Email marketing is well known as the best RoI digital marketing channel. Wondering how to increase your marketing ROI with email list management? Welcome!
It may sound absurd or mythical to modern marketers, but the first marketing email generated $13 million in sales 😲
This email was not sent in the 2000s or in the 90s when email became popular.
It was sent in 1978 , when the number of email users was less than the population of Vatican City .
Digital Equipment Corp‘s Marketing Manager, Gary Thuerk, can be considered the first email marketer .
Sent emails using ARPANET to 100 email IDs promoting DEC products. That email blast helped Gary generate $13 million in sales.
No other story can better prove the power of email marketing 💁🏻♂️
Even in 2022, email marketing continues to be the marketing channel with the highest ROI.
Research shows that email marketing can yield a higher ROI than print media, SEO, and other paid marketing channels.
That’s enough fodder for anyone to drop everything and put all their chips into email marketing.
However, while it may seem like an amazing marketing channel, it still comes with its own unique challenges.
- First, you need a proper email marketing strategy.
- Second, there are a few key elements to have in place to get the best results.
It starts with managing your email list. 👏🏼
- What is Email List Management? 💁🏻♀️
- How To Increase Your Email Marketing ROI With List Management 🧐
- Sign off 👋🏼
Important Disclosure: We are proud to be affiliated with some of the tools mentioned in this guide. When you click on an affiliate link and then make a purchase, we earn a small commission at no extra charge (no extra charge).
What is Email List Management? 💁🏻♀️
An email list is a fundamental necessity of any email marketing campaign. You can only run campaigns if you have people you can send emails to.
Email list management is an end-to-end process that involves building, validating, maintaining, and maintaining email lists by removing spam addresses and unsubscribing.
Email list management also includes related activities such as importing a contact list database from a CRM system into a spreadsheet.
In fact, the last step activities like setting up double opt-in and launching re-engagement campaigns are all part of email list management.
You need at least 100 healthy subscribers to launch your email campaign.
By comparison, e-commerce business mailing lists should be slightly more extensive (at least 500+).
The more subscribers you have, the more email deliverability you can achieve.
Ultimately, this leads to maximizing your email marketing RoI. So, you need to manage your email list.
How To Increase Your Email Marketing ROI With List Management 🧐
Email list management is not a single task and cannot be fully automated. It takes human intelligence, creativity, and a lot of planning.
You also need to make strategic decisions using as much data as possible .
Once you have all of this in place, the tactics mentioned below will help you maximize your email marketing RoI.
- Use segmentation for email personalization
- Clean up your email list to reduce soft bounces
- Remove invalid email addresses with hard bounces
- Don’t Buy Email Lists
- Track Engagement with Email Metrics.Let’s take a closer look at each tactic, what it means and how it works.
Use list splits for email personalization 📝
Simply put, list segmentation is a way marketers send targeted and personalized emails to their list of subscribers.
Segmentation divides your target audience into groups that exhibit similar characteristics or behavioral characteristics.
Segmentation can be done based on:
- Demographic characteristics
- psychological characteristics
- geography
- behavioral traits
By understanding the specific characteristics and needs of users signing up for your email, you can create personalized email content that drives maximum engagement.
Engagement emails can ultimately also help increase revenue.
Neal Taparia, who runs Solitaire, explains:
” We started segmenting emails by player level. We emailed more challenging solitaire games to top players and easier games to new players. We found this to substantially increase engagement on our site. I did. ”
Each site can have its own way to get to a segment, but the three most popular are:
- Page-level targeting
- lead magnet
- automation software
Page-level targeting 🎯
Page-level targeting aims to identify customers and their interests based on the landing pages of your website with which your customers interact the most.
Their website activity gives you an idea of the kind of problems they are facing and the plausible solutions your company can offer. Email can be used as a channel to distribute content that best meets the expectations of these users.
Lead Magnet 🧲
A lead magnet is downloadable content material from a website.
For example, an eBook introducing a topic, a white paper explaining upcoming technologies, or a webinar hosted to educate prospects.
By analyzing the lead magnets consumed by users, you can easily classify them into specific groups from which lead magnets were created.
Automation software 💻
Automation requires support from your email service provider. You will also need email marketing software that allows you to categorize your lists according to the rules you set up.
According to the rules, the software classifies users as:
- new subscriber
- User-based on preference
- interest-based subscribers
- unsubscribe
Not all marketing automation tools have email list segmentation. You should choose a service that offers list segmentation.
Reduce soft bounce proactively 🙅🏼♂️
Before understanding how to reduce soft bounce, let’s look at what soft bounce is.
Email marketing has two stages before an email reaches the user.
- The first step is when it goes through the recipient’s email server. Many factors come into play to pass this stage. Your domain IP reputation is one of them.
- The second stage is when the email goes through the recipient’s email server but does not reach the user’s inbox.
A soft bounce is a temporary issue and is often caused by:
- Problems with the user’s inbox, such as insufficient storage
- Bulk email file size that your inbox can’t handle
- server failure
- It has been classified as spam.
The good news is that an email with a soft bounce can be delivered next time. However, it is necessary to reduce the soft bounce as much as possible to avoid wasting valuable time and effort.
Here are some proven ways to reduce the soft bounce rate.
Improve your sender reputation 🤝
Maintaining a good sender reputation increases the chances of your email reaching your users’ inboxes.
Send engaging content 🥰
In email marketing, great content is the only way to keep your customers engaged and responsive. Without engagement, your email marketing efforts will fail in the long run.
You can use HTML email templates or text-based emails. Regardless of format, your content can make a difference.
Find your spam trigger 👎🏽
Every email client has its own set of spam triggers and filters. It could be a word or phrase that turns out to be malicious or part of an unsolicited email.
These mails are sent to your spam folder by default.
Make sure there are no spam triggers in your email copy. This can help prevent soft bounce.
Remove email addresses with hard bounces 🤔
Unlike soft bounces which are caused by temporary conditions, hard bounces are caused by permanent conditions.
Permanent conditions can be invalid recipient addresses, invalid domain addresses, or unknown recipients. Therefore, it is necessary to filter out emails with hard bounces.
Otherwise, you will skew your email deliverability and create the illusion that your email marketing is failing.
You can prevent hard bounces in several ways:
Make sure your email address is correct ✔️
A hard bounce can be caused by something like a misspelling of an email domain. A common case is for users to spell ‘Gmail‘ as ‘ gmal ‘ .
Take a closer look at your email address filters for minor issues like this that can sometimes lead to hard bounces.
Enable double opt-in 💌
Double opt-in requires users to complete an additional step to confirm their subscription. It is usually sent along with the welcome email or as a separate email.
It also verifies that the email address is valid and active.
