8 Factors that Influence Email Marketing ROI

As brands recover from the impact the pandemic has had on their businesses, marketers are looking for less expensive marketing options that have a high ROI in 2021. According to Litmus research findings, email today offers the highest and most measurable return of all types of marketing with an average ROI of $42 for every $1 spent. The research further broke down email marketing ROI by industry:

• Software & technology: 40:1
• Marketing, PR, & advertising agency: 42:1
• Retail, ecommerce, & consumer goods or services: 45:1
• Media, publishing, events, sports, & entertainment: 45:1
• Travel, tourism, & hospitality: 53:1

The travel, tourism, and hospitality industry reported a substantially higher email marketing ROI (53:1) than software and technology companies (40:1). This may be due to the travel industry’s knowledge of email tactics, or that audiences are more likely to engage with email in this category. It’s also possible that these industries have measurable call-to-actions in place designed to lead to immediate purchases. That makes it easier to attribute financial gains to email marketing ROI.

What factors influence Email Marketing ROI?

Dynamic Content

Personalization creates relevancy in email messages. By leveraging demographic, behavioral, and other data, it helps brands demonstrate they know and understand subscribers on a meaningful level. According to Campaign Monitor, emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened. And, Experian found that personalized emails get 6X higher transaction rates.

That’s huge. But just adding your recipient’s name in your email subject line and copy won’t be enough to sway most consumers in 2021. Consumers are now looking for hyper-personalized content that gives them information relevant to them, and that feels like it was meant only for them. In fact, roughly 20% of people will unsubscribe from a newsletter if the content or promotions don’t match their interests. You can create hyper-personalized emails by adding variables to your mailing list and segmenting your list.

Email Frequency

The sweet spot appears to be somewhere between 5-8 emails per month per subscriber.

Email Preview Testing

Test the rendering and functionality of your emails across email clients to ensure that you deliver a great customer experience.

A/B Testing

Analytics give you valuable insights into the messaging that resonates with your subscribers.

Animated Gifs and Video

Content that make emails more engaging to subscribers and drives results.

Bold and Bright

Embrace bold colors that evoke emotion and drive action with your designed and templated emails. According to Kissmetrics, 93% of consumers find color most important when making a purchase, and 85% of shoppers say color is the primary reason they buy a product.

Text-Only Emails

Sending a text-only email can be a nice change of pace for your subscribers. You can mix your text-only emails in with your other designed and templated emails for maximum effect. To get the most from your less-flashy emails, use them when you’re looking to get a little personal or trying to connect on a deeper, more personal level.

Marketing Automation

Effectively manage omnichannel marketing campaigns with automation. Benefits of marketing automation are:

• Generate more and better qualified leads. Combine multiple criteria with a lead scoring system to generate and identify sales-qualified leads.
• Multichannel view of prospect behavior. Integrate multiple channels and devices to create more comprehensive prospect profiles.
• Alignment of sales and marketing goals. By working cooperatively to set scoring parameters and define qualified leads, sales and marketing become one team.
• Increase revenue and average deal size. By automating your cross-sell, up-sell, and customer follow-up campaigns, your customer lifetime value will likely increase.
• Repurpose existing content to nurture leads. With marketing automation, you can set up automated rules to recommend content that educates your leads and customers over the customer lifecycle.

Email marketing has been around for 40 years but it’s as strong as ever and with an impressive ROI! These 8 factors are key since brands are paying more attention to customer voices and reimaging their brands and business models to an empathetic, human-centered approach this year.

About the GRI Marketing Group, Inc.

The GRI Marketing Group is a consumer-focused marketing agency, in business for over 30 years, that works across multiple channels integrating online and offline content. Please contact us if you need help getting maximum engagement and impact with your campaigns.