The High Tech Marketer
A monthly Advisory for Qualified Lead Generation
What increases email marketing ROI?
According to a June 2013 study by Ascend2
and Research Underwriters, increasing email
marketing ROI is the objective of 40% of
marketers with a superior strategy.
Recently I got a tragic email from someone
pitching a high tech service. I say tragic because
it included so many mistakes that it would have a
hard time converting business or any ROI from it.
Today I’ll outline some of these mistakes in hopes
that your company doesn’t make them. Then I’ll
go through a few things that could increase ROI
for your email marketing even more.
Let’s start with…
Stronger, inspiring subject lines
What are subject lines anyway? Subject lines
– like titles of a book – are really headlines.
And we know the job of a headline is really only to
capture the reader’s attention.
So what’s an email marketer to do to capture attention
with your subject lines?
The most important part of an effective email marketing
message is that it is relevant and compelling to your reader.
The subject line needs to let people know that the message
will be completely relevant and compelling
content.
If the message appears to be irrelevant to what
your prospect is interested in, or not exciting,
it suffers a quick death by delete key.
If the subject line does not contain something that benefits
the reader, it’s probably weak. What else can destroy your
email ROI before even sending it?
Make them true. Completely false tactics in subject lines to
get the email opened. In my example above, someone actually
used what they thought was a proven subject line:
“Further to my voice mail.” What voice mail?
I’m sure this would have been effective, if he actually left me
a voicemail.
That’s a small bit about what you should do for effective subject
lines for better email ROI, but what else could affect it?
Get permission
It’s pretty much self-explanatory really, but I’ll explore it a bit.
When you send an email to someone unsolicited, that
is called… SPAM.
You’re essentially wasting your time because the prospect
you are emailing is not even a qualified lead. They have not
indicated any interest by giving you their permission.
But what if you had permission you were emailing an actual lead?
What are a couple ways you could squeeze even more
ROI out of that email?
Make it Shareable
If your message is offering valuable, relevant content to your
recipient, and they opted to receive it in the first place, you
can make it easy to share it with their friends and colleagues.
With some simple links from companies such as AddThis.com
you can help people share your content on Twitter, LinkedIn and
Facebook.
You can make your email work even harder if you…
Integrate it with other marketing tactics
The Ascend2 and Research Underwriters study also indicated some
other tactics most often integrated with company email programs.
They were: landing pages at 63% of respondents, online events
such as webinars with 35% of respondents saying so, and 34% for
offline events like trade shows.
Want more ROI out of your email marketing campaign?
Hire a B2B technology copywriter who knows even more ways to
generate more leads, nurture them and improve your ROI with
email.