Is email marketing worth paying for?
The total value of an email marketing campaign is measured by more than just the amount of money you spend on it. That cost must be balanced against the value you can recover from your campaign. Once you've decided what software you need and factored in any additional costs, it's time to really consider what you're getting.
Email marketing ROI
Marketing pioneer John Wanamaker is credited with saying, “Half of the money we spend on advertising is wasted. The problem is, we don't know which half of it is.”
Fortunately, email campaigns are easy. Unlike billboards or magazine ads, you can track every email view. All of the top email marketing software we recommend offer some form of campaign analysis, tracking of email opens, bounce rates, etc.
The main ROI metric for your business is the number of conversions per campaign. This typically refers to sales numbers, but can also include other actions such as subscriptions, event registrations, and downloads. But many other key product metrics (KPIs) provide marketers with the data they need to further streamline the sales funnel and increase conversions even further.
measurability
The larger your business, the more useful a comprehensive set of email marketing analysis and reporting tools will be. MailerLite is one of the best options and offers analysis tools even on its free plan.
To learn more about your email software's metrics, compare analytics and CRM tools. Sendinblue offers the strongest set of tools across both groups.
Time and resource optimization (automation)
Automation tools can help in-house marketers spend less time emailing the right sublists while increasing efficiency. As mentioned earlier, Omnisend, Sendinblue, HubSpot, and Zoho have the most comprehensive set of automations, while Constant Contact has the slimmest set of automations.
Important email marketing metrics
Here are the key product metrics you should track when launching your email campaign:
- Email sent
- bounce rate
- Opened email
- Click-through rate (CTR)
- forward
Once you've collected this data, you can track growth compared to past campaigns. You can also compare some metrics to other metrics from the same campaign. By matching the number of emails opened with the click-through rate for specific links within an email, you can see click-open rates and learn about the popularity of your campaigns. The link was included among those who read the email.
Comparing email to other marketing channels
At the end of the day, it's worth continuing your email marketing campaign when you get better results with other marketing channels, from pay-per-click advertising to content marketing to social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Only if you can't. Or LinkedIn. However, the good news here is that email marketing is more than effective on its own.
According to a study by McKinsey & Company, email conversion rates are three times more effective than social media conversion rates, while the average order value is 17% higher. Simply put, email readers spend more money and more often.
