1. The DMA (Direct marketing Association) places email marketing’s ROI for 2011 at $40.56 for every $1 invested. The figure for 2012 is predicted to be $39.40, when email will account for $67.8 billion in sales.
2. 72% of respondents to an Econsultancy survey in early 2011 described email’s ROI as excellent or good.
3. In a 2011 Focus survey of marketers, the channel cited most often as the best performer over the previous 12 months was email.
4. The ForeSee Results report on the effectiveness of social media recently found that promotional emails were the second biggest influence on retail website visits.
5. In Datran Media’s Annual Marketing & Media Survey, 39.4% of industry executives said the advertising channel that performed strongest for them was email.
6. When asked about their 2012 digital marketing budget priorities, only paid search was cited more often by retailers than email.
7. A late 2011 survey of US small businesses found over a third using email to advertise or promote their business.
8. 51% of small businesses surveyed by Zoomerang in 2011 use email marketing. Only websites were a more popular digital marketing tool.
9. 68% of small businesses surveyed in mid-2011 by Pitney Bowes listed email as their preferred marketing channel.
10. Forrester’s recent survey of US marketers found 88% of B2C firms and 71% of B2B organizations using email marketing.

Let us first discuss why most email campaigns fail.

Indistinct offers– The benefits of your offer are not clearly stated to the recipient due to a poorly developed offer or improper formatting of the email. These will appear more like announcements, rather than an email providing something of interest to customers. The recipients will promptly delete such messages.

Feeble offers– This is ordinary. The vendor believes their email campaign is solid; their company recognizable; and they do not need a quality offer to achieve results. This is incorrect.

Advertisers do not understand what their customers want– You need to know your customers are always asking:  “What’s In It for me?” Does your campaign support what your customers actually want? Do you express this to them clearly?

Do not settle for awful email marketing campaign results!

• You can learn how to get your email marketing campaigns attention.
• You can discover ways to stand out from the rest.
• You can find out what top email marketers know that makes all the difference.
• You can stop wasting 75% of your budget on emails that are never read!

There is a great deal to learn about email marketing, so begin today.

A survey showed that business-to-business (B2B) email campaigns have greater open rates than business-to-consumer (B2C) campaigns. Sometimes the user who receives the text format of your email is not counted in the open rate calculation. This is because as a rule only HTML mails can be tracked down. It is important to note that sometimes the ‘from’ field is unclear. People tend to delete vague mails.

A simple email marketingcampaign can produce significant results quickly. Once you have mastered the basics of targeted email campaigns, it is time to integrate a few advanced techniques to improve email marketing. You must refine your email campaigns based on results. The popularity of content is not the only type of data you can learn from. As we have discussed in the past, look for patterns in the times and days you send your emails. Divide your email list into groups based on a common factor. For example, you could segment your list based on age, gender, or past buying behavior. Do not be afraid to test your groups to see what produces the best results; i.e. send your groups different subject lines to determine which is more popular and which garner the most results.

Determining the purpose of your email marketing tells you what kind of email messaging you should be sending. Email marketing activity is also subject to constant changes in advice, approach, and technology. Given this subjectivity, your campaign can easily lose its direction, its intended purpose lost, thus rendering your time and investment as ineffective. Many email marketing campaigns send out the wrong type of message. Once you decide your email campaign goal, and the elements needed for your message, determine the format your email messages should follow. Here are some email formats which businesses have found successful. However, be sure the positives outweigh the negatives, as far as the structure you are employing.

Email newsletters

The email newsletter involves a little more commitment than an immediate action-driven email message. It needs to be more informative and useful to your readers than a direct marketing email. Email newsletters need to be sent with regular frequency to be effective, and that is where the challenge begins for many companies.

The best advice for any businesses sending email newsletters is to start out slowly. A monthly or even bimonthly email newsletter would not be considered an over-aggressive frequency. Newsletters are not a direct marketing tool. In other words, you risk a high unsubscribe rate if you promised to send email newsletters to customers and started sending email ads instead.

Announcements

Non-profit organizations should be using email to announce almost anything new about their mission.

Service-based organizations usually find the announcement format easier to compose. This approach usually requires a little creativity, but it continually keeps your message and services in the minds of your clients.

Printable email coupons

If you sell clothing, books, or even gift memberships, email coupons can be helpful. They are typically issued either as an online coupon code, which can be used on a website ordering form, or they can be in the form of a printable coupon. Printable coupons can be simple PDF files or they can be web-based, HTML documents composed using minimal design features, for easy printing.

Common elements of a printable coupon include your organization’s logo, specifics of your offer, your phone number, street address, the URL address to your website, and an expiration date.

Surveys

Another format of email campaign is the customer survey, using email to invite supporters to participate in a short survey about their recent experience with your business.

Define your purpose

Define the goals of your email campaigns ahead of time, and develop appropriate email messages that will best help you succeed.

*Did You Know– 71% of the top 360 U.S. companies (as ranked by D&B) offer an email opt-in on their website.