How To Get A 300% ROI With Gmail Advertising

Alright everybody, today we're going to show you how you can get a 3 to 1 return on ad spend using Gmail advertising. Now, Gmail advertising is interesting because it's something that Google has been taking away, bringing it back, taking it away, bringing it back, and we think it's here to actually stay this time. And whenever you're able to achieve that 3 to 1 return using ads, that's always a good thing for your business. We're going to show you the nuances of Gmail advertising and we're going to show you how you can succeed with it. So my name is Eric Siu, and I'm the CEO of a digital marketing agency called Single Grain, and we work with venture-backed startups and Fortune 500 companies helping them grow their revenues online using search engine optimization or paid advertising. And that's me teaching a Skillshare course on content marketing. I'm also the founder of an entrepreneurial podcast called Growth Everywhere, and this is where I interview people such as Ron Klein, who invented the magnetic credit card stripe, that you see on the back of your credit cards. Mark Organ, who co-founded Eloqua, which sold to Oracle for over $1 billion. Jason Lemkin, who co-founded EchoSign, which sold to Adobe for hundreds of millions of dollars, and also the godfather of SaaS. So, a lot of great content here, it's all available for free and that's us kind of paying it forward. We talk about entrepreneurship, we talk about marketing, we talk about personal growth. And I'm also a contributor to Entrepreneur Magazine, Forbes, Business Insider, Time Magazine, Fast Company, and more. But that's enough about me. What I want to show you right now is what you're going to get out of this session. And first things first, we're going to talk about some numbers because it's always good to know what type of return you can expect to achieve and just what's possible using Gmail advertising. Then we're going to show you an introduction to Gmail ads and how you can set it up. Then we're going to talk about targeting ideas where you can find out the best targeting ideas, not just for Gmail advertising, but for any type of ads or content ideas across the board. Then we're going to show you the path to a winning Gmail ad. Finally, we're going to show you 3 crucial steps to Gmail advertising success, and there's also a bonus at the end if you stick till the end. So let's jump into it and let's talk about some numbers. So this client right here, this was a client in the lead generation space, and their target cost per acquisition was $150. And that basically means they're willing to pay $150 per lead. And we're actually able to get the numbers as low as $7 per lead, and it was ranging from $7 to $50. And whenever you're able to achieve returns like this, well, I like to call it laughing your way to the bank. And that's kind of how you feel when you're able to achieve returns like this. So let me just show you how it looks in the Google dashboard. You can see on the very right side the cost per conversion, that is the CPA right there, and it's ranging from $7 to $50. The click-through rate, if you look at the left side, the left column in that red box, you can see it's ranging from 16% to 30%. The average cost per click is give or take around 9 cents, and that's a good thing. You know, these numbers are really good, but there is a caveat to the CTR and the CPC right here. But you know, just focus on the cost per conversion. Those are real, and the leads, we did confirm with the client that the leads are high quality. So that's a client in the lead generation space, but what I want to focus on right now is I want to talk about ecommerce. So e-commerce, there was a company that sells mobile cases online. It's a very competitive space. And in this space, well, the initial testing, the initial return on ad spend or ROAS was -14x, which is not good. It's not exactly what we saw in the first results. But after extensive testing, we're able to get that ROAS to 3.2x, which is not bad. Okay, now this company itself, you know, a lot of people talk about the, you know, having to have the discipline for testing, you know, test, test, test, right? Well, this client itself, this company I should say, they took 2 months to achieve the returns that they needed to achieve. You can see how long it took them to actually start to get great returns on it. So you have to have that type of discipline, you know, at any point, you know, after 1 month, a lot of people tend to give up after 1 month or after spending initial, you know, a set amount of budget. Just keep in mind you have to have the type of discipline for testing and this is what it takes. A lot of people talk about test, test, test, but, you know, I don't think a lot of people embody it. And this is just showing how long it takes to actually get this thing working. Does that make sense? Okay. So Gmail ads, an introduction. Here's how the ads look like inside of inboxes. You can see you have different tabs. You have the primary, social, and promotions. Now a lot of you are probably thinking already, I never go into promotions tab. I personally never go into the promotions tab either. Maybe that's because we're jaded marketers or jaded entrepreneurs, but you can see right here Uber is running ads. You can see 180 Fusion, they're running ads too, and you can see the emails right below that. And here is what the ads look like when you, you know, when you see the Uber ad right here, when you click on it, this is what happens. The ad will expand, you get another companion ad on the right side, and you can forward this or save it to your inbox. Or if you click on the green call to action, you will be taken to the Uber app or the Uber website. Okay, so this is what it looks like on desktop. Now, this is what it looks like on mobile. So you can see it's the same type of idea. You get one ad slot and you can see Syracuse is running ads over here and you can see the ads are, you know, the other promotional emails are right below that. Now, to get started with this, it's very simple. All we need to do is go to the ads tab in any type of campaign that you have, hit the red add button. And then hit the Add Gallery button. And then you're gonna have 5 different options, and you're gonna see Dynamic, Lightbox, Video Ads. We can just ignore all those. We're selecting Gmail Ads. And then you have 5 different options to choose from. So you have the Gmail Image Ad Template, you have the Gmail Single Promotion Template, which I'll show you what it looks like in a second, Gmail Multi-Product Template, which is good for e-commerce, Gmail Catalog Template, that'd also be good for e-commerce. And then if you want to get creative, you can use a Gmail custom HTML upload. For us, you know, you know, we've tried a few different templates. We haven't tried the custom HTML upload yet, but you know, the fact that we're getting great results already just shows that there is room to grow here. So that's a good thing. So here's an example of the Gmail single promotion template. This is what it looks like. You guys saw what it looks like inside of the inbox. This is collapsed ad. This is before you click on it. You can see on the right side there's a logo and then there is the company name, and then you have— you can put a title, and then you could put a subtitle as well. And then you can just continue. I mean, your objective here is to really get people to, to click on it. And then once people click on it, this is what happens. You get the expanded ad, and you get a little more real estate for the picture. You get a call to action as well, and you get more room to write more copy. And we'll come back to this when we start to talk about testing in a little bit. So how you can actually target inside of Gmail advertising— this is actually super interesting. But first things first, go to display keywords and And then you want to be thinking about, you know, just for example, if I am Coca-Cola, I want to be targeting people that are opening emails from Pepsi.com, from RedBull.com, I want to think about all my competitors, right? Then I can think about a lot of different targeting options, but in this case I'm only thinking about competitors. Now, in this scenario right here, this is for the podcast, I'm targeting DigitalMarketer.com, I'm targeting JeffBulas.com because I want to be able to kind of siphon off that audience. And get people to come to the, you know, I know that audience is interested in marketing and they're interested in entrepreneurship. So it might make sense that they read the content that we have on our site. So you can see, you know, when you have a savvy audience of marketers, you can see the click-through rate is 6% or 10%. Because marketers, first of all, they don't, you know, they're not prone to clicking on ads. So just to give you an idea, I mean, again, let's talk about targeting ideas right here. The first thing is competitors, right? Coca-Cola, you know, we're thinking about targeting Red Bull or Pepsi.com. And just to backtrack a little bit, when we're thinking about targeting ideas, this doesn't just apply to Gmail advertising, this applies to advertising across the board. Now, we can think about blogs as well. You saw me just targeting digitalmarketer.com and jeffboulez.com. Trade shows are fantastic because, you know, the fact that you're getting people to shell out money to travel cross-country to go learn at something, you know, people are very motivated in this scenario. You know, they're in a different mindset, they're in the growth mindset, so trade shows are great to target. If you're not sure what the top blogs are or the top trade shows are in your niche, you can always Google it and then find out what works best for you, what would be the best fit, and then, you know, just break these out into different ad groups, or, and then you can target them. Then you have magazines as well. So publications, large publications, you know, nothing to sneeze at. You know, Wall Street Journal still going strong today, Entrepreneur Magazine, Forbes, you know, Forbes, Business Insider, those are all great. Software would be applicable to some industries, right? So if I think about the digital marketing industry, there's a lot of software. I can target HubSpot, I can target Moz. If I'm thinking about targeting sales, I can target Salesforce, for example. So there are a lot of people that are using, you know, specific software. So you have to think about your demographics, your personas if you have them, and I hope you do, and just start working off of those. And you can also think about complementary products as well. If you're thinking about, if you sell skateboards, well, you can think about, you know, apparel or skateboard equipment. You can target complementary products. And you can find the right people for your specific business. This is all making sense so far. Great. So next step, we want to talk about the path to a winning Gmail ad. So this is what happens when we— this is what happened, I should say, when this company ran these ads. So this ad right here lost money. So $600 was spent and only $35 was made. So that means this one lost basically $565. Okay, now you can see it says right here, Cell Outfitter, Protect Your Galaxy S5. So that's the title. I mean, that's, you know, the company's name, and then the headline is Protect Your Galaxy S5. And you can see when it expands, it says choose one, buy a Galaxy S5 tempered glass screen protector for just $9.99. And you can see there's a, there's an image over there of And there's additional copy in the image and then there's a call to action, okay? So this one lost a lot of money. And this one broke even. So let's just go— let's just backtrack a little bit. So you can see the— at the top right here, it says Sell Outfitter and then the title is 71% Off Phone Cases. So instead of Protect Your Galaxy S5, we got 71% Off Phone Cases. And you can see, it says get today's Note 4 deal while supplies last. This one says, don't pay $30 for a screen protector. So there's a sense of urgency here, and you can see the value proposition is being communicated immediately, 71% off phone cases. And when you expand it, instead of saying 24-hour blowout, it says was $29.99, now it's $8.97. So again, value proposition. And then you can see the copy is very simplified. Now it's price match guarantee, 90-day returns, daily discounts for your phone. So this one right here, it's a little harder to understand. This one's more abstract. Protect your Galaxy S5. What's the value proposition there? Choose one. I don't want to choose, right? You're making me think. Don't make me think. So, and then right here, it's very clear that it's, you know, you'd be getting a case. So you get the deal instead of order here, get deal. And you can see this one, you know, the fact that it broke even means this one performed a little better because it communicated the value proposition faster and people weren't required to think as much. But, you know, you're not in the business to break even. And you know, we're not here to tell you how to break even. So moving on here, this is the third iteration. We adjusted the copy a little bit more, but it was still basically the same result. So instead of saying 71% off, you know, again, it says case was $30, now $9. So same type of value proposition, you're just getting a discount, just the title was changed and you know, most of the copy is the same. So that's why it broke even. So you know, the question now is, well, we're not in the business to break even, you know, what are we here to do, right? So, this business, what they did was they changed the template to the catalog template for Gmail, and it got close to a 3 to 1 return on investment. So, this was the smoking gun. So, you know, you make these changes right here, but here's the thing, you only have a purple case right here, right? That's telling people there aren't many options, not necessarily everyone wants a purple case. But when you do something like this with the catalog template, you're showing multiple options. You have black, you have pink, you have baby blue. And, you know, that tells the user that there are a lot of different options available. Not just these, but potentially more. Here, not so much. Here it's like, oh, I guess there's only one option, right, when you look at it. So this is what was the smoking gun right here. So the average conversion rate over 4 rounds, we started at the first iteration, this was 4%, and it jumped to 6%, and it went to 5%, and then it went to 8%. So effectively it doubled over 4 rounds of testing. So again, you have to have the discipline for testing. Now, the true click-through rate over 4 rounds, you can see this is 5%, 5%, 6%, and jumped to 8%. Okay, so about a 60% increase. And we'll talk to— we'll talk about what a true click-through rate over 4 rounds actually means in a second. Okay, and we're going to talk about that, about that in this section, which is the 3 crucial steps to Gmail advertising success. So the first thing you want to do when you're doing Gmail ads is once you have it working, you want to switch to cost per acquisition or CPA bidding when you're at 15 to 20 conversions per week. Because Google actually does a pretty good job of determining who they should be showing the ads to and then who is more likely to convert. So CPA bidding is a good bet once you're at 15 to 20 conversions. The only caveat to this I would say, or I should say the only thing that you should watch out for is that, you know, CPA bidding sometimes, Google can get a little out of control and your CPAs will get out of whack. So sometimes you need to reset it, turn it back to manual bidding, and then, you know, maybe a few days later switch it back to CPA bidding. So that's something you need to closely monitor. And number 2, this is something we've been stressing throughout this presentation. You have to have the appetite and discipline for testing. So right here, this company spent $60,000 in spend before seeing success. Not a lot of people can deal with that. You spend $60,000 for 2 months, You know, after the first month, a lot of people would say, well, let's just scrap it and let's just continue to double down on what's working, which I think is not a bad idea. But, you know, if you're, if you're already tapping out all the other channels and you need another one to work, well, this is one to take a look at. The good thing about this talk right here is that you're gonna be able to sidestep the mistakes that were made in, in, you know, over 4 rounds of testing. So $60,000 in spend, and 2 months before seeing success. Not a lot of people can take it. You know, think of this presentation as saving you that money, saving you that time, and hopefully, you know, you're going to be successful with Gmail advertising. Now, the third thing that's very important here is to make sure that you're calculating your true click-through rate and conversion rates to get actual insights on your real performance, okay? So, what do I mean by that? What does true click-through rate mean? Here's the thing. When you look at the Gmail ads, when you actually click on the ad itself and then you have it expand, that counts as an actual click and that's how your click-through rate is measured. That's how your conversion rates are measured over, you know, over based on that. That's how your CPC is measured as well, which is not exactly fair because, you know, even if they click on that, they still need to click again to come back to your website. So in effect, it does require 2 actual clicks. And just because you get the first click doesn't mean they're gonna— you still have to convince them to do the second click. So it's basically 2 to call to actions. Okay, so basically when you, when you go into Google AdWords, you're going to log into your dashboard and you're going to be able to modify your columns. And when you click on modify columns, well, go to select metrics, go to Gmail metrics, and then you want to make sure that you're adding a column on Gmail clicks to website. That way you're able to see the clicks to website and then you're able to see your true click-through rate and your true conversion rate And you're gonna be able to kind of iterate off of that. It's not fair to really just say, okay, you're, you know, you think your CPC is around, you know, 8 or 9 cents, you think your click-through rate's 30%, but it's really not. You know, in some cases we're able to get the click-through rates as high as 75%, but that's not the reality here. So that's something to watch out for. So the return on ad spend was 3.2x, okay? And it added 1,000 sales per month, and this thing is still scaling up. There's still room to grow, and this is just— this just shows the potential of Gmail advertising. And, you know, this part, I mean, it's really important. You know, it's constant iteration, and hopefully this is gonna give you a few ideas. But, you know, because you stayed till this point, I want to show you a quick bonus, and we're gonna talk about some tools of the trade that are gonna help grow your business. Some of you have probably heard of some of these tools, but I guarantee you there's at least one that's gonna help, help your business grow. So let's talk about these tools. So first and foremost, we have SEMrush right here. And SEMrush, what it does is it shows you your website or a competitor's website, what they're ranking for from an organic keyword perspective. It also shows you what type of ads they're running. It also shows you what type of keywords pages are ranking for, you know, there's certain pages that can be ranking for, you know, a couple thousand keywords and you want to see how your competitors are doing or how other people are doing it. You can kind of start to craft a paid advertising strategy or an SEO strategy based off of this. So you can see right here, this is for my site Growth Everywhere, and you can see I rank number 2 for sales team. I can rank— I rank number 11 for cold email template. So there's a lot of things that I rank for, rank well. You're really looking for the keywords that are ranking from number 5 to number 30. These are the low-hanging fruits, and these are the ones that you're looking to get to the first page, hopefully a top 5 ranking. And you know, that's kind of how you're going to build your competitive SEO strategy, okay? So this is SEMrush. And this tool right here is called BuzzSumo. And I like it a lot because, you know, 50% of, you know, or I should say 80% of your effort should be going into content promotion, at least when you're starting out. You're producing content, that should be 20%. But you're really looking to create outreach lists. You're looking for people that are sharing similar content. You're also looking for content ideas as well. BuzzSumo is going to show you kind of what's trending. It's going to show you people that are sharing similar content, so when you write a piece of content, You can go to the view sharers button right here or the view backlinks button and start to create an outreach list and then have people reach out for you. And I also like the create alert section over here that tells me over time, you know, new backlinks coming to the website on a daily basis and also new articles coming from sites that I follow or competitors that I follow just to see what's going on over time. And that way you can stay on top of trends and you can, you could have, you know, your content person take this over. Your content promotion person take this over, but this is going to help shape your content strategy and I think it's definitely worth, it's worth what it is. Now, this tool is one that I think a lot of you probably have not heard of. And a lot of people talk about dashboards. Dashboards, you know, truthfully, there's products like Domo out there which will charge you 5 to 6 figures a year. This dashboard right here will hook in with your WordPress, it'll hook in with your Stripe, it'll hook in with your PayPal, it'll hook in with Google Analytics. Facebook Ads, Google AdWords, a lot of different tools that'll integrate with, and you can make different dashboards just so you can get your team together and get on the same page. Why is production going up? Why is production going down? Why is traffic going up? Why is it going down? It's worth everything. I think it's severely underpriced. This thing, you can make as many dashboards as you want. It's only $20. So, Cyfe is fantastic, and I definitely recommend it for any type of business that's serious about online growth. You can get your team together, get them on the same page. Talk about why things are up or down and what to do about it. That's probably the most important thing and you're only paying $20 a month, definitely worth it. This one right here is an automated reporting tool. This is one we use for our clients and one that clients can use, you know, I personally like looking at the reports, looking at the last 90 days or so and seeing exactly what is going on with my business and then figuring out what to do from there. So this is great and it can be automated. And last but not least, we have SimilarWeb right here, which is going to show you your website or competitors' websites, kind of, you know, what the traffic breakdown looks like. Is traffic trending up or down? The trends are generally accurate, but the volume is generally not accurate. But, you know, I just use the free version here and I can see my top referrals. I can see also the, you know, similar websites to this one. I can see what category this site is in. Also, we can also look at, you know, if a site has mobile apps as well. So there's a lot that can be gleaned from this. This is just kind of scraping the surface. But hopefully one of these tools will give you kind of what you need. Now, the thing is this. We think about Gmail ads, we think about the tools that we just talked about. The question is, you know, it's worked for our clients and why shouldn't it work for you? Now, a lot of people, they are often conflicted. They're not sure about what they need to do next in terms of their strategy. Should they be doing Gmail ads? What type of budget should they be spending? Should they, you know, what, where should they focus on first? Should it be Facebook? Should it be Google? And the question is, it really depends, right? You know, first of all, it depends on the stage that your business is at. It depends on what kind of business you're in, and it also depends on what you've done in the past, right? There's so many different variables that there's no custom type of strategy. So what we're offering right here, you know, if you liked the talk around Gmail advertising, if you want a free strategy session with us and you're not sure what you want to do next, you know, we could take some time and All you need to do is go to singlegrain.com/session. And right here, you know, there's gonna be something for you to fill out just to make sure that, you know, that we're the right fit for each other. You know, there's no guarantee that, you know, the free strategy session is gonna happen, but we need to make sure we're a right fit for each other before it happens just to make sure that we're on the same page here. So, you know, we're not trying to sell you anything here. Honestly, you know, it's a free strategy session. We'll talk about what potential growth strategies you can go down What path you can go down, and then even down the line, you know, after we get after we do this call, then we can talk about potentially you know working together and helping you out. And if we can't help you out, it's okay. You know, we do have a Rolodex of companies that we know, vendors that we know, partners that we know that we can easily just say, okay, you should be talking to this person, and we can point you in the right direction because a lot of people they're like, you know, there's so many different things coming out, right? You know, Snapchat's growing, Facebook Live is you know getting bigger and bigger. You know, you talk about YouTube Live as well. There's just so much stuff going on and we're very attuned to what's going on in the world of digital. So if you want the free strategy session, just go to singlegrain.com/session. You know, we'll see if we can help you out. And you know, if you want to contact us, you can always go to singlegrain.com. You can see the email on the bottom, it's sales@singlegrain.com. Again, last but not least, you know, we want to thank you for joining us. And again, before I go, singlegrain.com/session if you want that session. We want to see if we can help you out, point you in the right direction, and just assist you. And then if it makes sense, you know, perhaps we will work together or at least point you in the right direction. So with that being said, this concludes this presentation. Thanks for joining us. We are aiming to have more like this in the future. We're going to try to keep it action-packed, deliver as much value as we can in a condensed amount of time, and move forward from there.