Today’s Top Email Marketers Earn 9.5% CTR – Why You Still Need to Build a Mailing List in 2014
In the early days of internet marketing, mailing lists were one of the best ways to reach potential customers.
Today, mailing lists aren’t as popular as they once were. Spam filters and stingy customers have discouraged many marketers from building email lists.
But mailing lists are far from dead. In fact, today’s top-performing email marketers earn a click through rate (CTR) of approximately 9.5%.
That’s six times higher than the median CTR for email marketing.
What’s their secret? And why should you still use email marketing in 2014?
Click-through rates by industry
A marketing group named Silverpop recently studied marketing emails sent by 3,000 brands from 40 countries around the world. Data was collected over the course of 2013 and measured a wide range of email metrics like CTR, open rates, and bounce rates. The results are interesting and, in many ways, encouraging:
As you can see, the top quartile of email marketers are working with click through rates as high as 13.2% – several times the industry average.
Open rates by industry
We see more encouraging results when looking at open rates – the percentage of emails which are opened by recipients:
As you can see, the top quartile is operating at an incredible open rate of 50.4%.
Email marketing tips and tricks to maximize CTR and open rates
Obviously, the top quartile is statistically different from the rest of the pack. But what, exactly, are they doing differently?
Well, if we knew that, then we’d all be in the top quartile and, at the same time, nobody would be.
Nevertheless, here are some email marketing tips that are guaranteed to increase your CTR and open rate.
Optimize for mobile devices: Your emails need to look good on all popular devices. A recent study suggested that 63% of US consumers will immediately delete emails if they’re not optimized for their mobile device. If you greet a potential customer with a mobile-optimized email, they’ll assume the rest of your services are also branded for their mobile device.
Personalize emails wherever possible: Most marketing strategies can’t be personal. You can’t change your television commercial to address a single consumer’s unique wants and needs, for example. With email, you can personalize it. Some marketers choose to add personalized recommendations into emails based on user browsing behavior on their website, for example. Others simply add the customer’s name at the top. Personalized emails can increase sales conversion rates by as much as 25% and improve CTR by 25% to 35%.
Reward email subscribers with deals: Email users are more likely to click on your promotion if you give them an exclusive deal. With email marketing, you have a large, direct audience which has already shown interest in your company (they signed up for the email list, didn’t they?). Tap into that market by offering a 5% discount, 10% discount, free gift with every order, or some other attractive promotion.
Take advantage of abandoned cart emails: Every day, shoppers fill up their virtual carts with merchandise and then abandon those carts before checking out. It’s your job to win these customers back – no matter what their reason for abandoning the cart may be. Some online retailers will email abandoned shopping cart users with an exclusive discount, while others will throw in a free gift. Some just remind shoppers that they forgot to check out. You’re not going to convert all of your abandoned shopping carts, but you will convert some.
Tell subscribers what to expect: Email marketing is a permission-based marketing strategy – customers have to give you an email address before you contact them. When someone signs up for your email list, tell them what to expect from your email list. Are they going to receive a constant flood of marketing spam? Are they going to hear about news stories? Will you send them funny pictures and videos? Make sure your email list is attracting the right type of customer.
Follow CAN-SPAM guidelines: The CAN-SPAM Act governs the email marketing industry. Being CAN-SPAM compliant makes you a polite business. But more importantly, being CAN-SPAM compliant means your emails won’t get blocked by Gmail and other email service providers. You can read up on CAN-SPAM guidelines here. The two most important rules are: include an obvious “unsubscribe” link in every email; and don’t send emails to people who didn’t ask to be on your mailing list (even if you collected their emails through some other manner).
In addition to all the tips listed above, today’s top email marketers have a little extra something special. This secret ingredient gives them higher CTRs and better open rates than anyone else in the industry.
For some companies, that special ingredient is customer loyalty. For others, it’s great products or industry-best pricing. Ultimately, your goal is to find out what your consumer wants and deliver that product or service to the consumer via email.
