When it comes to determining the worth and real value of email marketing, there are many different ways to look at it. Thankfully, email marketing is an activity that lends itself well to analysis and review but different firms will look for different metrics or returns. The financial element and aspect will always be a major point for businesses in determining the impact of email marketing but there are less tangible benefits such as branding, corporate identity, word of mouth and cohesive marketing campaigns that can be impacted upon by initiating a good standard of email marketing.
With respect to ROI, return on investment, there is a lot of positive talk about how email marketing provides a healthy return for businesses. There have been numerous studies on the ROI of email marketing and if you believe analysts in the US, it looks to be a sensible option. This is because the general findings indicate that email marketing provides a ROI of between $40 and $55 for every $1 spent. This is a fantastic level of return and you can see why businesses would be keen to get involved with this sort of activity. If you are looking to benefit from email marketing and you can initiate it properly, you’ll find that email marketing offers a number of benefits.
Some of the benefits that come from email marketing include:
- Strong ROI
- Allows your audience to be segmented
- Provides a cohesive focus for your business
- Allows discount vouchers to be provided to customers
- Can integrate well with social media
- Creates a strong brand image and identity
- Allows you to reach out quickly and receive responses quickly from clients
It has to be borne in mind that some of these benefits do not come direct with a sales benefit or with a figure that can be placed into a spreadsheet but this is where all of these individual benefits will add up and have a positive impact on the overall business of a company.
Add Value to your Business
If reputable and reliable emails that develop your brand help to make more sales in the long run, even if not directly seen with click-through rates, there is a lot to be said for the fact that email marketing adds a considerable amount of value to a business. One of the problems in a business is that there are so many variables operating at the same time. This means you can never be 100% certain that a change in sales or brand awareness is down to one factor. However, there have been more than enough examples of positive email marketing campaigns feeding into the success of a business to ensure that it is worthwhile for a firm to undertake.
If you need more convincing about the actual merits of an email marketing campaign, you will find a fantastic amount of detail in the analytical tools provided by many email software providers. If you choose to work with a reputable email software service provider, you will be in a position where you can check the deliverability and click through rates of your emails. If you are receiving click throughs and forwards from your emails, you can be seen to be having a great amount of success with your work. This is something that provides a more tangible element on to the value of email marketing and when looked at in contact with other findings and issues, you should be able to make a determination on how well email marketing is working for you.
Some of the factors you should have to hand to determine the value of your email include:
- Size/Quantity of email list
- Cost per email
- Revenue per email
- Loss of subscribers (and demographic information of unsubscribers)
- Number of bouncing emails
The worth of an email campaign is likely to be measured in different ways by different businesses. This is why it is important to know what you want to achieve your email marketing campaign. While the ultimate goal of sales is what people should be looking for, there is often a lot of other reasons why businesses decide to create and utilise emailing lists. No matter the reason you have initiated an email list, make sure you know what you want from it and consider this when judging the real value of an email marketing campaign.
My name is Nicola and i have interests in health & fitness, technology, family matters and interior design.