Eagle Strategy Group has been in business for over 10 years and I have been in a consulting role for over 17 years. It is interesting how throughout that time projects are cyclical and they run in waves. What do I mean by this? When we do one project in a specific area it seems like we get interest from many clients in that area. Also, we do a bunch of projects in a specific area and then all then may not do another project in that area for months or even years. Email Marketing falls into this phenomenon. Lately, we have been fielding inquiries from clients with email marketing questions, which seems to happen every two or three years. Here are some of the Email Marketing Questions that we receive from clients:
- Why should I use Email Marketing? Hasn’t social media killed email marketing?
- Should my marketing emails be all text, all graphic, or both?
- How can I optimize cold-call emails?
- Why are my A/B Testing Results not matching actual results?
- How much money should I earn for each email subscriber?
- How often should I email my subscribers?
Answers to these questions are below. Consider this Email Marketing Questions post an AMA – Ask Me Anything. If you have questions about email marketing send us an email at Sales@EagleStrategyGroup.com.
For more information, check out our Email Marketing page and our articles, Create Scarcity Email Marketing Campaigns in 3 Easy Steps and Business Growth Hacking Tips Roundup. Also, sign up for our Business Hacking Tool Kit (for FREE) to get the Business Growth Hacking eBook and Scarcity Email Marketing Audiobook.
Why should I use Email Marketing? Hasn’t social media killed email marketing?
We get a lot of variations on this email marketing question, but basically, the demise of email marketing is greatly exaggerated. I will argue that for most businesses email marketing is the most effective marketing tool. When you send a tweet or make a facebook post, how many of your followers actually see your post in their crowded social feeds? Meanwhile, a good email list will give you an open rate or over 50%. That is not to say you should drop social media.When we develop an Email marketing Strategy, we consider email as another form of social media. An email marketing campaign is really a social media marketing campaign with content being sent across all social channels.
Should my marketing emails be all text, all graphic, or both?
It depends on your product and how your subscribers view your email. If you are a design firm, sell art, or make image editing software, your subscribers are going to expect images in their email. Otherwise, keep images to a minimum. You can have 2 or 3 images and still have a great professional looking email. You may find that a lot of your subscribers have images turned off in their email by default or are viewing on mobile devices. If this is the case here are some things to consider:
- Don’t have a large banner image at the top of your email. If images are off in the email client the viewers will just see a blank screen.
- If your key points and call-to-action (CTA) are in an image make sure it is also in text. Again if images are turned off and your 35% off sale and code is only in an image, the subscriber will not see your CTA.
- Have your first CTA as close to the top of the email as possible. This is called “above the fold”. If possible, you want the CTA to be visible on a small screen when the email is first opened without any scrolling.
Most ESP’s (Email Service Providers) have tools that you can use to preview emails before sending. You should also send the email to yourself and view them on phones, tablets, and desktops before sending. Just like you A/B test CTA’s and subjects, you should also A/B test the use of images to see how your subscribers respond.
How can I optimize Cold Call Marketing Emails
Cold call emails are a little tricky because you really only have one shot at your target and you do not want to burn through your target list with A/B testing. Over time, you will get an idea of what works and what doesn’t work, but you need a jumping off point from email #1. Here are a couple ways you can optimize your cold calling emails:
- Look at what CTA’s and copy works on your regular email marketing and website and feed them back into the cold calling email marketing.
- Use social media to test subject lines and CTA’s. When trying something new, I will send out a couple tweets and whatever tweet gets the most response becomes the email subject.
- This costs money but set up a campaign with Google Adwords or another text ad service to test your CTA’s and subjects.
- You can do A/B tests, by sending 2 different emails to different groups of targets or to the same targets spread over a couple days, but for cold calling, you don’t want the first impression from a potential customer to be that you are a spammer.
Why are my A/B Testing Results not matching actual results?
Here is a sample of what an A/B test of subject lines may look like:
- An A/B Email is sent on Tuesday morning at 8 AM with two subject lines
- By 3 PM, email A has a 8% open rate and email B has a 6% open rate
- At 3 PM an email with subject A is sent to the rest of the email list
- The next day a review of the email results shows an open rate of 5%… What?
We see this a lot, an open rate for the complete email lower than the A/B test open rate. Here is what you need to understand about your email list. Opening rates vary by time of day and day of the week. If we took a deeper look at the results of previous campaigns, I am sure we will see that morning emails get a better opening rate. An easy way to fix this is to tighten up the A/B testing time. Send the A/B email at 7:30 AM and the full email at 9 AM, so the full email is still going out in a window that works for your list.
How much money should I earn for each email subscriber?
There is no magic formula. Revenue per email subscriber depends on many variables including:
- What you are selling
- Your Selling price
- How often you send emails
- Email statistics like open rate, click through, etc.
Measure your results to see what your revenue per email per month. Use this number as one of your KPI’s (Key Performance Indicator) and start testing ideas to improve your revenue per email subscriber.
How often should I email my subscribers?
Here is the answer you are probably not expecting, as often as you can without exceeding once per day. It is actually more harmful to send to your list too few times then too often. If you are sending to your list once per month or less, the subscriber is going to forget they signed up for your list and you will see high unsubscribe rates. As a jumping off point, try to send an email to your entire list at least once per week. If you have the time to create good content for your email list, then send more often. The content is the key. If you are not providing value, your subscribers will unsubscribe.
Consider this Email Marketing Questions post an AMA – Ask Me Anything. If you have questions about email marketing send us an email at Sales@EagleStrategyGroup.com.
For more information, check out our Email Marketing page and our articles, Create Scarcity Email Marketing Campaigns in 3 Easy Steps and Business Growth Hacking Tips Roundup. Also, sign up for our Business Hacking Tool Kit (for FREE) to get the Business Growth Hacking eBook and Scarcity Email Marketing Audiobook.
