Email Marketing is alive, well and thriving. Email after all is the original “killer app” that allowed for personal computers to proliferate and set us on the path to billions of daily one to one written communications: whether it between two individuals or between a company and its client base.
From an ROI perspective, Email Marketing continues to generate the kind of returns that new platforms such as Social Media would envy. Consider the fact that Email Marketing yields a Return on Investment (ROI) of 38-to-1. This level of performance on ROI is among the highest in competing digital marketing platforms. Notwithstanding the pesky, unsolicited, get rich quick schemes, that get relegated to the email trash bin, permission based, opt-in emails do well. In fact 72% of respondents in a survey indicated that Email remains their preferred way of communications over other marketing channels. Given these mouth watering metrics of eye popping ROI results, coupled with customer acceptance, 56% of Email Marketers indicated that they would be increasing their Email Marketing spend in 2016.
Target Your Audience
Success in an Email Marketing Campaign requires successful targeting. According to the folks at Email Marketing Company Litmus, “to succeed in email, you must send relevant messages and provide your subscribers with a functional email experience. This means eliminating friction that can degrade the effectiveness of your messaging, erode the subscriber experience, and ultimately damage your brand image.” We would recommend readers of this blog to download and review Litmus 2016 Email Marketing Guide to get an in depth understanding of the tactics required to conduct an effective email marketing strategy.
Measure Phone Call Conversions
The above being said conducting a successful Email Marketing campaign still remains a challenging task. From writing good engaging copy, to tailoring the message that suits the targeted audience, Email Marketers also need to take into account the different digital devices that would be used to open and read the emails and also be able to measure view through across multiple channels that are involved in a potential customer’s journey. Measuring the success and ROI of an Email Marketing campaign through conversions requires not only capturing online conversions but also capturing phone calls that can be tied back to an Email campaign.
According to research published by BIA Kelsey by 2020 there will 169 billion mobile calls to businesses on account of the ubiquity of smartphones. The research report states that these calls are going to be driven by high user engagement based on contextual relevance and of course the ease with which a call may be completed.
Making the phone call easy for your email recipient is where smart email design comes into play. Place the call to action with phone number in multiple spots. Do not make the email recipient search for your number. Because many of the email recipients will be using their smart phone to read your email copy, use Click-to-Call function to facilitate the call.
If you operate in a business vertical where landing page conversions are more likely, then use follow-me-from-this-email call tracking numbers that will automatically dynamically populate on your landing page when a button such “Learn More” is clicked on your email. In the preceding case, even if you do not receive a phone call from that click, use the email copy content to create retargeting ads that sparked the email recipient’s engagement. Example, if you ran an email campaign that targeted individuals who had expressed interest in learning more about heart scans and received a click on your email, your retargeting ad copy should be consistent with the email that generated the click.
Use Call Intelligence to Tailor Email Copy
Use the actionable intelligence gleaned from call recording and transcript function to learn more about your audience. For example, do respondents to email marketing campaigns ask questions that are markedly different than callers who call in from a Paid Search campaign? If yes, then use the questions to come up with email copy and campaigns that target a narrower but more qualified audience.
If your data suggests that respondents to Email Marketing campaigns are starting out in the investigation phase of the purchase cycle then use Smart Routing to route calls to sales people who are “consultative” in nature rather than quick closers.
Summary
- Email Marketing remains a viable and profitable customer acquisition tool
- A successful Email Marketing campaign is predicated on audience targeting, copy selection, message relevance and measuring online and phone call conversions
- Phone calls comprise a critical portion of Email Marketing conversions. So distinguish calls that arise from email campaigns
- Use the Intelligence derived from Call Tracking to improve on your audience segmentation and to tailor your copy to be specific to your audience
- Route calls smartly based on the learned needs of your email marketing calle
