An introduction To Email Marketing
Email is widely seen as being the best ROI in the marketing world. For every $1 you spend on email marketing you will earn back between $36 and $44. (Reported results vary depending on the source but $44 seems to be about average.)
Most people check their email every day and many also check email several times a day.
Over 50% of emails are read on smart phones (this does not include tablets) so we need to optimize our emails for mobile users.
Almost 60% of people say they have directly purchased a product after reading an email.
To see the latest email statistics follow this link.
While this is primarily an article about writing Profitable Email Campaigns we need to look at things like email deliverability and the reasons why I suggest what to do when writing email campaigns for yourself or other people.
What is the function of an email? An email should inform the recipient about something they need to know or do. It could be a transactional email thanking them for their purchase and telling them how to access their product and contact details if they have problems.
Or it could be a sales message giving them a call to action to check something out such as go and view a sales page. Note: it is the email’s job to get the reader to take some sort of action, not to sell the product directly from the page. The sale takes place on the sales page.
Apple privacy rules have changing email marketing for ever. Approximately 60% of email is received via Apple mail whether on computers, tablets or smartphones. Apple are allowing people to opt out of tracking and 98% are doing so. This means open rates are no longer accurate.
Clicks are not a good way to tell if an email is being opened because they don’t happen often enough. To check on your email delivery rates you need to keep an eye on the amount of unsubscribes and spam complaints that you get.
To see what is going on with your emails, you are going to have to track the open rates by using a link tracker.
Each email you send (including split tests) should have their own tracking link that shows how many people clicked through to the website.
To check engagement you should send a free gift, a cheat sheet or useful PDF, that they can download. When clicking through to the download page there is a box to enter their email address and name to get access. When they do this they have a tag added to their profile such as “engaged gift 1” so you know they are interested in your content.
You can also make them a special offer related to the free gift if you want to.
Building An Email Swipe File
Why should you build an email swipe file? There are many great email writers out there with years of experience so why not learn from them? I am not saying you should copy their emails but you should read through them and study them to see what they are doing right (and wrong).
The best way to do this is with a new Gmail account. A new account will enable you to keep your swipe file separate from you normal Gmail account (if you have one). As well as using it as a swipe file you can use it as a test email address to ensure your emails go directly into the Gmail inbox.
If any of the emails go into the promotions or spam folders, find out why. Try using the subject line with a known good email and see if it gets through. Alternatively use your own known good subject line and the bad email text. Still not getting through? Try splitting the email in half and see which half gets through.
Who should you add to get your swipe file emails from? It does not really matter but you should probably follow people and companies who are leaders in your industry that are obviously making money from email marketing.
Certainly a good starting point are the people you already follow and buy from. If you have purchased a product from someone’s email, they are obviously doing something right.
Many people (the lazy ones) will use a generic email supplied by the product vendor rather than write their own custom sales email.
It is far better to write your own emails as it will set you apart from all the other internet marketing “sheep”.
