Your audience is silently telling you exactly what they are interested in reading about!
With your email marketing, as with everything about digital marketing, we can see exactly what our audience is interested in reading about. There is no need to guess, just look at your email analytics and the proof is right there, in black and white.
Let me explain what I am talking about, so you can improve your email marketing performance and the impact of this critical business marketing avenue.
Some Stats Say Everything
Most people are not looking deep enough into the email analytics data typically available to them. While open rates are clearly an important measure, they are only one measure of reader interest. What else is important to look at? Click-through rates have proven to be one of the most reliable indicators of reader interest. Why is click-through rate so important? Because it’s an action taken by your reader that shows exactly where they are willing to spend more time to get more information. This clear demonstration of interest should help you decide what your audience is most interested in. Make sure you listen to this!
How do you use this information? If, for example, you write an article on one topic in one email, and then write an article on another topic in another email, and the first article gets 10 clicks and the second article gets 100 clicks. What does this tell you? There isn’t a hard number to shoot for, but it’s a relative comparison that will tell you what is working best for you and your particular audience.
Optimize With Autoresponders
To save time and better stay in contact with leads and customers, create an email autoresponder series. An autoresponder series is a series of pre-written emails that are sent to certain email contacts over a pre-determined timeframe, sharing a similar theme throughout the series. Autoresponders can be sent to one person at a time, or a full email list. They’re often event-triggered, and begin once someone downloads something from your website, or makes a purchase.
There are a number of great uses for email autoresponders. Just think about what you would like to say to people – if you had the chance – if you absolutely knew that they had an interest or need in your products or services. What would you want them to know about your company or other products?
Here are a few cases where an event-driven email autoresponder (single email or series) would be useful:
- Showcasing products complimentary to a recent purchase.
- Following an inquiry or download, educating customers about your company’s products or services
- Onboarding new customers
- For non-profit organizations, providing information about your services, success, photos of the people you help and use of donated/charitable funds.
- After a sales person meets with a potential customer.
Drip Marketing 2.0
In the past, this same activity of building relationships was achieved by sending short, informational notes over a period of time. This was called “drip marketing.” Today we can use the automated email autoresponder series to save time, maintain contact and help to inform our prospects, clients or members.
We hope this article has highlighted how to improve your email marketing performance, simply by looking more closely at your audience behavior. Watch your click through rates, and see what your audience is telling you. This data might just point to opportunities to improve your customer responsiveness, increase sales and save you time through the use of email automation.
Please let me know if you have any questions or would like to hear more about this or any other topic related to email and digital marketing.
Erik is a corporate-trained business consultant and recognized expert in email and digital marketing. With more than three decades of experience in financial services, management consulting and entrepreneurial ventures, he has provided strategic and digital marketing services to clients nationwide.