4 strategies to integrate PPC and email
Have your digital marketing conversions hit a plateau? You know what to do with your pay-per-click campaigns to get more traffic to your site. And you know how to use email marketing to nurture potential leads. But have you ever thought about how you could amplify your results by combining the two channels?
Truth is, success depends on more than optimizing each digital marketing channel in isolation. Generating a killer ROI is all about integrating channels, from search to chat, display, video, email, and even offline.
Combining email and PPC is an easy place to start.
Email marketing is still one of the best-performing online marketing tactics, regularly outperforming Facebook or Twitter by 40X and generating $38 for every $1 spent.
At the same time, Google Ads are brilliant for brand exposure – they can improve brand awareness by as much as 80%. Businesses make an average of $2 for every $1 they spend, according to Google.
So, it makes sense to create a strategy that uses email and PPC advertising in tandem to yield incredible conversions and an ROI worth shouting about.
Read this post and we’ll show you four actionable strategies how.
Test your strategies using PPC
Did you know that almost 50% of recipients open an email based solely on the subject line? (OptinMonster)
The more compelling your subject line is, the more people will actually read your email.
The higher your open rate is, the more people will click through on your offers and actually convert.
So how do you create a subject line that gets opened and a call to action that converts?
That’s where your PPC ads come in.
Use your PPC ads to test your calls to action, subject lines, copy, and offers BEFORE you use them for email campaigns.
Create two PPC ad campaigns using your email CTA or subject line and see which gets more clicks.
Try one subject line to evoke FOMO (fear of missing out), with words like ‘urgent’, ‘important’, or ‘limited offer’:
The other could be tapping into their pain-points, like this one:
Let the campaigns run for at least a few days and see which one performs better.
A simple A/B test gives you visible results without risking email unsubscribes, making it a low-risk strategy. You won’t be wasting PPC budget either, because you can monitor the results and quickly change things if the test doesn’t yield good results.
It works the other way, too. Track the subject lines that win the greatest engagement and use them to create your paid search ads.
Use email to remarket with pay-per-click ads
Studies show that 72% of online shoppers abandon their cart before making a purchase. But one in four of them will return to complete their purchase later – if they are retargeted.
Bottom line – if you want to turbocharge the conversions you’re getting through marketing, your funnel must include retargeting. This means monitoring your customers’ behavior and using what you know to push them back to your site.
If someone has already shown interest in your brand by opting into your emails, they are far more likely to convert than a ‘cold’ audience.
Run retargeting ads on Google Ads for people who have already clicked links in your emails.
Let’s say they clicked on a link to a certain product or offer, you can display relevant ads when they visit other sites.
Grow your email list with PPC
Do you know one of the biggest challenges in email marketing? Maintaining and growing a list of interested and highly qualified leads.
One easy way to do this is to include a subscriber form on your website. So how do you get people to the signup form in the first place?
PPC ads.
Think about it – your PPC ads attract clicks from searchers who are actively looking for products or services you offer.
So, when they click on a PPC ad, you need to direct them to a landing page that includes a way for you to stay in contact with these prospects – even if they aren’t yet ready to make a purchase.
See how this one gets it right:
And one from Krispy Kreme that offers a free doughnut when you subscribe (who can resist that?!):
Upload your email lists to run personalized PPC ads
Squeezing the best results from your marketing budget is all about customizing your campaigns.
It’s no secret that email best practice is to personalize your emails. Whether you send them an offer relating to their buying history or web browsing behavior, the goal is to build a relationship with subscribers by showing that you ‘get’ them.
Here’s the thing – you can also customize PPC ads to your specific audiences using your email lists.
All you need to do is upload targeted email lists into Google Ads, or whatever platform you’re using. Google Ads has something called Customer Match, which lets you target ads to your customers using data they share with you.
Then you can serve ads that are customized for that audience segment.
Pro tip: You can create a Google Ads campaign targeted to your email list on the Search Network, Google Shopping, YouTube, and Gmail platforms, but not on Google Display Network (GDN).
Over to you
Making PPC and email the dream team will catapult your conversions and ROI. Using data from your email campaigns to fuel PPC, and vice versa, you can grow your subscriber base, optimize your messaging, and better target your audience. That’s where the magic happens.
