All posts in ‘E-mail Marketing’

Wednesday, 10 November 2010

Newsletter #1

So, last week we sent out our first newsletter, it’s all in Swedish, but I still want to tell you how it went. This is it by the way…

We used MailChimp, but I manually coded the nine snippets from our website in HTML. Our list still has less than 1,000 subscribers, so this means that it’s still free for us to send out our newsletters with MailChimp. This is a huge plus for MailChimp!

So the question is, how did it go with our newsletter, and with MailChimp?

Well, MailChimp is a tad on the slow side when getting started. Everything marched along flawlessly, but it did take about 15 minutes before the first email was on its way out the door.  This is something to think about if you have something important that needs to be out by a certain time. Leave a little room for yourself.

The stats look good. We have zero bounces, zero spam complaints and no one is unsubscribing.   Almost 70 % opened the letter and the click frequency is about 35 %. Why thank you.

Some people signed up the same day we sent the letter, but it was after the actual letter went out. For a situation like this, MailChimp prevails. You go to your email list and click on “segment”.  And there you’ll find a pre-made filter that says “send to recipients that joined after your last campaign”. A few more clicks and all your new subscribers get the latest. Done!

And a fun bonus: If you log in to MailChimp during holidays, you get a special tailor made welcome.

Christopher Mansson

By Christopher Mansson

Category: E-mail Marketing, Misc

Thursday, 28 October 2010

What’s an Email Address Worth?

Maybe it’s hard to believe that an email address has a real “money” value, oh but it does. So, how do we figure it out?

Christopher and I sketched up 3 little pictures to show how you can calculate the average value of each individual email address. Now we’re going to dive a little deeper and use statistics for more than just how many emails were opened, or who clicked on what however many times.

To be able to use this formula you need to know the answers to three big questions:

This is just an example, obviously. This is what you’re going to do. First, insert your own numbers and divide the income amount with the number of subscribers you have. Then, multiply that number with the average amount of time you keep your subscribers. (Three years ago, companies in the US kept an address for two years on average.)

Now that you know how much each email address is worth, wipe the sweat off your forehead and lets take it a little further.

Okay, here is an example of how I would use email marketing to improve my numbers. I would need to have very accurate figures to know what I’m working with.

So basically, in this case, and in every case, it’s not just the number of subscribers. It’s all of them combined, they all matter to create profit. What’s a subscriber without a click? Or a visit? Or something bought? So, try different offers, or subject lines, and vary the time of day and week it’s sent out.

Sarah Wittbom

By Sarah Wittbom

Category: E-mail Marketing