Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 41 seconds

Are You Keeping Email Marketing in Perspective?

By many accounts, email marketing is the superstar of the digital world. Yet marketers need to take a thoughtful approach to email initiatives and not get too wrapped up in the hype.

It’s understandable, of course, that marketers could easily set overly aggressive goals for email considering some of the claims regarding the technology. According to the Direct Marketing Association Statistical Fact Book, email marketing has a 4,300% return on investment (ROI), according to a post from The Balance.

Another report maintains that marketers can expect to generate $44 for every $1 invested in email marketing. Yet, astronomical ROI isn’t guaranteed. Variations in results are to be expected based on the type of businesses conducting email marketing and the commitment that firm makes to the programs.

Broadly speaking, email marketing is likely to be the most successful at retailers. On one hand, the sales process from sending an email to generating a sale is typically shorter than for other industries, such as finance or business-to-business companies.

Retail emails also tend to be highly engaging by nature. Marketers can send emails that offer discounts on items that customers may have viewed online but haven’t purchased and other emails that provide order updates, package tracking, and receipts. Those communications can all be opportunities to pitch additional products and boost email ROI.

Other industries don’t have those advantages. In finance, for example, institutional clients can take months or sometimes years before hiring an asset manager or other services provider. In such an environment, emails tend to supplement, rather than replace, the role of the sales person. That can make it difficult to assess the ROI of email.

With that in mind, marketers should assess reasonable ROI goals based on their respective industries. Marketers also need make appropriate commitments to their email programs to achieve an acceptable ROI.

In instances in which employees are poorly trained or spread too thin, some of the most compelling aspects of email marketing can go unutilized. For example, in a survey of marketers by GetResponse, 51% of respondents said they do not test or optimize emails, which can entail experimenting with different subject lines and landing pages. The process, also called A/B testing, involves sending two emails to small test groups and then the email with the highest engagement rate is sent to the remaining prospects.

In a similar manner, email campaigns in certain industries, including finance, must adhere to complex regulations. The nature of those regulations can make an email campaign a high stake endeavor.

In other instances, clients may have their own requirements or restrictions that limit the volume or nature of emails that can be sent to them. Poorly trained or harried workers risk straining relationships with clients by failing to comply with restrictions.

Marketers in certain industries or at business-to-business firms should also assess if they have sufficient staffing and expertise to evaluate data to search for sales opportunities. In industries where certain emails can be automated, such as responding to triggers, including online shopping behavior, this can be less of an issue. In other industries where sales can be a long process of relationship building, analysis of email engagement data is crucial to assessing which relationships should be nurtured.

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