A new prospect asked me to estimate the return on investment for an email marketing campaign he was considering.
“I don’t know enough about your business to answer,” I said.
He didn’t like that so he persisted.
He may as well have handed me a gas can and asked me to estimate his miles-per-gallon…
…without telling me what kind of car he drives.
“I’m flying blind here,” I said. “But I can tell you this: Some studies estimate email marketing returns $44 for every $1 spent.” (That’s a popular stat that lots of email marketing advocates toss around.)
He seemed pleased. I wasn’t.
I had to call it like I saw it: “But I think that’s a garbage stat.”
“A garbage stat?” he hissed.
Who’s on your list, qualified prospects or ice cold leads? The better your list, the higher your ROI.
What’s your process for closing sales? In many businesses, an email campaign may nurture a prospect, but salespeople still have to close the sale.
If you spend $1,000 for an email campaign, you might nurture 25 qualified prospects. What’s your ROI if you close one sale? Five sales? All 25? The more you close, the better your ROI.
How much much revenue do you earn from an average transaction? If you spend $1,000 on marketing and earn $44,000 in sales, your ROI would be 44 to 1. But I can’t estimate 44 to 1 when I don’t even know how you price your products.
I’ve seen email campaigns generate better than $44-to-$1 ROI. I’ve seen email campaigns generate 44 cents. I can’t tell you where you’ll land without knowing about your list, your sales process, your revenue model and other factors. Those who say they can are lying.
I wasn’t picking a fight. I was just trying to help him.
But now he was pissed. “Look,” he barked, “I can tell you exactly how much I spend on SEO each month. And I can tell you exactly how many sales I generate from the SEO each month. So I can tell you my ROI. That’s all I’m asking you to do.”
The guy’s co-worker chimed in: “Actually, we’re not sure which sales result from SEO and which come from other channels.”
The silence in the room was deafening.
The guy didn’t hire me to run his email campaigns. I’m not surprised. I’m not sad, either.
It’s no fun to anger a prospect. But my job is not to sugar-coat or to tell happy lies (i.e. “Your ROI will be 44-to-1.”)
My job is to help you succeed with your email campaigns.
Part of that job is to help you measure success.
If you want to know the ROI of your email campaign, I can help you.
It’s not rocket science. But it’s also not some number I’ll pull from thin air.
Tom
MarketVolt
p.s. I won’t promise 44-to-1 ROI, but I can promise this: MarketVolt’s experts can help you devise creative, smart strategies and tactics for your email campaigns that will improve your chances to maximize ROI. We can help you with planning, testing, tweaking, and measuring. We can show you how to do that. Or we can do it for you. If you want to learn more, give me a call (314-529-1431 or email me).