide

If the stock market has been sinking, knowing which stocks have retained their value is useful and important information.  Where do I click?

Or, what about this one:

Spark Business with Webinars, Podcasts, and Online Video

Looks like the email is about different ways to market your business.  All good tactics.  The trouble isn’t with the content.  The trouble is that they’ve given away the entire strategy in the subject line.  There’s really no need to read further.  OK, I can use these tools to promote myself, one, two, three, check.  Done.

What if we changed this a bit.  Make the headline say something like,

How to Spark More Business

With that headline,  you won’t know what the tools are unless you open the email.

Here’s another one:

5 Ways to Break the Rules of Email Marketing

It promises I can break some rules, but there’s absolutely no way to tell what I’ll gain by doing it. I also can’t tell whether the rules are legitimate or foolish.  What if, instead, the headline made a promise about how I can be more successful by breaking the rules.  Say something like:

Profit From Breaking Email Marketing Rules – 100% Legal!

Makes you wonder what the rules are, how you can make money, and reassures you that it’s legal (you’re not spamming anyone).  The contradiction between doing something that sounds dodgy, and knowing that it’s perfectly legal gets your attention. You now want to open that email to find out exactly what you need to do to increase your profits.

In each case, the new subject lines work because they engage emotions, tell a story, or promise one.  You can do this by arousing curiosity, creating a mystery, setting up a contradiction, or promising useful information. And that’s why emails with these subject lines get opened.

Got a favorite email subject line? Or a question about writing them?  Ask in the comments.

 

Why Email Lists are Like Rodney Dangerfield

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Email marketing lists get no respect. They’re the Rodney Dangerfield’s of marketing. Rodney’s signature “tag line” was “I don’t get no respect.”

Lists are a bit like that too, they’re a bit dull, and they have row after row of names and @ signs. None of it very interesting or flashy. Certainly not as fun as graphics (oooh pretty colors) or web design (buttons, clicking, interactive) or social media (more buttons – likes, dislikes, tweets).

Why you need a targeted email list

The truth is, your email list is the most important part of your marketing.  A bad list equals bad results. If your list is performing poorly (and remember your house list is your best source of sales), it may be time for a bit of spring cleaning (or fall cleaning, depending on where you live).

Buying a list can be expensive, so the best thing to do is to build your own.  Here are some tips to keep in mind when building (and maintaining) your email marketing list.

Size doesn’t matter

People get attached to the size of things, lists included. The size doesn’t matter. The quality, cleanliness (meaning it’s up to date and old addresses have been removed) and the responsiveness do. A big list won’t help if the data is old, the information is irrelevant, and nobody opens your mail.

Big can be bad

Don’t just take my word for it.  Here’s the results of an actual case study from Marketing Sherpa (Nov. 9, 2010).   The article describes what happened when The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra decided to revamp its email marketing completely (samples and the full article here). The existing database had tens of thousands of names, but the marketing was hit-and-miss, irregular, and unfocused. The list was big, but it had a lot of old, outdated information – which meant that their mailings were getting a poor response.

Permission matters

Cleaning your list (and drastically reducing its size) can seem frightening. However, it also means that the only people on it want to be there. And, you’ll have fewer bounces, and less strain on your email server.

The Symphony sent a fresh email asking everyone on the list to confirm that they still wanted to receive emails. Anyone who didn’t answer was removed. Here’s the scary part. This cut the database by 95%!

Relevance matters

The next step was to ask people exactly what kinds of emails they wanted (or didn’t). So, those most interested in classical music would receive one newsletter, while people interested in events for children/families got another. The only content subscribers would get would be the content that they wanted to read.

Anticipated messages matter

The list was a lot smaller, but a lot better. I bet their open rates went way up too. Finally they started to build a new email list – adding an opt-in for ticket buyers, free ticket giveaways (opt-in option), and other outreach efforts. Instead of hit-or-miss, the emails were now welcome, relevant, and anticipated.

Responsiveness matters

The list has since grown by 500% and sales have doubled.  Permission (check).  Relevant (check). Anticipated (check)… even some respect.

(If you’re wondering, the tombstone reads, “There goes the neighborhood”)

A Powerful Little Email Marketing Tool That’s Often Overlooked

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postscript, one more thingThere’s a little email marketing tool that people often forget about.  Many marketing posts tend to focus on writing the perfect headline, finding the right image for your post, and how to structure your offer.

But there’s another, humble tool, that’s less flashy than a great headline or a photo or an offer, but a tool that can have a big impact on your marketing results.

It’s the P.S.

Why use a P.S. in your email marketing

It may seem like an afterthought, but the P.S. is the second place most people look at a letter or email (the first is the return address on a physical letter or the sender in an email).  With all those eyeballs going to that spot, it’s important to use that attention to your advantage.  It works on physical letters, emails, and landing pages.  People look at the headline, scan the photos, and then check the P.S.

Your offer: miniaturized

It’s a mini-summary of your marketing: your offer, an important reason to buy quickly, or another benefit of using the product.  It’s the chance to add an extra little push. focus attention, and tell readers to go  back and look at the rest of the page.

The fifth “P”

It’s sometimes called “the fifth P” (after Promise, Picture, Proof, and Push).  Marketers selling to other marketers sometimes treat it ironically (here’s that P.S. again, you know the one where we promise to make you better looking, taller, and increase your IQ to genius levels), but it still works.  If you’re pitching to a more button-down audience, play it straight.

P.S. Just one more thing (no, I couldn’t resist, could I) … I wonder if that’s why Steve Jobs did that at the end of Apple presentations.

P.P.S. I was reminded while looking for an image for this post that TV cop Lieutenant Columbo used to do the same thing.. and he always solved the case!

Image: flutterby

How Big Should Your Mailing List Be?

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How big should your mailing list  be? What’s the best list size? 100 names? 1,000? 10,000? More? By list I mean email, Twitter followers, or even (gasp) snail mail.

Someone was asking the other day whether theirs was large enough. And if people would buy things from a free email newsletter.

The answer is that they will buy. Not all of them, but they will, as long as two things happen.  One, you have been sending them relevant, useful information and two, whatever you’re offering for sale in your newsletter is also relevant and useful to them. If your newsletter is all about gardening tips, you’re not likely to sell your subscribers on a set of dental tools (no matter how good a deal they are).

How big should your mailing list be?

There is no perfect list size.  There is a right size for your needs, your market, and your industry.  That just means that your list has to be big enough and responsive enough to support your marketing goals.

If your response rate is low, your list will have to be larger; if it’s high, you can get away with a smaller list and still get the same return.

There are three things (primarily) that affect the response you get.

List cleanliness

Is your list up-to-date?

Long ago, I worked for a company that hadn’t cleaned their list in a very long time. When they finally decided to do something, the guy they hired called me (I was marketing manager at the time) and said, “You have to come see this.” He took me into a room that was about 10 x 6 feet (roughly 3 x 2 meters). It was FULL of returned mail. They were mailing to companies that had closed, people who had left, and people who were deceased. Big waste of time and money!

If it’s an email list, and you’re using  an email service provider (such as AWeber or MailChimp), most of this gets taken care of automagically. New signups are added, and unsubscribers are removed. You’ll still need to check for other things, such as opens and bounce rate.

If you’ve got a snail mail list, when something comes back, go update your list (or get someone else to do it). Don’t wait until the returned mail piles up! And don’t waste your money mailing to dead people.

Think less about size and more about responsiveness, relevance, and permission. Those aren’t size measures, they’re quality measures, which is what really matters, not absolute size.

Responsiveness

Some people are buyers, some are not. You can have people who are just at the beginning of looking for something (doing research on a new washing machine, for instance), or people who are ready to buy (my washing machine is broken, I need a new one).

Look to see who’s buying (and who isn’t)— and what they buy.  If you see certain people are buying lots of  gardening tools from your home improvement site start a separate gardening tools list. If you have a separate business that sells dental instruments, don’t try to sell them to your garden lovers.

Relevance

See my gardening comment. The important thing isn’t the size of the list as much as how relevant your information is to your subscribers’ needs. If you’ve got a list of 2,000 rabid, raving medieval jousting fans, they will want armor, lances, helmets, and banners. And they will want all of it. Find those people (that tribe of 2,000) and they will buy and buy and buy from you.

Permission

Your list will do better, regardless of size, if you only add people who want to be added.  Use double opt-in (meaning that subscribing requires two steps, signing up and confirming that sign up).  Don’t add people who you met at conferences, or who attended events where you spoke, unless they request it.

I just unsubscribed from an event invite service.  A newsletter I do subscribe to used this service to create an event that I attended.  That invite service kept the names and started spamming me with more (unwanted) invitations.

When you’re building your mailing list, concentrate on relevance, cleanliness, and, permission, and responsiveness—not size.  Bragging about a list of 150,000 people is fun—but  that list is useless if 95% of them never open your emails or half your messages bounce.