by Suellen | Email Marketing, Online Success
Now let’s talk about email marketing audits.We touched on that subject in the last post, but we want to delve a little deeper.
It’s to our advantage to check out everything we are doing to make sure that we are making the most of our time. So why in the world are we spending so much time on email funnels, audits, and such?
Let’s take a look.
Email marketing audits are about reviewing everything it takes to create your email marketing campaign – from developing your goals to reviewing your content creation process. They also include identifying your strengths and weaknesses so that you can build an actionable plan for continuous improvement. You want to improve your conversions and make a better connection with your audience through email marketing.
The following are four important benefits from conducting email marketing audits:
Your Audits Can Improve ROI (Return on Investment)
Return on investment (ROI) is the most important metric when keeping track of any marketing strategy. If your return is low or less than what you put in, it is not worth your time or investment. Meaning adopting strategies that provide a high return on investment are where you should spend most of your time.
As it turns out, email marketing should be your top marketing priority since it converts more sales than social media and gives you as much as forty-eight dollars back for every one dollar you spend.
Your Audits Can Identify Winning Content or Strengths
Knowing your brand’s strengths and weaknesses is crucial to improving your content and in increasing your engagement with your readers. Your weaknesses are red flags, or indicators, that tell you what you need to do to better engage and connect with your audience. Your strengths can be used to improve your weak points.
Find out what is working for you, and do more of that!
Your Audits Can Highlight Marketing Holes or Weaknesses
Highlighting your weaknesses is a strength within itself, and vital to running a successful business. Of course, business is never perfect. You have to get used to that fact.
It is a roller coaster which requires constant evaluation and improvement to maintain your speed and stay on track. However, when things aren’t going well and you know exactly what to fix, you can make the fix and keep running smoothly.
Your Audits Help You Optimize Your Company Mission and Values
A valuable benefit of email marketing includes spreading brand awareness, authority, and credibility. These three factors are needed to convert your readers into loyal customers.
First, through email auditing, you can keep your message more consistent and ensure you provide the value your readers expect. Keeping a consistent message brings trust.
The more your readers trust you and value your authority, the more likely they are to make a purchase and become loyal followers.
These four benefits are significant.
By routinely performing marketing audits you are perfecting your ability as a marketer. Continuously tracking your results and committing to improvement are essential factors for a successful business.
You come away with a better understanding of your audience and a successful, fully optimized email marketing campaign.
Join the 30 Day Email Marketing Challenge. You can sign up Here!
by Suellen | Email Marketing, Online Success
It’s time to talk about “red flags” in your email funnels.
Now here is where the rubber meets the road. And I have to admit, this is not my favorite part. But it’s necessary to take notice, if you want to have productive emails.
To perfect your email marketing funnels, you need to be aware of certain factors that hinder your success. Many red flags are obvious if you just know where to look. Thankfully these red flags have plenty of solutions to them as well.
Here are five common email funnel red flags we need to notice.
Low Open Rate.
While this is not a metric you usually want to use on its own, a low open rate at least indicates that your subscribers are not reading your content.
This could mean several things. It could mean that your emails aren’t being delivered as they should. Or maybe your subject lines aren’t grabbing their attention. Or you are sending them at the wrong time.
Take notice of these three things. A good internet provider (such as GetResponse) will show statistics on all of these items so that you can see how you are doing.
Try different subject lines. Also try sending the emails at different times.Tweaking here and there can produce better results.
However, a high open-rate will not always translate to success, so you should always track other metrics to measure your results more accurately—for example, a high open-rate with a low click-through rate.
High Open Rate with Low Click-Through Rate
This means you are on the right track as your readers are interested, but something about the product you are advertising is off. Maybe the price is too high, or it doesn’t actually solve their problem.
High Click-Through Rate with Low Conversions
Again, this can be associated with the same problem presented above. The readers are clearly enjoying the content as they click through; however, you cannot make the final conversion.
This could indicate a disconnect in your landing page from your email. Your email had enough detail to persuade them to click on the landing page; however, the expectations were not set.
Be sure you don’t have any misleading discounts and that your email and landing pages have similar expectations.
High Unsubscribe Rate
This can happen for a couple of common reasons. First, you are either marketing your opt-in copy or forms to the wrong people, sending out too many emails, or are developing copy that is not compelling enough or too spam-like for your audience.
Some marketers say that to solve this you need to keep your sequences short and direct and not send emails too often.
I have a different take on this. Of course, you don’t want your true customers to start unsubscribing. However, when people unsubscribe, I just think they aren’t my true customers. In fact I don’t want people on my list who are totally disinterested in my information.
So the idea is to know your target audience well, including how you can help them. Then you can develop the right content, products, and services to prevent a high unsubscribe rate.
Usually, your unsubscribe rate is not a problem if you start with your buyer personas in mind. There will always be a few, and you can’t worry about that.
Varying Unsubscribe Rates Per Sequence
You want to take notice of this one.
Some email sequences may be too long, too short, or seen as spam. Also, some customers may end up in the wrong sequence leading them to unsubscribe. (Thus you should be sure most of your readers are in more than one sequence).
Email marketing isn’t an exact science. You are working with many different people and many types of personalities. Don’t take it as an insult when people don’t open. don’t buy, or unsubscribe.
We notice these red flags so that we can increase our effectiveness. We continue to look for the right people and offer them an opt-in. Then we notice if they open, if they click, and if they buy.
Then we boldly and confidently try new things. We might land on a truly successful approach which will surprise us.
Successful email marketing will always require consistent reviewing and updating.
And the more we continue, the more successful we will become.
by Suellen | Email Marketing, Online Success, Success
Crafting the right Email funnels is an important marketing strategy to understand if you want to better communicate with your audience and to increase your profits. While it may be hard to believe, email marketing still out-performs social media by nearly forty percent. Not only does email marketing generate more revenue, but it is also more productive as it is three times faster.
Here are four easy steps to creating a high-converting email marketing funnel:
Step One: Find more customers and sign them up for email.
The first crucial step to creating a high-converting email funnel is to create brand awareness and find more customers. (This is often called Lead Generation). Focus on creating a process that draws in your target audience. Usually this is an offer with an opt-in form. Your offer of a free product is an incentive to get their information and start them down the email funnel. Once they opt-in, they’ll become a new subscriber and receive your hearty welcome email.
Step Two: Continue to send value-filled emails.
You will further build their interest with great content. Your emails will provide information and teach them about your products or services without focusing on promotions. This step is about building a stronger relationship with your customers to keep them around long-term. It allows you to form a deeper connection with your audience. Engaging content leads to more action.
Step Three: Content Persuasion
Once strong relationships are built with your readers, you want to persuade them further to make a certain decision. This is where the promotional content begins to flow into your sequences and your readers start to make purchases and become loyal customers.
In this step, be sure you always include an easy and obvious call-to-action, so your audience knows what to do. Your click-through rate depends on it.
Step Four: Engage and Follow Up
Nurturing your leads never stops. The step keeps going as is required to keep their interest and see more conversions. Even after your readers purchase, you want to follow up with them and keep them engaged.
Send thank you emails and invite them to other groups or platforms that teach them how to use your products or services even better. The more places and ways you can keep your audience engaged, the better and fewer chances for them to unsubscribe or become disinterested.
So there you have it.: your email funnel formula. Four steps to follow again and again. Sign up email customers, nurture them with a series of emails containing valuable information, offer them something to purchase, and continue to engage them for the follow up.
Following these steps ensures you have everything you need to create high-converting email funnels. A great marketing strategy for the highest return on your investment.
This costs little to nothing to get started, but can reap great rewards when you continue.
Forever Upward!
Suellen
P.S. If you want to know about a terrific email provider, you will want to check out Get Response. You can find them Here.
