Email marketing is well known in the marketing community for having a high return on investment (ROI), thanks in part to how cheap and easy the strategy is to start. But what if you want to push that ROI further and make the strategy even more effective?
How can you increase your ROI as much as possible?
What Is Your Email Marketing ROI?
Your email marketing ROI is a measure of how much value your strategy brings your organization, compared to the costs of this strategy. For example, if you spend $5,000 on your email marketing campaign, and it nets you $10,000, you can define this as an ROI of 200 percent; you made back everything you spent twice over.
This metric is very important because it tells you how much value your strategy is bringing you. You might be impressed to see that your email marketing strategy has driven $100,000 of new sales, but if your strategy costs you $105,000 to maintain, you're actively losing money on it. Conversely, if you're operating on a shoestring budget and you only spend $100 on your email campaign, but that campaign generates $1,000 of new sales for your organization, you'll be benefiting from a massive return.
Improving your email marketing ROI is the best way to increase the long-term value of your strategy. Once your ROI is in a better spot, you can scale up your efforts by emailing more people and emailing more frequently, making back whatever you spend to make that happen.
Ideas for Improving Your Email Marketing ROI
These are some of the best ways that you can improve your email marketing ROI.
- Rely on inexpensive tools. First, try to take advantage of free and inexpensive tools that are available to you. There are many platforms and systems that can help you manage email campaigns and improve those campaigns, and many of those tools are useful, but some of them are simply too expensive to be friendly to your budget. MailChimp is a well-known example of a budget-friendly tool, since you can get started for free and benefit from relatively inexpensive plans.
- Curate high-value subscribers. Many email marketers think the secret to success is getting more subscribers, but in reality, the secret is getting better subscribers. You're better off with a list of 100 very dedicated brand loyalists than a list of 10,000 people who don't really care about your brand at all. Because of this, you need to spend time curating a list of high-value subscribers. You can start by naturally attracting more people to your brand with the help of content and an active social media strategy. Avoid buying new subscribers or relying on cheap gimmicks to build out your list.
- Use automation for an ongoing drip campaign. Automation is excellent for your marketing ROI because it reduces your manual effort, improves the scalability of your campaign, and increases the consistency of your strategic execution. If you're planning a drip email campaign, automation is a practical must. Automation tools do cost some money, but if you use them wisely, they should more than make up for what you spend on them.
- Embed videos into the body of your emails. If you want your emails to generate more value, you need to work harder to truly engage your subscribers. One way to do this is to embed videos directly into the body of your emails so they play automatically when subscribers open the message. Thanks to tools like Viewed, this is relatively easy; all you have to do is upload your video, copy and paste a code, and send the email. Just make sure the content of your video is perfectly suited to the subscribers who will be watching it.
- Personalize your messages. People don't respond well to generic, universal messages. They're much more likely to engage with messages that are personalized to them; these messages stand out as original and more relevant. Get to know your subscribers as much as possible and personalize elements of your subject lines and body copy to make them better suited for each individual.
- Perfect the art of the subject line. The overall average open rate is less than 17 percent. But you can push that much, much higher if you learn to optimize your subject lines effectively. Subject lines are the biggest factor standing between you and email marketing success, since a bad subject line can devastate your open rate. Focus on writing subject lines that are relevant for your niche audience, original, concise, and valuable in some way.
- Improve your timing. Another way to optimize your email marketing ROI is to improve your message timing. Some days of the week are going to be more favorable for your marketing emails. The same is true for times of day. Every industry and every business is a bit different here, so we'll need to experiment to figure out what works best for you.
- Focus on your most profitable products and services. If you want more bottom-line value, consider focusing on your most profitable products and services. Assuming your calls to action (CTAs) are working, you'll end up generating more revenue without
- Analyze your results (and act on them). Finally, take the time to analyze your results and act on them. Which tactics seem to be most effective for your audience and which ones are falling flat? How can you use this information to make better emails in the future? Experiment on a regular basis to push the limits of your email marketing potential.
Do you want to get more value out of every marketing email you send? Are you looking for a way to secure more engagement and conversions from your subscribers? Viewed can help by making it easy for you to embed automatically playing videos in the body of your emails. Sign up to get started for free!
