Ways to Increase Response Rates
Every marketer dreams of high return rates on every action they take. Imagine an email marketing campaign with a ninety-five percent return rate.
As many motivational coaches chant – dream it – believe in it – do it. To get a successful return rate on any marketing campaign, especially email campaigns, the doing it part has to have a lot of pre-planning before execution but it also helps to have a list of best practices.
Email Marketing Debate
There are some experts that believe email marketing is dead or certainly not worth using. While there are more people just deleting promotional emails than there were when email first became the thing to do, email marketing still has its merits.
Social networking has taken the place of emailing in some age groups. Nonetheless, people over 25 years of age are still using email frequently. To reach those folks and to make every email count, the tips below can help.
Reduce the Spam Effect of Emailing
According to a white paper published by Silverpop, an engagement marketing company, email marketers can achieve a ninety-five percent return. There are few of their recommendations along with a few others listed below.
Take away the spam factor by:
- Send emails only to those who give permission.
- Don’t send unexpected emails – if people sign up for a newsletter, then send them a newsletter.
- Avoid using exclamation points, aggressive language, and subject lines, large fonts, or big red letters.
- Always, always, make it easy for the user to unsubscribe.
Use an Opt-In Form to Build Email Lists
It is always most effective to build email marketing lists using a permission-based form. The form can be placed on the company web site with a question such as ‘Would you like to receive emails with monthly specials?’
It is also a good idea to validate the email address provided on the opt-in form just to make sure the user typed the email in properly.
Also, tell the reader up front, either on the form or in the signup message on the web site, what they can expect in the emails that the company will be sending them. Let them know they may be receiving advertising.
Keep Email Lists Clean
On a regular basis, go through email lists and clean out the emails:
- That bounced back.
- Generated spam compliant
- Recipients have unsubscribed
- With outdated domains
- Where the recipients have not opened or clicked for a years
Other Ways to Make Email Marketing Successful
There are several other must-do tasks that every marketer must do to keep email marketing returning at high rates.
- Keep the frequency just right, not too much, not too little, but just right.
- Send only relevant, current, and wanted information.
- Use good, explicit subject lines.
- Monitor reports generated by the email management system and take action when needed.
Email Marketing
Email marketing remains cost effective and can have a tremendous reach. It is also helpful to implement an email management software program for which there are a plethora of options at various price levels on the market.
Stop wasting time debating the effectiveness of email marketing and start dreaming and making that ninety-five percent return rate happen.
