Why E-mail Marketing is More Valuable Than Ever

Having a steadily growing e-mail list is the most critical way to communicate with your fans, customers, and partners. This can be vital if you lose a major source of referral traffic. What's more, we recently studied the open rate patterns of hundreds of e-mail marketing campaigns and uncovered information previously unheard of. Here are our findings along with reasons why your e-mail list is your most valuable marketing asset.

The New SEO 

It's been a widely held notion that after you've sent out your campaign, you have 12 hours to get the most opens you can before your e-mail is lost in inbox limbo. But based on our research, e-mails have a much longer tail than people are aware of. 

Most people would expect that the open rates are for most e-mail campaigns to look like the pink line as shown. A high volume of opens from the start and then a flatline once your e-mail has been dogpiled on by all the other e-mails vying for attention. But what we found was a pattern that looked more like the blue line. There's still a high volume of opens within the first 12 hours but what's more interesting is the trailing opens days or weeks after the campaign was shipped off.

To boost the longevity of your e-mails, making your text searchable is a good way to start. Most people don't bother flipping through countless pages of their inbox to find the one e-mail they are looking for. Including key words that people would likely search for such as 'coupon', 'discount', or 'new release' will make it easier for your recipients to search for and find your e-mail that might have gotten lost in the inbox shuffle and get you more visibility and customers in return.

E-mail Marketing Basics

Here are some tips and tricks to get started with your e-mail campaigns.

Connect Directly to Your Customers

Think about your own online activities for a moment. Chances are, you are less likely to miss a piece of communication in your inbox compared to updates in your Twitter, Facebook, and other social network newsfeeds. E-mail marketing lets you take your message and put it in your subscriber’s inbox. You don’t have to worry about the length of your message or whether it will be popular enough to bypass the EdgeRank filters. This lowers the likelihood of them missing an important announcement, sale, or piece of content that you want to share.

Segment Your E-mail List Subscribers

While some social networks and pay per click advertising offer targeting so you can send your message to a specific audience, e-mail marketing gives you full control over which subscribers will receive your e-mail based on segmentation. You can segment your users based on location, customer loyalty, dollar amount spend, pages on your website they visited, specific campaigns they signed up through, and other criteria of your choosing (based on your mailing list provider). This means that you can send a highly relevant e-mail to your subscriber that is more likely to lead to conversions.

Track Subscriber Actions

When it comes to analytics, you can see the correlation of which referral sources are driving traffic to your website, but you can’t really see who is clicking through to your website from a specific message campaign. With e-mail marketing, you can track everything from who opens your e-mail, who clicks on your links, which links they click on, and so forth. You can also see who unsubscribes based on a particular message, which can help you determine what your audiences loves and loathes. These are stats you generally can’t get from any other type of online marketing.

Get the Most Out of Your E-mail Marketing

So how can you get the most out of your e-mail marketing campaign? Here are some tips!

• Add opt-in boxes in prominent areas of your website including the sidebar, footer of posts, and header if possible to build your mail list.

• Analyze your e-mail data and segment your subscribers.

• Watch the spam score on each of your e-mails and try to keep it under the limit suggested by your e-mail service.

• Give subscribers more than just sales pitches. If they come to expect valuable information, they will be more likely to open your e-mails.

To know exactly how your e-mail campaigns are translating into traffic to your site, next week we will be launching three new e-mail platforms. Connect MailChimp, ConstantContact, or Sendgrid to your SumAll account along with Google Analytics and see if your marketing campaigns are driving traffic. 

Kristi Hines is a freelance writer, professional blogger, and social media enthusiast. You can follow her on Twitter and Google+.