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    5 Ways to Improve Your Email Marketing ROI

    How many emails arrived in your inbox today? What about yesterday, or this week in total? And out of that number, how many emails did you actually read? Email is one of the most valuable tools at a marketer’s disposal, but only if it’s relevant to their audience. Otherwise, it gets ignored.

    The right message delivered to the right person at the right time can help brands lift conversion rates, expand audiences and encourage customer loyalty. The trick is collecting the data needed to power a successful email marketing campaign, applying that data to your target market, and ultimately cutting through the sea of irrelevant email blasts (ick) and advertising-heavy online communications your contacts receive on a daily basis.

    When executed properly, an email marketing strategy can result in a 4300 percent return on investment (ROI). If you’re not seeing that kind of return, give these tips, identified by Cynthia Price, director of marketing at Emma, a try to boost your results.

    Cynthia Price is director of marketing at Emma, an email-marketing company. With an extensive background in sales and marketing, Cynthia represents Emma at conferences across the country, where she can be found geeking out about everything from subject lines to audience segmentation.

    5 Ways to Improve Your Email Marketing ROI - slide 1

    Improving Email Marketing ROI

    Click through for tips that can help boost your email marketing ROI, identified by Cynthia Price, director of marketing at Emma.

    5 Ways to Improve Your Email Marketing ROI - slide 2

    A Killer Subject Line

    Grab your readers’ attention with a killer subject line.

    Your subscribers are quickly scanning their inboxes, so your subject lines should always be clear, compelling and concise. Quick tip: A subject with more than 32 characters will get cut off when viewed on an iPhone.

    And if you have a nasty case of subject line writer’s block, look no further than your own inbox for inspiration. Why did you open the last three emails you read? Apply that insight to your own campaigns. Finally, don’t forget that most browsers will pick up your first line of preheader text in addition to your subject line – many companies make the mistake of not customizing this valuable piece of inbox real estate.

    5 Ways to Improve Your Email Marketing ROI - slide 3

    Mobile Friendly

    Make sure everything is mobile friendly.

    More than 50 percent of email is opened on mobile devices, and checking email is the top activity on smartphones. With this in mind, ensure that your brand’s emails – and every one of the website landing pages you’re linking to – are optimized for mobile. For example, readers prefer to scroll down, not across, when reading email on a mobile device. Also, graphics and images should be optimized to load quickly and responsively.

    If your email loads awkwardly on a customer’s smartphone or your call-to-action (CTA) leads to an unwieldy page that’s hard to navigate on mobile, you’re going to lose customers’ attention. You don’t want all of your hard work to go to waste because it’s too hard to see on a mobile device.

    5 Ways to Improve Your Email Marketing ROI - slide 4

    Inspire Readers

    Inspire action, and keep it simple.

    Most of your audience consists of relatively passive readers. They might be scanning their inboxes at their desks, on a lunch break or at home in front of the TV. In any case, they’re absorbing some of the content they’re reading, but they’re not likely to act on any of it without a great reason.

    As an email marketer, it’s your job to provide that reason. Incentivize readers with time-sensitive deals, or highlight a local event. Give them a reason to act on your message quickly and easily, and they’ll be more likely to move down your conversion funnel.

    5 Ways to Improve Your Email Marketing ROI - slide 5

    Use Video

    Differentiate your brand with video.

    The average person receives more than 84 emails per day. One way to separate your emails from the herd is to embed video. According to Experian, embedding a video in emails can increase your conversion rates by 21 percent, while click rates improve up to 13 percent when marketers include “video” in their subject lines.

    5 Ways to Improve Your Email Marketing ROI - slide 6

    A/B Testing

    Test, test, and test again.

    Blindly sending an email probably won’t result in many opens. Many aspects of email can be tested in depth – everything from your CTA buttons to subject lines to content can be analyzed and used to plot a course for moving forward. A, B and even C testing can also provide direct insight into the language, imagery and style that resonates best with your audience. After a few rounds of in-depth testing, you’ll be able to write and send emails that you already know your audience will love, and improve your email marketing ROI in the process.

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