01 Sep Improve Email Marketing ROI with These Mailchimp Features I Love

 

For as long as I can remember, email marketing has had a ridiculous ROI – 4,200%. (For every dollar you put it into email, you get $42 back in sales.) If you want to improve email marketing ROI to get to that level – or higher – you might just need to take advantage of some Mailchimp features.

 

You don’t have to use Mailchimp for email marketing. However, I’ve used this platform for a long time, and I recommend it to all our clients. It’s very user-friendly, and honestly, I like getting a virtual high-five when I send an email. 

 

Because it’s so easy to use, you can get into the habit of logging in, doing your thing, and logging out without paying attention to features that are intended to support and/or improve your marketing.

 

And by the way, Mailchimp – like most online marketing platforms – has a huge library of resources. Use it!

 

But back to our main story: Let’s dive into a few features that can improve your email marketing game.

 

New and improved email analytics 

 

I love love love MailChimp’s new email analytics reporting feature. When you log in, you’ll see this message on your dashboard:

 

 

Click on “see my report” and you’ll come to a landing page.

 

 

The two biggest, most valuable changes are:

 

1: the ability to toggle between audiences (rather than clicking around from one audience to another) 

2: the ability to update the time frame of results

 

Let’s talk about #2 a little more. While it’s super important to look at each email’s performance, you now have the ability to understand the overall success of your monthly newsletter or a lead nurturing campaign. 

 

I offer a few free downloads on my website, which are sent out via Mailchimp. Once the free download is sent, a lead nurturing campaign is triggered. I switched my Audience from Newsletter to the Small Business Guide to Blogging. Then I chose to see how many emails have gone out in the last 90 days. 

 

Guess what? No one has downloaded it. 

 

 

This is my cue to switch up my marketing strategy a bit. I’ll start posting a few tips on LinkedIn that are found in the ebook to see if that’ll spur some engagement and downloads. 

 

Now let’s back up a sec, because I skipped over this part. I really like the new Performance snapshot of number of emails sent, open rate, click rate, and unsubscribe rate. 

 

And by the way, don’t worry about unsubscribes. It never bothers me. People retire, change companies, and clean out the emails they subscribe to. (If you see massive number of unsubscribes at once, you should worry. That’s not good.)

 

Audience engagement

 

This is not a new feature, but it’s very helpful to view every few months. 

 

Under Audience > Audience dashboard, scroll down the page to Engagement. Your subscribers in that audience are categorized by their engagement level. 

 

• Often
• Sometimes
• Rarely

 

Here’s mine:

 

 

So nearly two-thirds of my list read my stuff. I’m very happy with that. 

 

And here’s something else to look at:

 

Hover over Rarely, and you’ll see an option to “Target with a campaign.” This is a great way to either get people back on board (via a come-back campaign), remind them to follow you on social if they prefer, and/or cut them loose. 

 

Surveys

 

Again, not a new feature, but I think people forget that Mailchimp makes it really easy to send surveys to your audience. 

 

Want to know what type of content (blogs versus videos) or topics (like email marketing) people want more of? Or if a new product or service you’re considering is in-demand – and at what price point? 

 

Ask your list.

 

Under Audience > Surveys, you’ll find a bunch of templates. You can also create your own.

 

Either way, keep the surveys really short, and incentivize people to take the survey. You could offer a Visa or Starbucks gift card to one person at random who takes the survey.

 

Automations

 

I mentioned lead nurturing campaigns earlier; you set them up under Automations, where you’ll find pre-built journeys to get you started.

 

Mailchimp does a great job with templates for small businesses that have an ecommerce store. For those of us who have a service-based business, you have fewer options. 

 

For example, click on “Recover lost customers,” which is nested under the Re-engage contacts category. You need an e-commerce store to use this journey. A lot of them have this requirement, which kinda sucks for service-based businesses.

 

 

Don’t abandon automations, though! To set up a lead nurturing campaign like me, choose “Welcome new contacts.” 

 

This journey will:

• Send a welcome email to all new email sign ups and another email 2 days later.
• Tag users based on their behavior to identify high-engagement contacts.

 

Tagging people right from the get-go lets you know who is really into your brand and offerings. That’s great information to have. 

 

Email subject line suggestions

 

Want to really improve email marketing ROI? Much of your email success depends on your email subject lines, which you can read more about here. 

 

But Mailchimp also has a great tool to help you in real-time.

 

When you create a new campaign and get to “Email subject,” you can click on “How do I write a good subject line?”. This window pops up:

 

 

The subject line researcher lets you “discover how the words in your subject line will impact your open rate. More stars means a better open rate.”

 

The recent subject line performance is just that – a snapshot of the open rates for your most recent emails. 

Use these tools! They are there to help you.

 

Need extra help to improve email marketing ROI?

 

If you’re a small business owner or marketing professional at a larger company who just wants to hand all this stuff over to an expert, drop us a line. We’ll take a look at what you’re doing now and put together a plan to improve your ROI. Heck maybe we can get it above 4,200%!