Email Marketing Solutions

Grow your email revenue, increase email engagement, and automate more of your email marketing channel.

Ready, Fire, Aim… 

It’s a great motto to live by in business, because you can’t accomplish anything if you don’t start.

But when it comes to email marketing, I’ve audited numerous accounts that are a collection of cobbled together automations, segments, pop-ups, and campaigns that have been thrown together over the course of months or years.

And while it’s better to have something rather than nothing… if you don’t have your email marketing channel set up correctly, you’re missing out on a significant amount of revenue.

So today, I’m going to share 5 common reasons why your email revenue is lower than it should be and how you can improve.

Let’s dive in…

Number 1 – Low Open Rates

Open rates are a vanity metric. Always have been and are even more so now that we have to deal with iOS 14 and Apple Privacy opens.

Why are open rates a vanity metric?

Because opens don’t move the needle. A large open rate is worthless if your email isn’t converting.

BUT… even though open rates aren’t as important as click through rates or conversion rates, they are still important to monitor. 

Low open rates are the first sign that something is wrong. If people aren’t opening your emails, they aren’t reading your emails, and they aren’t clicking on your emails.

So a high open rate doesn’t mean a lot, but a low open rate is a red flag.

A 20% open rate used to be the benchmark, but now that number is closer to 30-35% taking Apple Privacy opens into account.

So if you’re open rates are less than 30%, you need to take action.

Start with basic segmentation. Create an engaged segment (subscribers who have opened or clicked an email recently, think 30-90 days) and focus on emailing that segment.

Then A/B test your subject lines. Use different templates and styles. Figure out what types of subject lines resonate with your list.

Then test sending times and dates. There’s no “ideal” sending time. It’ll vary depending on your subscribers. Test AM vs PM sending times. Test different days of the week.

I shoot for 40% open rates for campaign emails each month for my clients using these three steps.

Number 2 – Low Click Through Rates

Emails have ONE goal. To get the click.

It’s sexy to connect revenue to email, but ultimately there are too many other factors to definitely say that any particular email drove $X of revenue.

Sales page, offer, etc.

That’s why the click-through-rate (CTR) is the ultimate KPI when it comes to email marketing.

Click through rates can vary drastically. They will be higher for automations than they will be for campaign (or blast) emails.

Overall, you want to shoot for a CTR that’s between 2-5%.

If you’re struggling with low CTRs, here are a few things you can test.

Segment different audiences. But don’t go too crazy. Start with two groups. Prospects and Customers. Create different messages for each group.

A/B test your call to action (CTA). Test out different copy, different locations of your CTA, button styles, inline links, etc. 

Then look at the data. Where are people clicking? What links do you need to keep, which links can you get rid of?

Lastly (and this is potentially a big one) add more direct response style copy to your emails. People need to be given a reason to click, even in ecommerce. 

Number 3 – Slow List Growth

Lists grow and decay each year.

Roughly 25% of your list will disengage each year.

Your list growth needs to match or exceed the rate of list decay in order to keep your list healthy and strong.

This is why email cannot survive on its own. Email needs new traffic to grow and thrive.

There are two things you need to focus on.

The first is website traffic. This could be done organically but most likely will require paid ads. Best case scenario is that you are getting new site visitors using both organic and paid traffic.

The second is your lead generation offer and how it’s presented.

In order for someone to consent to give you their email address, they need to get something in return.

This could be a discount offer, free gift, cash back, free shipping, etc. Or you could get creative and offer a free digital offer that compliments your products.

Test different offers (are you noticing a theme here?) to see what gets you the highest conversion AND keeps that first purchase profitable.

Next, test different pop-up styles. Spin to win is popular right now, but there are a variety of different styles and options that you can test.

Test, test, test…

Number 4 – Deliverability Issues

This is a big one. If your emails aren’t landing in the inbox (or at least the promotions tab) they aren’t going to get opened, read, or clicked.

If you’ve implemented everything that I mentioned in the first section (open rates) and you’re still struggling to get above 20%, you’re probably suffering from deliverability issues.

There are two sides to deliverability.

Technical. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Sending reputation, domain reputation, blacklists, etc.

Content. Text to image ratio, alt text, spammy language, link quality, link quantity, etc.

There’s a lot that goes into deliverability. The bottom line is that you need to monitor it consistently and be aware of any changes in your open rates, click through rates, bounce rates, and spam complaint rates.

Using a website like mxtoolbox is a great start to check for deliverability issues. And then testing emails with sites like mail-tester or mailgenius is a good way to ensure that your content isn’t going to land you in trouble.

If you’re looking for more help with deliverability, you can check out my previous blog post with 5 steps to better deliverability or send me an email (ben@henkenmarketing.com) and we can set up a deliverability audit.

Number 5 – Missing Automations

The more money that your email marketing channel can make on autopilot… the better.

There are a few key automations that every ecommerce store needs to have in place in order to maximize automated revenue.

• Welcome
• Post Purchase
• Browse Abandon
• Cart Abandon
• Checkout Abandon
• Sunset
• Win-back
• VIP
• Back In Stock

You could add on a few others, but if you start with these 9 automations, you’re going to be in a really good place.

There are endless templates and frameworks out there for each of these flows. But how you set up each one will depend on your product and customer. 

The biggest thing… test, test, test.

Subject lines, CTAs, cadence, length, discounts, etc.

There’s no one size fits all when it comes to automations. 

If you’re missing any of these automation, or you don’t think the ones that you have in place are performing as well as they could be… let’s chat. You can fill out this form or send me an email (ben@henkenmarketing.com).

Summary

Hopefully you got some value from this post. Here’s a quick summary:

Step 1 – Fix open rates

• Segment
• Test subject lines
• Test sending times

Step 2 – Fix click through rates

• Segment
• Test CTAs
• Include more DR style copy in your emails

Step 3 – List growth

• Drive more traffic
• Test pop-ups and lead-gen offers

Step 4 – Deliverability

• Technicals (SPF, DKIM, DMARC)
• Content (Text to image ratio, alt text, link quality)

Step 5 – Automations

• Include the 9 core automations
• Test different aspects to optimize

What Should YOU Do Next?

1. Follow me on LinkedIn for daily email tips and what’s working now
2. Leave a like or a comment on this post to let me know what you thought. 
3. If you need an email list manager for your brand or business, send me an email at ben@henkenmarketing.com or fill out this form and I’ll be in touch.
4. Sign up for my weekly newsletters here and get these email tips and tricks sent directly to your inbox.