Email marketing is great for a number of reasons, however, like all business opportunities and marketing methods — they might seem great at first, but without the proper planning and strategy in place they can soon become a disaster.
This is true with all different type of online marketing where you are focusing on ‘pay to play’ — even more so in social media than email, as you can quickly find yourself spending thousands of dollars in literally hours, as billions of impressions and clicks are being served hourly.
However, you can also find yourself going through a lot of money and ad spend with email and lead generation as well. With the average email lead generation cost ranging from .50 to $5 per lead, just a few hundred leads can quickly blow through your daily or monthly budget if you are just starting out.
With all of this in mind, today we are going to provide you with seven data points and factors that every business, ecommerce site and email marketers should be focusing their attention on. Once you better understand these metrics and data points, there is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to scale your business and email success across the board.
Source of Data
One of the most important data points when it comes to email and lead generation, is knowing where your data is coming from. Not just where, but also how.
For example, here are just a number of ways such data is commonly purchased or acquired.
- Single lead generation form and data submission
- Co-registration on an existing form with an opt-in/opt-our box
- Email or newsletter solo mailing to another email signup/lead gen form
- Opt-in email after signing up for another email list on a unique site
(this is how AfterOffers runs their email lead generation campaigns)
Once you understand where and how your data is coming from, you can then start sorting it based on quality. And after the data is analyzed, you can then tweak your ad campaigns and spending to focus more on the resources that are providing the best data.
Quality of Data
In addition to where and how your data is being collected and acquired, you need to know about the quality of the emails and subscribers as well.
This can be done by keeping an eye on the following stats:
- Email opens
- Email click rates
- Unsubscribes
- Spam complaints
When collecting user data from different sites, it’s important to have individual lists set up so you can track the performance of your campaigns and email data. If you lump everything together, you won’t be able to understand what emails are performing best, and where they are from.
Geographic Location of Data
Another important piece of data to pay attention to, is the geographic location of where your data is coming from.
Depending on where and how your information is being collected, this might be harder or easier to find out that you might think. In either case, two clear ways to discover where your emails are being sourced from, is to look at the IP address of the email (when they open your mailings), or to check the IP address of the site or landing page that such data is being collected on.
Geographic information can be a big decision maker in regards to whether or not you are going to find success with your mailing campaigns.
How Much Are You Paying for Data?
One of the most obvious things to look at when buying any type of lead generation or email data online, is to know how much you are paying per lead.
There is no right or wrong answer for this, as lead quality and volume will both play into this decision.
However, the most important thing to look at is the costs basis versus your overall revenue and profits.
Use of Data?
Email addresses aren’t just being used for mailing lists and newsletters anymore. There is actually a lot you can do with such data.
For example, remarketing is growing in popularity and has become one of the best way to run ad campaigns through social media.
In short, the more effective and creative ways you can come up with for optimizing your email list data, the more likely you are to find success with each new lead.
Autoresponder/Email Response
Speaking of different ways to monetize and optimize your email data, it’s important to keep an eye on your autoresponder and email responses as well.
Autoresponders are great because they can be set up once, then mail out automatically to each new subscriber. They can also give some great numbers in reference to open rates and what people are interesting in reading as well.
All of your mailings should also have working response emails. Not only to actually give responses to anyone who might reply, but to also help you better engage and understand your list data and their needs.
Overall ROI/Conversions
At the end of the day, all of these metrics and data points are important, but ultimately — you need to keep an eye on your ROI and conversions.
If you are buying thousands of email leads and none of them are converting, something is wrong.
Always keep tweaking your email data, ad copy, and split testing your mailings and traffic sources. Once you find success and a proven formula for a positive ROI, there is no reason why you can copy that same campaign and apply it to different traffic sources and paid lead generation methods.
Why Opt-In is Always an Excellent Choice for Email Lead Generation
If you want to spend your money wisely and make sure it’s getting put to good use, then opt-in lead generation is always the way to go.
This is something AfterOffers decided on a long time ago, and why we continually hand-select all of the partner sites we work with.
If you are ready to get started on your next email marketing campaign, while also growing your in-house list, be sure to contact us today and we can help you get started.