What's the key to emails that drive revenue? Value.

TL;DR:

• A well-executed email marketing strategy can generate $38 in revenue for every dollar spent.
• Successful email marketing manages to deliver value on both sides of the campaign. Customers get value out of the content they receive, and brands can leverage email to increase their overall marketing ROI.
• Value is about more than just sending a great email. If you want consumers to continually open and engage with your emails, you need to develop a reputation for always sending valuable emails to those recipients.

Like beauty, value is often in the eye of the beholder. It doesn’t matter how much value you think your email marketing campaigns offer to your customers. What matters is whether or not your customers feel that they’re getting value from the content.

For your business, though, there’s no question that email marketing has value. A well-executed email marketing strategy can generate $38 in revenue for every dollar spent, making it one of your highest-value marketing strategies.

Wondering how you can maximize this value to drive better engagement and generate a higher ROI from email marketing? Here’s a brief overview of how to make the most of your email list, starting with gaining a better understanding of how to define “value” with these campaigns.

How should you define “value” in email marketing?

From the business side, value is all about driving an ROI — either directly, as the last-touch marketing channel that results in a conversion, or as part of a larger, more complicated customer journey.

For your customers and leads, value is determined by what they get out of these emails. Value can come in the form of:

• Useful information
• Exclusive offers
• Access to premium content
• Reminders about limited-time opportunities or upcoming events
• Other benefits from your company

Whatever form it takes, customers want to feel that the time they spent opening and reading an email from your brand was worthwhile.

Successful email marketing manages to achieve these goals on both sides: Customers get value out of the content they receive, and brands can leverage email to increase their overall marketing ROI.

The importance of valuable emails in email marketing

Email fatigue is a real thing for your customers — even the ones who love your brand. It’s not entirely your fault. Your marketing emails are being received amid a deluge of content that quickly overwhelms your target audience.

Research shows that 49% of consumers are overwhelmed by the number of emails they receive. Part of this reaction is due to the fact that most of those emails don’t offer much value. In fact, just 15% of email recipients think marketing emails offer them value.

This is why value is so important in email marketing. Emails may be cheap to send, but they’re a waste of your time and effort when they don’t offer value to your recipients. But value is about more than just sending a great email. If you want consumers to continually open and engage with your emails, you need to develop a reputation for always sending valuable emails to those recipients.

Tips for writing valuable emails for your email marketing campaigns

How can you create email campaigns that maximize value for your business and your customers? Here are some tips:

• Use segmentation to increase the relevance of campaigns. The ability to segment your audience is one of the most important features of successful email campaigns. Segmentation allows you to deliver relevant messaging based on the recipient’s geographic area, purchase history, location in the sales funnel, and past marketing engagements. Other factors like behavioral and demographic distinctions also play a role in shaping how you engage email recipients.
• Invest in drip campaigns to create a more responsive customer journey that moves recipients through a funnel. Email can be an effective lead generation and qualification tool that targets different stages of the funnel. It also provides recipients with timely calls to action (CTA) that keep them engaged with your business while moving them toward a conversion. Drip campaigns are a simple way to stay in contact with your prospects and keep your business top of mind.
• Spend time crafting a killer subject line. A short, eye-catching subject line is one of the most important features of any email. The subject line itself will determine whether your recipients decide to open the email. Subject lines should be short and compelling while communicating the potential value of opening the email. As you develop your subject line writing skills, lean on A/B testing to see which subject lines deliver the best results and use those insights to improve your subject lines going forward.
• Keep emails laser-focused. When you send emails that contain fluff or are long-winded, you’re more likely to lose your recipients’ attention. Recipients may decide that your branded emails don't offer much value, which can cause them to stop opening your emails altogether. Avoid this is by keeping your emails concise and to the point. Make sure the content of your emails is aligned with your subject lines. And remember: Less is more.
• Provide a clear call to action. Don’t leave your recipients hanging. Every email should include a clear call to action that offers next steps your audience can follow, such as “shop now,” “learn more,” or “download today.”
• Don’t send email just for the sake of sending email. Emails should be strategic and purposeful. If you’re sending emails to your audience just for the sake of staying visible, this strategy is probably going to blow up in your face. Why? Because when you send too many emails, recipients will start looking past your messages when they’re scrolling through their inbox. Only send emails that offer clear value and space them apart so you can spread this engagement over time — staying top of mind without numbing your audience.
• Mix up your approach. Use different messaging and CTAs to come to customers from different angles. This is especially important for segmentation. Branded messaging can offer different types of appeal to different consumers. Focusing on other goals with varying consumer groups may help. However, the framework of your message, subject line of your email to the CTA, should have a little consistency. But don’t be afraid to use different types of messaging with the same customers, either. Your email should speak to various pain points. You should also experiment with multiple engagement methods to figure out which types of messaging drive the best results.
• Pay attention to your performance analytics. The only way to realize email marketing’s potential is by paying attention to your performance analytics and implementing changes that lean into the elements you’ve identified as delivering better results for your business.

Metrics that can help you quantify the value of your emails

Email marketing performance reflects the overall value of your emails Or, at least, a reflection of how valuable your customers perceive your emails. The following metrics can be helpful in reflecting this perceived value:

• Open rate
• Click-through rate
• Bounce rate
• Email share rate
• List growth rate
• Unsubscribe rate

Depending on your marketing goals, certain metrics might be more valuable to you than others. And as your business gains its footing in using email marketing analytics to guide strategic decisions, you may develop a more customized approach to measuring performance.

Deliver value with every engagement

Email marketing offers tremendous access to your customer base without reliance on a third-party channel like social media. But this access is a privilege your brand should take seriously. The best way to do that is by making sure each email is thoughtfully crafted to provide as much value as possible to your customers.

Find out how CallRail can support your email marketing efforts — sign up for a free trial today.