Email Marketing – it’s all negative

It is easy to get carried away with the cheapness of direct email marketing campaigns as compared to any other kind – direct mail, call centres, mobile sales rep’s. It is even easier to get carried away with the cost:response ratio. Any rational assessment seems like a list of negatives:

• no insertion fees
• no printing costs
• no postage
• no handling
• no people

It appears too good to be true. But it is not. It appears free. But it is not. What it is, is cheap but this does not mean the campaign need not be costed.

The way to judge any campaign is by the return on investment (ROI). This is not a simple case of income over expenditure as the intent of a campaign might well be more than just selling items for more than they have cost you.

A simple way of assessing one’s ROI is to work out cost per objective. If the aim of the campaign is to sell items then it is a case of working out how much the campaign costs and taking this from the sales profit.

However, most campaigns will have more than one objective, and indeed probably should have. Whilst this might seem to complicate matters, if it is broken down into categories, things are simplified.

One straightforward method of assessing the effectiveness of an email campaign is to divide the total cost by the number of responses. On its own this is not much use so there is a need to refine the data by sub categorising the responses.

Examples could well be:

1. the number of visitors to your site
2. the number of responses generating a further enquiry from you
3. the number of direct enquiries from potential customers
4. those opting-in to your email list
5. finally that Holy Grail of responses, sales

There is no simple sales value one can place on most of these objectives so research is required to establish an evidenced value. If this isn’t completed then any conclusion as to the worth of your campaign is nothing more than a guess.

You need to be able to estimate the value of each visitor to your site. How much this might be depends to an extent on the type of site you are running. If it is purely sales, then anyone logging on should be viewed as someone physically entering a real shop. If they leave without buying something then your site is not working effectively. If sales are ancillary to the main purpose of the site, for instance an educational resource, then returns can be expected to be lower.

With regard to a sale, it needs to be established which was as a result of the email campaign and which was due to the effectiveness of the site. A customer on the email list buying the item specified in the email is a confirmed hit but it would also include any other items bought as a result of the visit to the microsite, or indeed, a similar item to the one subject of the campaign.

One would expect that conversion of enquiries into sales would vary depending on whether it is you or the customer initiating the contact. If it is the latter then the rate of conversion should be higher.

Whilst the value for each opt-in to your direct email marketing list is rather a blunt costing tool, further analysis can refine it. A one-man business would not have the sales potential of one which has recently expanded into a line of business you support.

The cheapness of bulk email marketing in comparison to other forms does not mean that costing and value should not be carefully assessed.

Source by Johns Nesa