Hasta La Creative!

Google-owned YouTube is a wasteland, but like all wastelands, when you brush aside the layers of dirt and debris, you’re in the position to discover a gem or two. The video that follows may not meet gem status, but it is a find worth noting here. Tara Walpert Levy is VP of Agency and Brand […]

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A decade ago many “digital agencies” were primarily production shops sub-contracting out to the big agencies in big cities. It was a profitable business for several years, but many clients were not fully satisfied. Something was missing. According to Joe Olsen, CEO of Rova, that something was the strategy that would wed digital production to […]

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“When you’re planning on getting online traffic, you have to do a cost-benefit analysis in order to understand your current standings to work towards a maximized ROI,” says online marketing expert and author of 90% Of All Internet Businesses Will Fail Danny DeMichele. A cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is a systematic way of thinking about whether the cost is greater than the benefits or the other way around. Naturally, you will have a higher return on investment (ROI) if your cost is less than the benefits you enjoy from it.

The purpose of a CBA is to determine if you have chosen a sound traffic strategy. It also allows you to compare one form of traffic-generation against another, helping you to decide which one is the best.

You need to use a CBA to determine what your online traffic is costing you. Then, after that determination, you need to maximize your return on investment by either lowering cost or increasing benefits or both if possible.

Here, then, are six tips from the expert himself designed to help you maximize your ROI.

First, decide on your optimal traffic-generation plan. One common myth is that there is something called free traffic. If you are not paying to send visitors to your website with money, you are still paying a price—your time. Some examples of traffic that costs time, but not money are blogging, social media networking, and forum marketing. Alternatively, you may simply choose to pay for traffic with money and spend your time on other aspects of your business. Three examples of traffic that costs money, but not time are pay-per-click ads, Facebook ads, and solo ads. The one you choose depends on whether you have more time or more money. Once you’ve decided how you’re going to get traffic, you have to do a CBA. If the benefit outweighs the cost, then you have found a sound traffic-generation method.

Second, determine your business goals. You have to have a clear list of goals to be successful in business. Otherwise, you will not know whether you are breaking even, winning or losing. Why, for example, are you choosing your current business model? Why should people buy from you? What makes you stand out in your niche? What would you like to happen after customers buy from you? Do you have a plan to upsell, create new products, etc. In other words, you have to determine ALL your outcomes. The greater your level of clarity, the better your ability to measure results, the higher your level of business success will be.

Third, decide on how to get the first click that will lead to a conversion. There are many ways of getting people to know, like, and trust your business, ranging from simply developing a steady stream of top-class content to creating an opt-in form with an ethical bribe and an autoresponder sequence.

Fourth, decide on how to call your traffic to action. In your niche, decide where to put your calls to action, and test to see which ones work the best.

Fifth, simplify your path from traffic to conversion. Once you have developed your traffic-and-conversion plan, then figure out, through testing, how to improve the CBA of each element. Ultimately, you want to make it as simple as possible for someone to go from hearing about you to buying your products.

Sixth, measure, experiment, and tweak constantly. The Internet is always evolving, as is e-commerce, so stay abreast of changes, improve the way you measure your results, and continue to experiment. Constantly try to improve your existing processes.

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No matter how many marketers talk about the social media and mobile marketing rave, email marketing still continues to win when it comes to outreach, conversions and profitability. However, there’s more to email marketing then simply composing and pressing the send button.

The Statistical Fact Book 2013 released by Direct Marketing Association had an excerpt revealing that analyzing data is one of the biggest challenges for marketers, and the second biggest challenge is leveraging the analytics to increase engagement and conversions in future campaigns.

The good thing is that most modern email marketing software already includes Google analytics and other metrics, so there’s no separate integration required. The real challenge is to improve future campaigns by making use of current analytical data and metrics and to constantly be improving upon your processes.

Important e-mail marketing metrics and analytics

1. Delivery rate

This is the rate of emails that actually end up in the inbox of the recipient. You can use the analytics to find out the total number of emails sent, and minus the emails that weren’t send to them. The bounce rate should also be deducted to determine the delivery rate.

Emails may not always reach the recipient’s inbox because they may end up in the spam box. The delivery rate should be above 90%. If this rate starts to decrease over the period of time, you need to check different factors contributing to the declining percentage. It could be because your IP has been blacklisted or your subject lines have grammatical and other errors. Improving the delivery rate will increase the campaign’s ROI and your ISP reputation.

2. Bounce Rate

There’s a small amount of emails that fail to reach the inbox of the recipient. This usually happens in two situations and you need to be aware of them in order to take appropriate action.

The first situation is where the inbox of the recipient runs out of storage space or the email server has issues. There’s not much you can do in this case except wait for the problems to be solved.

The second situation is when something is wrong at your end and the email is not sent. This mostly happens when the recipient’s email turns out to be invalid. You should avoid keeping such email contacts because if your emails are sent in bulk to invalid email addresses, you can be tagged as a spammer.

You should also take a deep look at your body content and the subject line because they may also make your emails end up in the spam filter. Improving bounce rate takes time but is important for successful campaigns.

Both delivery and bounce rate are related to each other and these two analytics are quite important to improve email marketing conversions.

3. CTR

CTR stands for click through rates, and it’s the prime focus of email marketing analytics. The click through rate shows the number of recipients who clicked on a picture or link in your email. This is quite important to find out about your ideal recipients and what they expect from you in future emails.

After realizing the type of links that are being clicked, you’ll be able to deliver more relevant content. The click through rate pretty much guides you about the step that should be taken next. For example, if someone has a high CTR for Facebook marketing links, an email regarding social media marketing services will be more helpful and relevant for him/her compared to an email about affiliate marketing services.

4. Conversion rate

Conversion rate determines how many recipients responded in a way that you wanted them to. This rate also tells you the number of leads generated from your campaign and measures the overall success.

If your conversion rate is low, you can try changing the content of the e-mail, design of the landing page or experiment with a custom layout. You can also add tags to different campaigns to get an idea of how the emails are performing. By a little brainstorming, it’s possible for you to increase conversion rates in every campaign

All the data and information you collect from email marketing analytics will only be beneficial if you put it to the right use. Analytics aren’t only meant for getting on the good side of management, but should also be used to optimize your cross-channel and targeted marketing performance.

You can benchmark how the campaigns performed over different time periods and try to come up with strategies to improve marketing performance in the future.

This is a guest post

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