As an email marketer, you’ll spend a good deal of your time wondering about costs. You want to make sure you’re getting the best value for your money, especially considering price fluctuations and the rising cost of digital marketing.
While there’s no exact formula for determining cost-effectiveness, you can implement a series of best practices that will make you more efficient and cost-friendly.
Set A Budget
As a starting point, it’s a good idea to set a budget for your email marketing. This will help you identify cost-effective efforts and eliminate those that won’t generate the desired results. The key is to set a budget that’s big enough to cover your costs but small enough so you can continue to make efficient use of your time.
As an example, if you’re paying per click advertising for the first three months and then deciding to change to cost-per-acquisition, you’ll have to adjust your budget. You can also consider implementing a no-spend policy on certain emails if they aren’t performing well and therefore aren’t bringing in the revenue you’re hoping for. That way, you’ll cut your losses and continue focusing on the emails that are helping you achieve your goals.
Outreach To Email Lists
Efficient email marketers will be constantly reaching out to email lists to grow their audience and gain more customers. Depending on your product and the industry, you’ll need to decide which lists to reach out to and which ones to ignore. In some instances, you may want to ignore consumer lists (e.g., purchase offers or discounts) while focusing on B2B lists (e.g., sales leads, business partners, or customers).
To build your audience, you can use a tool like Mailchimp or Hootsuite to get the email addresses of potential customers. You can then use a tool like AWeber or HubSpot to connect with these people and gain their trust so you can convert them into paying customers. Once you have their email addresses, you can use a tool like MailChimp to create and maintain email lists based on their interests. You can also use a tool like Harvest to gather all of the emails from your past marketing efforts and compile them into a list that you can use to engage with potential customers.
Depending on your product, you may also want to segment your email lists by gender, age, location, or interest to target the right audience.
Content Is Key
In some instances, the products you sell may require a lot of content in order to be effective. For example, let’s say you’re selling kitchen appliances and you’ve created a guide that outlines the different appliance types and how to choose the right one for your needs. While this may be helpful to existing customers, new customers may not know what type of appliance they need in order to get started. In that case, you could create a short video tutorial that uses colorful images and language that prospective customers can relate to.
When it comes to your marketing content, make sure that it’s engaging. Research shows that people hate to read long blocks of text and instead want to get straight to the point. The key is to keep your content concise but informative.
Focus On The Analytics
Google Analytics is a free tool that you can use to track the performance of your website or digital marketing effort. While there are a number of tools that can help you measure the effectiveness of your email marketing, you can use Google Analytics to determine the return on investment for your time and effort. That way, you’ll know what’s working and what needs to be changed.
For instance, if you’re running paid advertisements on social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram and you’re seeing a high return on the investment, you may want to consider increasing your budget as a result. On the other hand, if you’re not seeing the same results, it may be time to reevaluate your strategy and either cut your losses or find another way to achieve your goals. Analytics will also help you target the right audience for your product and identify key performance metrics such as open rates, click-throughs, and conversion rates.
If you’re looking for an easy way to get started measuring the performance of your email marketing, you can use a tool like MarketingCharts to get a free Google Analytics account. With just a few clicks, you’ll have all of the metrics you need to determine the effectiveness of your email marketing.
Use Digital Marketing Platforms
Running a business is difficult enough without having to worry about the numerous platforms and tools that can make or break your company. While it may be tempting to handle all of your digital marketing efforts yourself, if you want to be effective, you’ll need to use a more sophisticated approach. That way, you can implement A/B testing, multivariate testing, and other forms of digital marketing to determine the best approach for reaching your customers.
When you’re using a marketing automation platform, you can assign different tasks to different teams. For example, you may want one group to handle the creation of the content (e.g., articles, guides, etc.) while another team is responsible for the distribution. Then, you can set up automated email campaigns based on individual tasks and goals that are performed automatically.
As a digital marketer, you’ll be hearing a lot about content marketing and how content drives growth and engagement. While it’s true that good content can help you gain credibility and build trust, you should also be thinking about the other side of the coin and using your content to engage with your audience. Create thought leaders in your industry and establish yourself as an expert by consistently delivering high-quality content. Doing this will also help you drive sales and grow your business.
If you’re looking for an out-of-the box approach to content marketing, you can use the content scheduling tool Hootsuite to get organized and plan out your content strategy. With Hootsuite, you can create and schedule content across multiple platforms (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) from a single dashboard. You can use the platform to schedule the posts for later in the day when more people are online or to distribute content on the weekends to encourage social engagement.
If you want to be seen as an authoritative voice in your industry, consider creating and publishing whitepapers, case studies, FAQs, or reviews that will position you as a thought leader. When you establish yourself as an expert in your industry, you’ll be able to attract customers and grow your business.
Use Email To Its Full Potential
Marketing emails can be a powerful tool for connecting with customers and driving sales. Depending on your product, you may want to use different types of emails to establish contact with potential customers. For example, if you’re selling kitchen appliances, you may want to implement a sequence that starts with an introductory email followed by a series of educational emails that continue to teach your audience about your products and how they can help them get their kitchen organized.
Use your introductory email to introduce yourself as the person to contact for help with organizing their kitchen or bathrooms. Then, you can use a tool like Badgenics to segment your email list and send targeted, relevant emails based on interests and behaviors. For example, you may want to send an email about composting to those who showed an interest in organics and sustainability or those who bought a specific type of appliance.
Keep Optimizing
More and more businesses are implementing digital marketing strategies, which means there are a variety of tactics and tools available to marketers. While it’s a good idea to get acquainted with the basic tools, you’ll eventually want to look for ways to improve your results and lower your costs. That’s why it’s important to keep on top of the trends and constantly look for ways to improve your strategy and tactics. This way, you’ll ensure that you’re always making the best possible use of your time and maximizing your results.