Email does not require a lot of time, money or attention to create results.
I often hear, “I do not have the time or money to spare right now.”
Email marketing may take some upfront time and money if you create a gift for subscribing and follow-up emails before launching your newsletter, however you do not need to complete that step to begin. I started my newsletter three months after I started my business. I went to a networking event I attend regularly and asked people to sign up for my newsletter. Three weeks later my first marketing email went to 16 people. I started with a free MailChimp account. My upfront dollars were zero, my upfront time was entering the 16 people into MailChimp and my ongoing attention was an hour or two a week to enter new subscribers, write content for my newsletters and review my analytics.
I created my first list “freebie” three or four months after my newsletter launched and my first freebie with follow-up emails came another year after that. At that point I upgraded my MailChimp account to the $10 per month version so I could use their autoresponder to send my freebies and follow-up emails (MailChimp now offers autoresponders as part of their free plan). It might have taken me ten hours to create each freebie and possibly another five to ten hours to program the freebies and follow-up emails into the autoresponder. At this point my money was $10 per month, my creation time was approximately 30 hours (spread throughout several weeks) and my ongoing attention was an hour or two a week to write content for my newsletters and review my analytics.
Let us consider results. It is reported that for every dollar spent on email marketing, an average of $44 dollar return on investment is realized. (Source: Campaign Monitor, 2016) My average is not that high; however, I have made more money in return than I have spent on email marketing to date. As my list size grows and some of my offerings command higher prices my average will continue to grow.
Email tells you exactly who opened your email.
I have also heard this, “I have 5,000 Facebook followers and only 300 email subscribers. Facebook says my post was seen by 100 people and only 60 subscribers open my emails so I should spend more time on Facebook.”
What exactly does “seen by” mean? It means someone scrolled past your post 100 times. It does not mean anyone even looked at your post or read it or clicked your link. It also does not mean unique people. If your post shows up in my feed three times… I count as three views.
I have noticed approximately every 3,000 - 5,000 “seen by” I get via Facebook translates into five to ten clicks to my website. I do not have any idea who clicked to my website from Facebook, so I do not have any way to follow up with them.
I have noticed approximately every 100 opens I get via email translates into five to ten clicks to my website. My email analytics tells me who clicked which link so if I want to send a follow-up email to people who clinked a link to a product page and then did not purchase it, I can.
If you have been neglecting your email workhorse, it is time to show it some love. Constant Contact surveyed small business owners and found that 49% do not use email marketing data to assist with their email marketing campaigns because they do not know where to begin. (Source: Constant Contact, 2016) Get some training to help you create an email plan and either do it yourself or hire someone (like me) to implement your plan.
Until next time...
Have a great day,
Susanne
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