When things get tough, the tough get cost-effective with email signature marketing. Because when you’re facing the challenge of building your brand, driving sales and growing your business in difficult economic times, cost-effective marketing is key. So how do you get more bang for your marketing budget buck, secure sales while saving time and money, and get return on investment (ROI) as well as results?
Whether you’re a marketing professional or a business owner looking for lower budget marketing activity options, there’s a cost-effective marketing channel that you really can’t afford to overlook. One that packs a promotional punch way above its weight and which you’ve almost certainly used multiple times today already.
Read on to see why email signature marketing – including interactive email signature banners – is cost-effective, delivers a wide range of budget-friendly benefits and amplifies the effectiveness (and cost-effectiveness) of your other marketing channels.
When economic times get tough, with budgets tightening and costs increasing, your marketing has got to be smart – and that means (ideally cheap!) cost-effective marketing strategies that deliver ROI.
Tough economic times
In tough economic times of rising costs and declining demand, the search is on for recession-busting, low-budget marketing channels that get results.
Tightened budgets
Your customers’ buying budgets are being cut and – rightly or wrongly – your marketing budget is being squeezed. If you’re going to ‘sell’ your budget to your CFO for sign-off, they’ll want to see cheaper marketing channels that can really drive revenue.
Increasing costs
Keep an eye on the real cost of your marketing. Sometimes channels that are cheap (or even free) end up costing in terms of creativity, production (both in-house and external agencies) and management time.
Return on investments (ROI)
This is the metric that matters. Is your business seeing the required return on its marketing investment? Below we’ll show you how to calculate it, and also cover some other factors to be aware of.
How do you measure marketing return on investment (ROI)?
When you want to show the success of your marketing investment (and what a cost-effective marketer you are), the best metric for the job is Return on Investment (ROI). You can also use it to show the predicted profitability of your budgeted marketing program.
Calculating Marketing ROI
ROI is a fairly easy calculation. Simply subtract your marketing spend for a set period from the revenue for that period. This is your net return. Now divide this net return figure by your marketing spend, and then multiply by 100 to get your marketing ROI.
Marketing ROI example
Say you spend $5 on marketing and you make $30 overall, your net return is $25. Divide this by your initial investment of $5 and you get a total of 5. Multiplying this by 100 gives you 500. Your ROI is therefore 500%!
What’s a good marketing ROI?
According to Website Builder Expert:
‘Typically, an ROI of 5:1 is considered pretty good in digital marketing. This means that for every $1 you spend, you get $5 back. Marketers who want to be truly exceptional though, aim for a 10:1 ratio.’
Remember, the better the ROI, the better you’ll look and the better your chances of getting your marketing budget signed-off or even increased!
Is marketing ROI really the best performance measure?
ROI certainly shows marketing performance in hard financial terms but there are a couple of important things to remember.
Include all your costs
Your marketing investment is not simply the cost of the media or marketing agency charges. Think of the time and effort and in-house resources that have been used to plan, produce and manage your marketing campaign. Creating email marketing banner campaigns is very simple and cost-effective and, by using our email signature banners guide, can yield a sizeable return in engagement.
Consider other KPI’s
Also, whilst sales might be the ultimate desired result, not all channels can drive direct sales so you need to set realistic key performance indicators (KPI’s) for each channel such as increasing brand awareness on a budget or boosting website traffic, leads, follows, sign-ups, referrals and conversion rates. You might be surprised when you see below how many of these goals can be met using email signature marketing!
Share marketing and sales data
To effectively measure marketing ROI in terms of sales you need to ensure that your marketing and sales teams share their data. They also need to work closely together to act on this data to focus on the marketing channels that drive sales and improve ROI. By choosing email signature software with CRM integration platform capabilities, it’s easy to see how email banner click-through results in sales.
Digital marketing ROI stats
According to Website Builder Expert:
- Email marketing has the best average ROI at a huge 3,600%
- SEO marketing has an average ROI ratio of 22:1 equating to 2,200%
- Marketers who regularly calculate their ROI are 1.6 times more likely to secure budget increases for their marketing activities.
Why is email signature marketing cost-effective?
It might often get overlooked but email signature marketing could be the low-cost, high-reward channel you’ve been looking for. It might even become your most cost-effective marketing tactic! Here are 7 reasons why:
It makes every business email a sales opportunity
After all, it’s simply enhancing (greatly enhancing) your employees’ everyday emails – emails they would be sending anyway during the course of daily business. In fact, chances are, it’s your most used business communication channel. Suddenly, you can drive sales with every email, or at least reach each recipient with relevant email banner messaging to help move them through the customer journey. With email signature campaigns, suddenly everyone in your business is an active part of your marketing and sales strategy.
It achieves exceptional reach
The numbers speak for themselves. When you consider the average employee sends 1,000 emails every month, for a team of 50 email signature marketing opens over 600,000 extra engagement opportunities a year! And over 12,000,000 annually for a business of 1,000 staff! Just think of all the different recipients. Unlike bulk email marketing you don’t need to build or buy a big subscriber list. You’re reaching a huge audience of prospects, customers, partners and suppliers etc (and every email ‘forward’ increases this audience still further).
It achieves a 99% open rate
How many email marketing platforms can boast that? Especially when you remember that the average bulk email campaign achieves between 10% to 30% open rates. Why is email signature marketing’s open rate so high? Because these are the emails your employees are sending during the course of everyday business, they’re part of ongoing email conversations and so they’re always going to get opened. No need to rely on snappy email subject lines!
It meets a huge range of marketing goals
Email signature marketing banners are incredibly versatile and with the right provider can make sure that your recipients are targeted with the most relevant banner messaging. From building brand awareness to requesting reviews, promoting special offers to showcasing social responsibility initiatives and, of course, driving direct sales, email banners can do it all. Want to see exactly what I mean? Check out our 33 great email signature banner examples.
Not only that, but as you’ll see below email signature campaigns can amplify the effectiveness (and cost-effectiveness) of your other digital marketing channels.
It’s prime high-impact space
Does high-profile ad space sound instantly high budget? Sure, your signature is at the bottom of your email but at Rocketseed we include top banners as email signature marketing. Because they’re at the top they’re the first thing recipients see when they open an email. It’s prime, eye-catching, high-impact space.
It’s personal 1-to-1 marketing at scale
Does ‘1-to-1’ marketing sound small-time, a lot of effort and the very opposite of cost-effective? Email signature marketing is 1-to-1 marketing at scale. These are the emails that build relationships. They’re not only about customer acquisition but also retention. Recipients don’t just have a relationship with your brand, they have a relationship with the individual sender – sometimes formal, sometimes informal. Either way, it’s a people thing and the familiar name and headshot in an email signature helps cement that interpersonal relationship and adds a personal trust element. These recipients, with whom you have a strong business relationship are more likely to click on your email banner than engage with a bulk email.
It delivers low cost conversions
We regularly see customers achieving email signature marketing engagement (click-through rates) of over 20%, whether recipients are clicking through to key content or direct to a sales platform or online store (with a clickable ‘Buy Now’ CTA on your banner).
If you want cost-effectiveness, you can’t afford to risk missing a sale or losing a customer. By choosing email signature marketing software like Rocketseed with real-time click alerts, your sales team will be notified the moment a recipient clicks on your banner or signature, enabling them to follow-up immediately. As Rocketseed integrates seamlessly with Salesforce it’s easy to attribute sales to your email signature marketing.
Other cost-effective benefits of email signature marketing
There are a number of other direct benefits that email signature marketing delivers to give you even more bang for your buck…
Makes every email look professional
What price can you put on professionalism? Your email signature says a lot about you and your company, and I don’t just mean your contact information. Clear, correct contact details are, of course, essential but for prospects especially your business email signature design can give them the reassurance that they are dealing with a reputable, reliable and professional company – and that’s worth its weight in gold. Check out our 12 Professional email signature examples: Best practice & top tips for a truly professional email signature design.
Saves your marketers and IT teams time
It’s true, time is money. The right email signature software can save your marketing and IT teams time. With Rocketseed not only can email banner campaigns be automated to start and finish according to your marketing programme but your IT team can save literally hundreds of hours by setting up and updating all staff email signatures centrally, with contact details automatically updating by being synced with your Azure, Windows Active or Google directory. So as well as understanding the reasons Rocketseed is ‘Loved by Marketing’, it’s also worth checking out why it is ‘Trusted by IT’.
Ensure a consistent corporate brand image
What do the businesses we trust most have in common? They project a consistent brand image across every channel – including brand name and logo, colours and fonts. Your business email is no different. Using a centrally-managed email signature solution gives you control over every employee email signature – across all departments – so every email they send is perfectly on brand. A cost-effective way to consistent branding company-wide!
Tracks every engagement for insights
Which email banner campaigns achieve the best conversion rate? Which recipients are clicking through most frequently? With Rocketseed’s email signature reporting and analytics platform you can cost-effectively track and analyse every recipient engagement so you can quickly measure signature marketing performance and gain valuable insights to refine campaigns for even more future success.
Achieves cost-effective internal comms
Ever thought about internal email signature marketing? It’s an incredibly cost-effective HR solution. From onboarding and training to company news and social events, you can grab your staff’s attention with internal email banners and make it easy for them to click through to your key HR content.
How can email signature marketing amplify the effectiveness of other channels?
Choosing the best marketing channels for your new campaign will depend on your objectives, your business sector and your budget.
The cost effectiveness of email signature marketing becomes even more clear when you see how it can amplify the effectiveness (and cost-effectiveness) of your other chosen digital campaign channels. Here are 5 examples:
Amplifies social media marketing
Social media marketing can be a very cost-effective way to build a community of potential customers. Displaying your social media icons – linked to your actively-managed social platforms – on your email signature is a sure way to increase your social engagement, from building your B2B network on LinkedIn to getting people talking about your business on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Amplifies email marketing
At its best – with a large subscriber list, strong subject lines, fresh content and clear calls-to -action – email marketing has been seen to achieve ROI of 3,600%. As a substantial organically-acquired subscriber base is essential for success, continually grow your list by simply adding a ‘Sign up to our newsletter’ CTA on your staff email signatures and banner campaigns.
Amplifies content marketing
Creating content – from blogs and infographics to ebooks and ‘how to’ videos – can be time-consuming. However, high-quality, evergreen content can be extremely cost-effective by driving high-intent engagement and conversions over a long period of time. The key to a successful content strategy is distribution and that’s where email signature marketing comes in. An email signature banner is the perfect place to promote your blog, ebook or video – always with a clear clickable CTA. It’s an incredibly cost-effective way to get a huge audience engaging with your content.
Amplifies your website and landing pages
The long-term benefits and cost effectiveness of a search-engine optimised website are clear (SEO marketing has an average ROI ratio of 22:1, or 2,200%), with more traffic and more conversions achieved by sites ranking the highest on Google. Boost your website traffic even further by always including a link in your email signature. Want to drive traffic to a specific page, maybe to build some ‘About Us’ brand awareness or a landing page for your latest promotion? A dedicated banner at the top of every employee email will soon see traffic skyrocket!
Amplifies events
Whether you’re staging a face-to face or online event, a promotional email signature banner showing subject, speaker, time and place is a highly cost-effective way to boost attendance. Make sure you have a clear ‘Book Now’ button to get recipients clicking through to your sign-up page. Suddenly every business email your team sends becomes an invitation!
What does email signature marketing cost?
Cost-effective isn’t the same as cheap, but fortunately email signature marketing is an affordable addition to your cost-effective marketing strategy.
If you’re just starting or currently have just a handful of staff then there are free email signature solutions available that might meet your basic company email signature design requirements.
However, if you’re marketing an SME or enterprise business and you want all the benefits of making your staff email signatures an integral part of a creative, co-ordinated and cost-effective marketing strategy, then you need an email signature marketing solution that can deliver at scale.
To find out the cost of a signature management and marketing solution that meets both the requirements and scale of your business, check out our product plan and pricing information. Simply move the slider to the size of your business (number of employees) and choose which product plan – Signature or Campaign – best suits your requirements.
Can you really afford not to use email signature marketing?
Ultimately, email signature marketing is about consistently branding your most used business communication channel and cost-effectively opening a huge range of engagement opportunities from every email you and your staff send.
It’s simple, affordable and delivers a great return for a whole range of objectives. as well as significantly amplifying the effective and cost-effectiveness of your other digital marketing channels.
Ready to make email signatures and banners part of your new cost-effective marketing strategy? Talk to us at Rocketseed, we’re ready to help.
Shanique Brophy | Marketing Executive
Connect with Shanique on LinkedIn
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