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.

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.

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.

Several clients have approached me recently with questions about some of the basics of marketing via permission-based email newsletters, and rather than re-create the message from scratch each time, I’m posting the information here. For the next several weeks, I’m going to post parts in a series about Developing an Email Marketing Strategy. After that, I’ll be back to our usual drivel, I promise!

Determine Your Audience. More than likely, you’re already familiar with your target market — those prospects who make you smile most, when they convert to actual clients. But for many businesses who are marketing via email, your target market may not be the exact market that will open and read your email messages. Busy professionals, for instance, may receive more than a hundred emails in a day, and — nothing personal, but your message doesn’t possess the same urgency that others in an inbox might.

While this doesn’t mean that you should not communicate to that market, you should rather a little time thinking about what will make that target client stop and read. What will come across as relevant? What will come across as urgent? It’s often the urgent, and always the relevant, that gets the best read.

A well-planned campaign will be well worth the forethought.

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.

Consumers typically aren’t motivated with large amounts of information. They purchase products based on the vision of that product applied. If someone can imagine themselves using your product, and it helps them, serves them in some way, or helps them accomplish what they need to accomplish, they’re sold. Be careful not to show too many products, offers or specials. Simple gets your point across clearly. Feature a few products across multiple categories or price ranges, and your subscribers will immediately understand your message.