Almost 300 billion emails are sent on a daily basis. All of these are expedited by the various tens of thousands of servers located across the world, all of which aid the sending and delivery of these emails.
Without them, email marketing would be completely impossible. This is why they are very crucial to the success of your email marketing. Speaking of email marketing, if you’re not utilizing this marketing medium, you’re seriously leaving money on the table.
If you’ve ever heard the saying: “the money’s in the list”, then you probably know how important email marketing is. If you haven’t, well, it’s time to listen up. Email marketing currently produces an average of 4200 percent ROI. That means $42 for every $1 spent.
This is about the highest in the industry. However, to get such spectacular results, you need to use the best techniques, tips, and tricks. Here are some of the best ways to get good results from using this medium.
Deliver Value Always
This is the key thing. Most small business owners, info product marketers, and companies who use emails as a primary means of communication make the mistake of selling all the time.
The truth is most people only part with their emails because there was an attractive incentive in the first place. However, many list owners utilize the bait and switch approach.
They offer a good incentive on the front end, and then turn right around and inundate their lists with a lot of offers. It’s often as if the goal is to “sell, sell, and sell”. Most subscribers dislike this and will unsubscribe in time.
So, even if you want to sell, do it only after you’ve delivered excellent value over and over again. People are often more interested in what you have to sell if you’ve shown them that care about them.
And the best way to do that is to give a lot of value upfront.
Be in Touch More Frequently
Unless you’re only publishing a monthly newsletter or whitepaper, we’ll suggest that you focus on getting in your subscribers’ minds. Most people are guilty of doing too little or too much.
They either once a month with an update or something, or email every day –sometimes 2-3 times a day, and annoying the subscribers in the process. The key to making this work is balance.
Research has shown that twice a week is optimal. Preferably between Tuesday and Friday. Email offers sent on Monday hardly ever get as much engagement as those sent on Tuesday evening, Thursday afternoon, and Friday during lunch.
Clean Your Mailing List Frequently
Every once in a while, you need to go through your lists to find which recipients are “dead”. As a rule, if a subscriber hasn’t opened your email in the last 90 days, and you have been contacting them frequently, you need to purge them from your list.
It usually means they’re either uninterested in what you have to say, used a dummy email or can’t access that email anymore. A high response rate does great things for your email deliverability. So, pay attention to this.
Check for Bounce Rates
High bounce rates can be caused by issues with email servers. But first, make sure it’s not from your end. Is your email address flagged or reported for spam in the past? If yes, you might need to either ditch it or the domain completely.
Pay attention to your open and clickthrough rates. Compare those now, to your initial numbers. If your bounce rates are high, and your open rates are low, you need to find out why. See if you’re overselling or your email has been flagged as spam.
If you’re always sending promotional emails, switch tactics and see if those metrics improve. If that doesn’t help, change your domain and send from there. If the open rates are high, chances are your previous email address is done because it’s been marked as spam.
Consider Setting up Your Own Email Server
This has many advantages. First, it guarantees you privacy, improves your server’s security, puts your emails in your control –so you can determine its performance-, is highly reliable, and offers you exclusivity.
The good thing about this is it’s not hard to do. ServerMania.com has a good email server setup tutorial that you can follow step-by-step to set up yours.
The best thing is you don’t have to be a techie to set these up. Just follow the instructions, and you’ll have your own personal email server up and running in a few hours.
Increase Open Rates with Powerful Incentive-Based Subject Lines
Many people say this is the same as clickbait. But, it’s not clickbait IF the offer is actually true. So, make sure to incentivize your subscribers to open your emails.
Offer reports, discounts, rebates, bonus points… whatever you need. And mention it in the subject line. This will drastically increase your click through rates.
