How Mature Is Your Email-Marketing Program? 14 Types of Emails to Help Boost ROI

Are you doing everything you can to get the most return on investment (ROI) out of your email campaigns? Here are 14 different types of emails that can help give you a big boost to your email ROI. Perhaps you’ll find some that you could be doing but haven’t yet tried. And if you want to quantify, in dollars, some of your potential improvements from these emails, try our ROI Goalsetter®—the most advanced email ROI calculator and planning tool. You can get it free for 90 days with the promo code “FreeROI2013.”

1. Welcome Emails — These are the automated responses an organization sends when a new subscriber joins an email list. Welcome emails have among the highest open rates of all types of emails, so be sure your welcome emails make a great first impression of your organization’s email-marketing program. These emails are a huge opportunity to upsell, build credibility and trust, and enhance your brand. According to a 2012 study by Silverpop, one-third of U.S. online retailers fail to send a welcome email. This is your chance to have the recipient white-list your email as well as to improve your deliverability and stand out from your competition!
2. Educational Emails — These types of emails should help solve a problem or answer questions that an organization’s subscribers may have. A good opportunity to send educational emails, for example, is to highlight new content on your website or to share an interesting article or blog.
3. Order Status Emails — For companies with e-commerce sites, this series of emails keeps customers informed about the status of their orders and typically includes order confirmation, shipment confirmation, shipment tracking, delivery confirmation, and receipts. Transactional emails such as these typically have average open rates that exceed 75%; however, few marketers use these opportunities to build customer relationships and grow revenue.
4. Shopping-Cart Abandonment Emails — Typically set up as a series of trigger messages, shopping-cart abandonment emails encourage users to come back and complete the purchases they started at a company’s e-commerce site. If you have a shopping cart and aren’t doing recovery emails, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity. Recent research shows that shopping-cart recovery emails can generate as much as $17.90 per email sent. That’s because an average of 20.8% of abandoners return to the site, make a purchase, and spend 55% more than buyers who didn’t abandon their carts.
5. Reorder Emails — If your company sells a product that needs to be reordered regularly, such as vitamins or ink cartridges, you can use a reorder email program to remind customers before they run out. Coming up with an effective reorder email strategy for your products/services could result in a significant boost in sales and revenue. In a MarketingSherpa case study, for example, an air products company generated about $2 per email sent, thanks to a three-part triggered email series that reminded customers to replace their indoor air filers. Of the customers who clicked through to company’s website, 53% made a purchase.
6. Reengagement Emails — At FulcrumTech, we recommend running regular reengagement campaigns to help maintain a “clean” email list by identifying and keeping only those subscribers who are truly interested in hearing from your organization. Reengagement emails are sent to inactive subscribers—those who haven’t opened or clicked on an email in 6 months or more. For more information about how to use email to reengage inactive users, check out this previous FulcrumTech feature. These emails not only reduce your level of inactives, but also encourage clients to come back and buy.
7. Birthday/Holiday Emails — Sending birthday or holiday wishes to your subscribers is a great way to keep your organization top of mind. And because of the fantastic targeting, these emails tend to get a remarkable response. To send birthday wishes, you would have to collect date of birth information on your sign-up or subscriber profile forms. By also including a special offer or coupon in these emails, you can help boost interest and possibly new sales, as well. According to a study by Experian CheetahMail, birthday emails generated more than two times the revenue of bulk mailings to the same customers.
8. Anniversary Emails — Celebrating a subscriber’s anniversary for joining your email list is another excellent opportunity for keeping your company top of mind and encouraging sales. On average, anniversary emails generated almost seven times more revenue compared to bulk mailings to the same customers in a study by Experian CheetahMail. See FulcrumTech’s review of a recent anniversary email sent by drugstore.com for an outstanding example of this type of email.
9. Newsletter Emails — Sent on a regular basis—such as monthly, bimonthly, or quarterly—newsletter emails are a great way for organizations to reinforce their industry expertise, build loyalty and engagement with subscribers, as well as grow a list of qualified prospects and customers. We have clients who get a triple-digit ROI on the email newsletters we produce for them, meaning a very strong payback. In addition, check out this great infographic for all the ways you can calculate the return from an email newsletter for your business.
10. Sales Announcement Emails — If your company has a new product/service or a special promotion based around a product line, send out an email—or a series of emails—to announce the news and help pique customers’ and prospects’ interest.
11. Cross-Sell Recommendation Emails — Use customers’ purchase histories to create email campaigns with information about other products you sell that they may be interested in purchasing. For example, if a customer recently bought a smartphone, you know he or she may also be in the market for such accessories as cases, covers, and screen protectors. One study showed, for instance, transactional emails that include cross-sell items have 20% higher transaction rates than those without them.
12. Event Emails — With these emails, you can create a comprehensive email campaign around your events—including webinars, presentations, and conferences—to help build interest and encourage participation. Event emails would include invitations, follow-up invitations, reminders, and thank-you emails.
13. Website Affinity Trigger Emails — When a subscriber clicks through to your website, you can use the information collected about his or her activity to send emails with relevant content to match the interests indicated at your site.
14. Lead-Nurturing Emails — This type of email helps you move a lead through your sales funnel, while cutting the amount of time required by a sales team to educate prospects about your services and products. Lead-nurturing emails should be short emails with the main purpose of driving prospects to take action on your website. Click here for more information about setting up a successful automated nurturing or drip campaign.

How much value is there in adding one or more of these type of emails to your organization’s current email-marketing program? FulcrumTech’s ROI Goalsetter tool can answer that question. With the help of our email ROI calculator for business planning, you can now quickly, easily, and accurately calculate the ROI of each of your email campaigns, as well as potential returns based on email improvements.

Getting the best results from each email campaign requires a comprehensive strategy, effective implementation, and continual improvement of a number of components that work together to deliver against your campaign goals. The experts at FulcrumTech can help you develop that strategy, as well as improve and optimize all of your organization’s email campaigns. Email us or give us a call at 215-489-9336 and get started today!