Email marketing involves sending commercial emails to people or contacts who have signed up to your email list. You need express permission before you can send people marketing material through email, otherwise– your business will seem sketchy or your message would seem like a spam email.
Typically, email marketing is for informing clients, driving sales for your business, and building a community around your brand. However, did you know that email marketing can also boost your SEO efforts?
SEO + Email Marketing: An Unlikely but Effective Pair
People in the marketing industry often associate SEO with things like site links, SERPs, and keywords, but if done right– email marketing can help you improve your small business SEO strategy.
Modern email marketing has developed over the years. It is no longer just the process of sending a one-size-fits-all message. Email marketing now focuses on the personalization of content to create a better connection with leads.
Although search engines do not rank marketing emails, they can still help give your small business SEO strategy a boost.
How? Well, a lot of people learn about new websites or web pages through email. It means that it will help you get opens and click-throughs.
Why are click-throughs important in SEO? Even if your website shows up first in the search results, if only a few people click through– it means that you are not optimized. Your traffic is important to increasing your conversion rate.
Email marketing helps your strategy by optimizing and boosting your click-through rate.
The Two Types of Email Marketing
There are two main types of email marketing:
Promotional Email Marketing
Businesses can use email marketing campaigns to promote and advertise their products and services. The email can be about a special offer, a new product, some free resources, or even a webinar for your leads.
Email marketing campaigns could consist of up to ten emails sent in the course of several weeks.
Promotional emails need to have a clear CTA or call-to-action to represent the action you want the reader to take. For instance, would you like them to buy something or would you like them to visit your website?
Informational Email Marketing
As the name suggests, this type of email marketing uses informational content to share news related to the business. For instance, a newsletter is a type of informational email marketing. It could be an email about a new milestone the brand achieved or information on how to use a product.
Informational email marketing can also come in the form of an announcement. It can be an email informing your clients and leads about changes in the company, the products, or services.
Benefits of Email Marketing to Small Business SEO
Email marketing is one of the most trusted forms of client communication. It even has the strongest performing media buy. Did you know that 77% of consumers prefer email over other online channels?
If done right, your email marketing campaign can:
- Increase your business sales
- Generate quality leads
- Increase client loyalty to your brand
- Improve your repeat business rates
- Reduce your marketing costs
Email Marketing Metrics to Check the Effectiveness of Your Campaign
Okay, maybe you do have email marketing prepared for your business. You’ve sent them to your clients and leads. You are left with a lot of campaign reports, but now what?
Here are the metrics you can check to see if your email marketing campaign is contributing anything to your small business SEO:
Delivery Rates
Since you are running a business, it is only natural that you care for the results. So of course, the first metric is delivery rates. It is a great metric for monitoring the strength of your email list.
If you have a high delivery rate, it means that you are reaching your target audience while a low delivery rate means you need to work on your subscription list.
Open Rates
The next metric is the open rates. What is an “open rate”? Sending an email is easy once you have your client’s or lead’s email address. The challenge is getting them to open your email and compelling them to read.
You need to have a strong subject line to leave an impact on your campaign. A good subject line can get your subscriber to open your email. It should be interesting enough to catch your reader’s attention. It should also be relevant to the user.
Click-Through Rates
The next metric is the click-through rates. The click-through rate is the ratio of people who click on a specific link vs the total number of the subscriber who viewed your email.
Your click-through rate will depend on how relevant your content is to the clients on your subscription list. If your target audience finds your content relevant to them, there is a strong chance that they’d click on your CTA or links.
Business Website Metrics to Check to Determine the Success of Your Email Marketing Campaign
You can have a favorable delivery, open, and click-through rate and still consider your email marketing as a failure. But this time, you need to check your business website to see if you need to improve anything in your small business SEO strategy.
Here are the website-related metrics you need to check to see if your email marketing campaign is successful:
Website Bounce Rate
Even if you get your readers to click on the link on your email, they can leave if they don’t see its relevance to them.
For instance, your client is moved by your email and decides to click on the link you provided. However, instead of a landing page– the link leads them to your home page. Your reader is more likely to leave the site. Why? Because they probably have seen your homepage before, seeing it again right now does not add to what they have read on your email.
Ideally, there should be a targeted landing page created especially for your email marketing campaign. You need to keep the message consistent from your email to the linked landing page. If your bounce rate is high, then you might want to check if your email campaign and landing page message are aligned.
Conversion Rate
A business is a business– although it is important that you provide your clients and leads with valuable content, it is also important that you convert your emails to sales.
You can use the Google URL builder to help you track your email campaigns. You can identify how much revenue each email brings to the company and what is your email conversion rate.
Once you identify which email campaigns get the most results, make sure to implement the same style on all your other campaigns for maximum gains.
All Things Considered
Email marketing campaigns can help boost the results for your small business SEO strategy. However, you cannot go in blind. It is a trial-and-error process that you need to monitor, analyze, and improve.
Measuring your email marketing campaign’s delivery rates, open rates, and CTR can assist you in improving your approach to your content. Finding actionable data and doing something about them can lead to better sales performance and stronger client loyalty to your brand.