One of the first things I do when I start consulting with a business is to analyze their email marketing.
How do you know if you are doing a good job with your email marketing efforts?
There are 5 components of effective email marketing.
Let’s look at each component in-depth.
1. Building the List
The first step of any good email marketing campaign is increasing the size of the list. To build the list, you need a lead magnet.
What type of lead magnet are you using to build your list?
Lead magnets can be in all shapes, sizes, and types of content.
Each lead magnet serves a specific purpose. So, what are you trying to get subscribers to do? What is your end goal? Are you trying to get prospects to purchase a coaching package, a course, a book, an affiliate product, what is your end goal? Once you know the end goal, then you work backward and develop your lead magnet.
Ultimately, you want your lead magnet to lead people to the next step in the customer journey.
Does the lead magnet deliv16er on the 5 primary purposes of a lead magnet?
Once prospect opt-in to your email list, it’s important to start building relationships immediately.
Each Lead Magnet Has Five Purposes.
1) Call out to your audience.
2) Identify a specific problem that the lead magnet will solve.
3) Deliver value to the subscriber
4) Engage the subscriber
5) Set the stage for the next step of the customer journey.
2. Examine the Landing Page
The landing page is the second most critical component of building an email list.
Here are a few things to consider when creating a landing page.
a. The Design of the Page – the design of the page includes the layout, the colors scheme, the overall flow of the page, images, etc.
b. The Copy – The copy includes text such as the headline, sub-headlines, bullet points, calls to action, etc. Does the copy match any images on the page?
c. Is the landing page optimized for conversions? What I mean by conversions is email opt-ins. What is the email opt-in rate for the landing page? Knowing the landing page conversion rate is one of the ultimate performance measurements.
It is not uncommon for me to get between a 40-60% conversion rate from cold traffic from Facebook ads. (People who do not know the client’s site or brand.)
3. Evaluate how you are building the email list.
List building should be a part of your overall marketing strategy.
Building an email list should not be an isolated event. Instead, building your list should be part of your everyday activities.
Here are a couple of questions to answer when evaluating your list building efforts.
- How many free list building activities do you have in place?
Free list building ways can include the back of your business card, including a link to your landing page in your email signature, speaking at events, etc.. The more different ways you build your list, often the faster your list will grow.
- Are you doing paid media buys to increase the size of your list?
One of the fastest ways to increase the size of your email list is with paid media buys. That’s right advertising your lead magnet. This can be with Facebook ads, paid sponsorships in other ezines, and banner ads on other websites.
4. What is the subscriber’s experience?
Once a subscriber opts-in to your list what type of experience do they have? Are you establishing expectations for future communications? Or are you hammering the subscriber with offer after offer?
Here are 4 types of emails to ensure a positive subscriber experience.
Welcome Email – Does the welcome email establish the subscriber’s expectations? Do you tell them how often they will receive an email? What type of content to expect? Are you establishing the foundation of the relationship?
Autoresponders – Do your autoresponders engage the subscriber? Are you providing valuable content? Is there an offer in each autoresponder? Does the autoresponder ascend the subscriber to the next step of the customer journey?
Newsletters – How often are you sending newsletters? Once a quarter? Once a month? Once a week? Everyday? What type of content do you provide in your newsletter? How do you structure the content? Do the offers in your newsletter match the content?
Promotional Emails – How do your promotional emails engage your audience? Are you making soft or hard offers? Are you telling stories, providing testimonials, sharing case studies, and mixing in some direct response promotional emails? Are you advocating for your subscribers with each product you promote?
5. Inspect the email analytics
This is the most important part of any email marketing campaign. Tracking your email marketing results is critical to scaling your email marketing campaigns.
Here are a few questions to answer regarding the email metrics that you must track.
- How often you are sending emails?
- How often you are sending newsletters versus promotional emails?
- How many new subscribers are you adding each day?
- How much does it cost on average to add a new subscriber? New customer?
- What is the value of each email you send?
- How much is a new subscriber worth to your business?
- How much is a new customer worth to your business on an annual basis?
- What is the lifetime value of each customer?
These are just a few of the metrics that you need to track to ensure your email list is profitable.
As you can see, creating a profitable email marketing takes a lot of effort and expertise to ensure you have an engaged email list.
But developing email as a primary communication channel with your prospects and customers can have a dramatic impact on your business.
Today, when it comes to building your audience one of the most profitable marketing channels is email.
According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing yields a 4,300% return on investment for businesses in the United States.
ExactTarget reports for every $1 spent on email marketing, the average return on investment is $44.25.
One of the most profitable ways to build your audience is to increase the size of your email list.
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