Email marketing and leads generation are among the most critical activities that you can do as an online business owner. Getting leads that pay off is critical to growing and maintaining your business. That’s why it is so important to know that the emails you are collecting are relevant and that they will help you increase your ROI and conversion rate.
When it comes to how much money you are spending on your email marketing and lead generation efforts, this is something many entrepreneurs and brands have a good handle on. However, when it comes down to the actually ROI and value of each new lead generated, many list owners are still left in the dark.
To help with this process and to get a better understanding of how to value your email marketing and lead generation efforts, we recommend the following.
How do you measure the value of emails?
Since it is so important to get emails that pay off in the form of leads and conversions, how will you measure the value of the emails you collect?
We’ve researched this topic and collected five methods to measure the value of your emails so you can decide which ones to keep and what to purge.
Evaluate email addresses regularly
The first thing you can do to be sure your emails have validity is to check them with a tool such as verify-email.org/. This is a free tool that allows you to look up a specific email address to see if it is valid. Many times, people change email addresses due to spam or business changes, and you may not be able to know this until you get bounced email notifications.
By periodically checking email addresses through this type of tool, you will know which ones to purge from your leads and mailing list and avoid bounced or undelivered messages.
Wait for responses
While it is true that many people read emails from businesses without any response, you may want to purge potential clients who never respond as it may mean they may not be interested in engaging with your brand or buying your products. It’s best to save your energy and time for those who are most likely to respond and purge the rest.
Pay attention to the ones who respond, even if it is to remove them from your email list. When they do ask you to remove them, do so promptly to stay in compliance with FTC law. Focus on marketing to the ones who have indicated an interest by signing up but delete dead emails that you never see any action from. One rule of thumb is to delete any emails that you have not received a response from in 6 months. You can try retargeting some of these in a separate email campaign though, before final deletion.
Offer a free gift to subscribers
One way to tell if you have email lists that are good leads is to offer a gift to subscribers and see if they accept it. Sometimes you can get new subscribers this way by offering a free eBook in exchange for their email address. But, more importantly, you can use gift offers as a way to see who is interested in what you have to offer and then follow up with other offers if they agree to subscribe.
Responses are the best way to predict future conversions for your brand, so spend time on these leads and delete the ones who never respond. They are not worth your time and efforts.
Learn to calculate your email conversion rate
Calculate your email conversion rate by dividing the number of recipients who took the action you want to monitor by the number delivered to recipients. Then multiply the result by 100 to figure out the outcome as a percentage. This formula will give you an estimate of how you are doing on conversions from the emails you send.
This is perhaps the most critical method since it tells you how well your emails are converting. (Campaign Monitor)
Click-through-rate
Another way to measure engagement and results with your email newsletters, offers, and other email communications is to measure your CTR (click-through-rate). You can install software from an email platform that measures this such as Constant Contact or Aweber.com. These tools will give you a way to measure your metrics regarding your email marketing campaigns. While CTR does not give you analytics on conversions, it is the first step in conversions and gives you an idea of how responsive your email messages are.
If you analyze your data more specifically, you’ll see which subscribers are engaging with your brand. The emails that you get clicks on will show you which subscribers are most likely to purchase or do business with you in the future. Using external tools such as Salesforce or others can also help improve the results you get.
Kick Dynamic has an interesting blog post about more drilled-down specifics on how to measure the effectiveness of your email marketing programs.
What else can you do to improve ROI?
Email marketing is not easy. But using tools that help you measure your results can help you figure out which emails to keep and which to toss aside as you plan your strategies.
Another thing you can try is to use a tool such as afteroffers.com. They have a system that has helped thousands of online business owners to maximize their reach and improve their results through clicks and conversions. How? By placing your link on sites that are relevant to the topic and niche area that you are involved in.
This technique is related to the customized ad and native ads methodology that places relevant ads in front of your target audience on other sites. This gives you additional exposure to your most likely customers on sites other than your own.
It might be worth a try if you are looking for a way to expand your reach and get your message out there to thousands of people who are interested in your brand.
Email marketing, social media, and blogging are all important. But don’t miss out on one of the most lucrative options to add multiple links to your content on relevant sites. This will also improve your rankings on Google and increase your SEO.
Check out afteroffers.com and see if it’s something you could benefit from. Not only do we offer the highest quality email lead generation campaigns on the internet, all leads are 100% opt-in verified!
A famous philosopher once said, “Anything that can be measured can be changed.” This philosophy can be applied to email marketing, too. By measuring the impact your email campaigns are having, you can decide how to manipulate your metrics and change the little things you are doing to be more successful and improve your ROI.
Good luck as you launch your email marketing strategies and remember to use the resources you have to improve your results.