Maximize ROI through Email Marketing

Email marketing has been one of the best and cost effective methods of internet marketing. E-mail marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every e-mail sent to a potential or current customer could be considered e-mail marketing. Let’s go through the stats of what few are saying about the ROI of Email marketing.

Email presently generates 21.6% of total revenue from campaigns. - Direct Marketing Association "The Integrated Marketing Media Mix" (2008)
For every dollar spent on email marketing in 2007, marketers can expect an estimated $48.29 ROI. - DMA (2007)
The email marketing industry is a $3 billion industry in the U.S. in 2007 - $456 million for email-generated advertising revenue, $1.15 billion for all the technology, agency, consultant, service providers out there, and $1.35 billion for the lead-gen portion. Bill McCloskey, EmailInsider (2007)

Let’s now get into the details of how to maximize ROI through Email Marketing. There are few points to be considered to get the maximum out of the Email Marketing campaign that we do. Let’s go through them one by one.

1. Build and Manage lists:
a) Cleaning and analyzing the mailing list is very important as process to manage and build an effective mailing list as we receive a unsolicited, incorrect, out-of-date or duplicated addresses
b) Divide your signup lists in to two categories and retail the relevant segments. Segment your list based on email and Web behavior such as which links recipients clicked on or what actions they've taken on your Web site.
c) Maintain Quality email list over size. Analyze and filter your lists regularly to maintain customer value and activity levels.

2. Use Image tags:
Using image tag for the HTML mailer. Users who use dial up connections or other slow connections will not view your images quickly. Also, email services providers like Google, Yahoo, AOL and etc have images in the mails disabled as default, in such cases when mouse is rolled over Image tags will help the text description to be displayed.

3. Avoid spammy words:
Make your mailers professional and avoid using spammy words in both subject and in the content. Also, avoid using the special characters and Capital letters where it is unnecessary.

4. Comply with CAN SPAM:
a) Review your company's email marketing programs to ensure that they comply with the content and notification requirements and involve your legal counsel as appropriate.
b) Add a postal mailing address to all of your commercial emails.
c) Review and test your opt-out/unsubscribe language and process. Make sure it's clear, simple and actually works.
d) Ensure that all opt-out requests are honored within ten business days of receipt.


5. Manage Bounces:
a) Its recommended that you retry email bounces not more than 3 times.
b) Remove hard bounces from your email list
c) Minimize incorrect and false addresses.
d) Monitor bounce rates continually, and establish a benchmark. Analyze the cause, and take appropriate action when a message lies outside of the norm.

6. Optimize Landing Pages
A strong message always maximizes your ROI. Have a appropriate and good landing page, that makes it easy for customers to take the desired action. Use web Analytics tools to find out what visitors are doing and what pages they are visiting. Consider that, if the click rates for a campaign are strong, but your orders and conversion rate are low, then your visitors are hitting the landing page and then disappearing.

7. Shorter subject lines
Have your subject lines in such a way that the recipient keeps guessing about what’s there inside the mail. They can build or destroy your brand image. Misleading subject lines can effect trust with the recipients.
Some of the best subject lines are
RedEnvelope — Shop now for Mother's Day or pay until 2008
Abercrombie & Fitch — Be Naughty Or Nice In A&F Fleece
Gap— Can the Shirt off Your Back Change the World?
Crate & Barrel — What holiday tables are wearing...plus Free Shipping
RedEnvelope— Why man discovered fire
Urban Outfitters — Step away from the leftovers: Free Shipping Ends Monday!
RedEnvelope — Gifts for the guy with a one-track mind


8. Creativity
Creativity can boost third party conversions. The normal physiology of the recipient is, if they receive a creative email, they usually forward it to people in their friends list. This creates good word of mouth publicity for your brand.

9. Concentration Period
Concentration period is the period of first few hours after your delivery of your mail. It is assumed that 37% to 38.5% of conversion happens in first few hours of the delivery of the mail. Have a tracking system in place to keep a note of the same.


10. Customer Retention:
Customer Retention marketing is a tactically-driven approach based on customer behavior. Relationship and loyalty are very important aspects of customer retention. We can predict our customers behavior based on past behavior. Active customers are always happy customers and retention always require feedback from these active customers.

11. Maximizing Click-Thru Rates
Numerous research papers tell us that the majority of Internet users respond better to a plain, bold, blue text link -- such as this -- as opposed to a banner or button. So, if you're going to include links in your emails, make sure they are bold, blue and underlined. This will mean that more subscribers click through, meaning more conversions/sales for you

12. Avoiding the Spam Filters
The majority of large Internet service providers now use rigorous spam protection mechanisms to trap unsolicited email before it gets into their customers inboxes. Spam filters generally "rank" each email by a number of different criteria, and, if that email rates above a certain level (such as 10 spam points), then it is flagged as spam and deleted . To make sure your emails don't get flagged as spam -- and deleted before they even get to your subscribers -- avoid using words such as 'Free', '$$$', 'Save', 'Discount', etc in both the subject line and the content of your email. Both web pages and emails can contain a lot of text and graphics, and this sometimes makes it harder to get your subscribers to perform a certain task, such as clicking on a link to see your special offers.