With A 42x ROI, Crank Up Your 2020 Email Marketing Now
(Plus the Biggest Email Mistake Most Businesses Make)
The Number One Email Marketing Mistake
Not having a pop-up window on your landing page to gather visitors’ email addresses is the number one email marketing mistake.
Many business owners don’t like pop-up windows, because they believe that pop-ups are intrusive and unprofessional looking.
In business, facts trump opinions. And these facts are undisputed. Pop-up windows work, and they work well. Pop-up windows can bring additional revenue without additional cost.
The data even shows how soon the window should pop up, how long it should be there before it closes, what position on the page is best, and more.
If every visitor to your website bought your product or service on their first visit — wouldn’t that be great?
But they don’t.
The average visitor spends 5.59 seconds reading your content. When they leave — THEY ARE GONE. You spent many thousands of dollars getting them there. Now they’re gone.
They were interested enough to come visit your site in the first place.
If you get their email address you can begin a conversation with them. Show them all the benefits your product will bring to them. In 5.59 seconds how much did they read anyway? Not Much.
When your visitors opt in to get future emails, they are affirming their interest in your products and your company. They are starting a conversation with you.
Put that together with a 42x ROI on email marketing and you can see why not getting email addresses with a pop-up widow is the biggest marketing mistake most businesses make.
Fishing boats do not wander around in fishing waters. They throw out a net.
If you want fish — throw out a net.
If you want online customers — get an email pop-up window.
Email Is Way Older Than The Internet
Emails are not new. If you are less than 49 years old, then the email is older than you.
If you enjoy a bit of history, there are some fascinating facts below (including one about Monty Python).
But, if you want to dive into making money with today’s email marketing then skip to the next section and come back to the history later.
A brief timeline:
1965 — The first “electronic message” is invented at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). This simple act of allowing users to login from remote terminals and share files is the beginning of the email.
1971 — The first email message is sent by computer engineer Ray Tomlinson from one computer to another. The computers were next to each other in the lab and a simple test message was sent.
Referring to the picture above, Ray Tomlinson says,
“The first email was sent between the two machines shown in this photograph. They were (obviously) side-by-side, but the only connection between them was through the ARPANET. In the foreground is BBN-TENEXA (BBNA for short). Host names in 1971 had no .com or dot anything; DNS came along later…”
Tomlinson is more famously remembered as the man who invented using the “@” symbol. He was trying to differentiate between the name of the sender and the computer from which it was sent. He looked for a symbol that was not used much and noticed the @ which was right above the “P” key on Model 33 Teletype machine.
At that time there was no Internet. Hard to imagine. The first email was sent on the Arpanet network, the forerunner to the Internet, at the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
1973–1976 The first email standards are set by DARPA like “to”, “from” and “forward” to different users.
1976 — Queen Elizabeth becomes the first head of state to send an email.
1978 — The eventual Google connection. Eric Schmidt designs BerkNet at the University of California, Berkeley. BerkNet is a local area network service that offers messaging over serial connections. Schmidt is credited with leading Google transformation into a tech giant and oversaw the introduction of Gmail.
Schmidt’s 19-year career at Google included his role as Google CEO, and later as advisor to Google’s parent company, Alphabet. Schmidt just recently ended his advisory role with Alphabet. He still chairs the Defense Innovation Board and is also the chairman of the National Security commission on Artificial Intelligence.
1978 — First email blast is sent. Gary Thuerk sends the first “email blast” to 400 machines at ARPANET and generates $13 million in sales for Digital Equipment Corporation.
1982- The term “email” is born and people stop saying “electronic mail message.”
1988 — We can thank Monty Python for the term “spam” which is added to the Oxford English Dictionary. “Spamming” starts as a prank between BBS users (bulletin board system), and also players of MUDs (multiplayer real-time, virtual world games). “Spammers” fill their opponents screen with the word spam, over and over and got the idea from the Monty Python skit about spam.
1991 — August 6, the modern Internet is born. The World Wide Web becomes publicly available and the Internet, as you know it now, is born.
1998 — Microsoft releases Internet Mail (which later became Outlook). Hotmail also launches. HTML is added giving emails a better look with custom fonts, graphics colors and formatting.
2003 — The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 is signed into law, creating a standard for sending commercial emails. According to the FTC,
“The CAN-SPAM Act establishes requirements for commercial messages, gives recipients the right to have you stop emailing them, and spells out tough penalties for violations.”
- Don’t use false or misleading header information
- Identify the message as an ad
- Don’t use deceptive subject lines
- Tell recipients where you’re located.
- Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you
- Honor opt-out requests promptly
- Monitor what others are doing on your behalf
Email Marketing Stats Are Mind Boggling
- Bigger than Social Media. Incredibly true.There are 3.9 billion active email users compared to 3.5 billion social media users.
- 2 Billion emails are sent every day. Everyone reads emails.
- Crazy ROI. 42X. You can expect $42 back for every $1 you spend. What other marketing methods has that return?
- Everyday 99% of consumers check their email. Your customers and prospects read their emails every day.
- Welcome emails are wanted. 82% of welcome emails are opened.
- Personalized Emails make a difference. Personalized subject lines have a 50% higher open rate.
- Abandoned Cart Emails are one of the most effective ways to increase your revenue. Sending 3 abandoned cart emails lead to 69% more orders than a single email.
- Make it for Mobile. 49% of emails are opened on smartphones.
- Millennials prefer emails. 73 %of millennials prefer business communications to be emailed.
- Checking emails is almost addictive. Consumers are always checking. More than 50% of users check their email more than 5 times a day.
Best Email Strategies For Your Business
If you are not using email marketing, start now.
If you have an email marketing program, review your strategy to be in line with your customers and the current data about email marketing.
Email marketing is more effective than SEO, social media and affiliate marketing
Email marketing does not have to be hard, complicated or expensive. It can be as simple as developing a great list of customers and interested prospects and communicating with them. Show them great things about your business and how it can help them.
Your customers want to hear from you, and they want the information in an email.
If you want to do it yourself, there is an avalanche of free information available like these articles from Neil Patel.
However, bringing in an email marketing and copywriting expert is often a good idea and very affordable. With a 42X ROI, your email specialist will more than pay for themselves.
Here are five quick tips for your email marketing program you can start doing right now:
- Get Permission — Everyone hates spam. But once we opt in, we all love to get interesting content and offers. Have people opt in and make them part of your community.
- Always Send Great Content — Make it interesting and helpful to the reader. Make it visually stunning. Make it simple and easy to read.
- Personalize Where Possible- The more persponal the email feels to the reader, the more likely they are to respond. At a minimum, segment your list into groups like customers, newsletter and prospects.
- Automate — Plan your email campaigns in advance and learn to use autoresponders.
- Know your Analytics — Gain great insight about the people on your lists. Analyze your open rates, your bounce rates, your click-through rates (CTR), your unsubscribe rate and other metrics. Know your list and grow your list.
Your email list will be one of your most valuable assets and you should know its value.
Each subscriber might be worth $1 per month or $10 per month or more. The larger the list, the larger the revenue.
Use email marketing to get messages out to your market today and keep the conversation going.
