Your email campaigns should be resulting in revenue, and even better, profit! So how can you tell how profitable your email campaigns are? Here are some quick and easy formulas:

Revenue Per Email: Every email address on your list is worth a particular dollar amount per year. To calculate your RPE (Revenue per Email), use the following formula:

Total annual sales resulting from email campaigns / number of email addresses sent = RPE

Calculating Lost Revenue: To find out how much attrition is impacting your revenue growth, use the following formula:

(Number of email addresses that unsubscribe or bounce) x (RPE) = Lost Revenue

Now the question: are you tracking your profitability? It’s easier for some people to track profitability than it is for others (based on whether you’re selling something via your email campaigns, or whether you’re solely building rapport), but email marketing is truly an effective and profitable method for establishing your brand.

Best wishes, and Happy Marketing.

If you use your email message to help you sell, tread very carefully. I’m not saying don’t do it, but until people are completely ready to buy, they will not be likely to click through to a sales page. You will have more success by providing links to more information on your site, and from your site offer them the chance to buy now. This will also help you to measure the effectiveness of your sales message apart from your click-through rate.

For example, did 100 people click through for information but only 10 actually clicked from your sites information page to the buy-now page? Perhaps you can change the offer on your site and measure it again. Like we’ve mentioned before, Test and Measure! It’s the only way to achieve true results.

Avoid: Interested? Buy this widget today!
Instead, use: Learn how a widget can change your life.

The next tip in our “Ways to Increase Your Response Rates” series is to not obfuscate your links. Huh? That’s what I said, too. Simply put, if you have any control whatsoever on the way the URL that you’re linking to, reads, make it simple. Still wondering what I’m talking about? Here’s an example:

BAD: “http://www.xyzsite.com/newsletter/2008/e/a/article/sales2.asp”
BETTER: “http://www.xyzsite.com/Money-Saving-Coupon”

The concept is simple. Actually, the concept is simplicity. If you use URL’s that are long and deep, your reader’s eyes will tend to skip over the URL, because it looks like a jumbled mess. Instead, use something that is short and sweet, with clear benefits that will help reinforce the value of what’s on the other side of the link (Remember our article two weeks ago about enticing the reader?).

Now here’s something: What if you don’t have control of your site structure (the URL)? Here’s a simple way to bypass it: go to bit.ly and create a URL that points to the URL you actually want. A side benefit: bit.ly will actually track the people who visit your links. But you don’t need that, when you consider Online Outbox’s statistics, do you?

So we’ve started a series of weekly emails targeted at increasing your Response Rates. Not just your Open Rates, but what does it actually take to get a reader to take action, to click a link, buy a product, etc.?

Our topic for this week is temptation. To illicit a response, you need to Be a Temptress. Entice your readers by tempting them to keep reading on the “other side” of the link. Start sentences, but don’t finish them. Create teaser paragraphs and provide a link to the rest of information. Ask a question and provide the link as the response.

Avoid: Dromophobia is the fear of crossing streets.
Instead, use: Learn what Dromophobia is.
Or use: Did you know there is a phobia of crossing the street? Learn more.
Or use: There’s an old joke about the chicken crossing the road. But did you know that millions of Americans fear that same activity? Learn more.

The trick is to create intrigue. Get someone to click to find more, and you’ll then find new opportunities to interact with your reader.

Educators know that if you want to teach something effectively, the easiest way for the student to remember is to involve them in their learning.

Marketers know this, too. That’s why they ask their prospects plenty of questions and try to get their senses involved, as well. Have you ever received a direct mail letter that asked you to put a big “Yes” sticker on the offer letter and return it? If you returned the letter, they know there’s a good chance you are interested in the offer. The “Yes” sticker is just to get you involved.

Email marketers can use this idea, too, for maximum success in your opt-in email marketing campaigns. Placing links in your marketing emails is one way to get your audience to interact with your message. It also helps deliver your audience to your website, which allows for powerful tracking and statistics.

But how do you get them to click through? Over the next several weeks, we’re going to show you simple, yet effective ways to increase the response from your marketing emails.

Here’s one to get us started:

Communicate the Benefit to the Reader, Not Your Company. Be sure that there is a clear benefit associated with every link. Your audience will be more likely to click the link if they are aware that there is something valuable to them. Don’t assume that they’ll automatically perceive that value simply by clicking the link. Instead, make it very clear: When you click, you will get X benefit.

Avoid: View our latest offer here.
Instead, use: Get a money-saving coupon.

A recent survey conducted by Prospective Marketing found 76% of people who signed up to receive a company’s email newsletter were motivated to do so by a special offer or savings, leaving 24% signing up for the specific reason of getting production information. In other words, offering incentives works.

If you sell a product or service but are not enticing prospects to subscribe to your email newsletter with some sort of offer, you’re missing a significant opportunity to grow your list of subscribers. And chances are, your competition is already doing so.

Rather than simply posting product information on your web site, offer discounts, freebies or other incentives for visitors to subscribe. You’ll have a captive audience, captivated.

Woody Allen said that 80% of success was simply showing up. Many great ideas never make it past the drawing board. But the great ideas that are actually implemented are the ones that are remembered.

Once you’ve started your email campaign, stick with it! Your content will be good some weeks. Other weeks, you’ll be scraping the bottom of the proverbial barrel. Occasionally, your email will go out late. Some will be short. You won’t be as proud of some, but stick with it. As you grow in your ability to produce valuable content on a timely manner, your emails will gradually become something that your readers are looking for every time.

This concludes our six-week series. Stay tuned next week for a new set of ideas to make your marketing campaigns truly productive.

Building on the your target audience, and your purpose in contacting them, it’s now time to craft your message. Your purpose will drive your content.

For instance, if your purpose is to get readers to your web site, you should offer some “teaser” content: maybe it’s a headline, or the first three lines of a recent article on your site. Something that will grab the reader’s attention, and entice them to take further action. Then follow that teaser with a link to a specific page with that entire article. If, rather, your purpose in contacting your readership is to sell product, your content will need to be crafted in that direction.

The concept is not difficult to grasp, but starting with an analysis of your audience and your purpose will make crafting your message much more direct, and the more direct your messaging, the greater the impact of your marketing.

Determine Your Purpose. After becoming familiar with your audience (see our last post), you’ll want to nail down your purpose for writing. Whittle your purpose down to one goal: Entice the reader to visit your web site. Buy something advertised in your email. Heighten community impact. Make your group aware of certain news or events. Your purpose may be completely unique, but you need to know what it is, in order to market effectively.

This post is a continuation from my thought last week: that while the typical salesperson gives up too soon, his prospect is typically ready to buy tomorrow (80%, to put a number to it). The magic number is 7 impressions. It takes the typical person 7 impressions before they buy.

Granted, none of us are typical. But I suppose the stats apply to the median of the whole at large.

The point I’d like to make here is that you can’t send an email blast and expect your prospects to come running. I advocate pushing your products and services to the same contact over a period of several months. Don’t just send the same message each week. Change it up. Highlight different features. Create targeted landing pages on your web site that will convert better than just sending prospects to your home page. Keep it simple, but over a month or two, your target client should have a good idea of what it is you sell, and what it could do for them.

Then they still won’t buy. But one day, when they come across a need that specifically relates to them, your product or service will be fresh in their mind.