the 3 R's of email marketing

the 3 R's of email marketingIn this article we take a quick look at the 3 R's of email marketing: reading, reports and return-on-investment.

reading

The average email marketing campaign receives an open rate of 20% - 40% and can generate response rates that are up to twenty times higher than direct mail. If you want to maximise your read rates you need to find out what works best and who it works for.

Use this knowledge to decide the structure of your message and time for delivery. Remember email marketing allows you to be time critical, take advantage of this. Some people read their emails every hour, others do an early morning inbox clear out and then revisit them at lunch time.

Consider when you want your message to be read and the time it's most likely to catch your readers attention. Does your email have a weekend feel or will it need the reader to have their business hat firmly on? Most inboxes are busiest in the morning. Some email marketers send during the day to avoid this inbox clutter.

Make sure you have a clear idea of what you want to achieve before sending your email. Well planned campaigns will return much higher read rates.

reports

If you're using an email marketing provider you'll already have all of this at your fingertips. If you're not you'll need to create reports that help you answer these key questions:

  • How many emails were delivered?
  • Who read, when and how many times?
  • Who clicked, when and how many times?
     

Answering these questions will help you qualify sales leads, tailor future offers, improve your email copy and better understand your market. All of this will help you grow your business and improve your communication with your target audience. 

return-on-investment (ROI)

It's important to calculate the return you make on each email campaign. Email marketing is widely considered to return excellent ROI due to it's low cost, high readership levels and ease of response. If last week's Sudoku has left you numbered out, try using an email ROI calculator like this one from bplans.co.uk.