introduction
You go to bed at the end of the night, then wake the next morning only to discover that a single email, sent before going to sleep, amassed more sales than you had achieved through a week’s worth of posts on social media. While this may sound like an extremely unique and fortunate event, it is in fact a fairly regular occurrence for those businesses that actually employ email marketing in a strategy-oriented manner. So despite new forms of digital communication coming online all the time, and gaining in popularity; email continues to be one of the most effective marketing mediums available today and also provides one of the best returns on investment (ROI).
What is so good about email marketing? Essentially, email marketing enables companies to communicate directly to their customer base and to prospects using a method that is highly personalized, measurable, and scalable. In addition to this, if performed properly, email marketing can build relationships as well as provide a continual source of revenue growth over time. In this article, we will highlight how to utilize email marketing in order to create sales using three basic strategies: 1) Building a high-quality email marketing list, 2) Providing personalized and value-based content that is delivered to email subscribers, and 3) Creating efficiency in your email campaigns through automation and performance in order to constantly improve and optimize your email marketing campaigns long term.
Body
How to Generate a Quality Email List
The first step to effective email marketing is getting the right audience. If you’ve targeted the wrong inboxes, even the smartest message is not going to convert many sales.
Big=Bad? Why Quality Trumps Quantity in a List
A common mistake some businesses make is concentrating all efforts into growing a list of email addresses as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, a large list that is not engaging does not usually result in great metrics, spam complaints, and decreased deliverability. On the other hand, a high-quality email list is made up of consumers who are interested in what your business offers.
High-quality email lists give you:
- Increased open and click rates
- Improved customer lifetime value
- Stronger trust in your brand and company.
Research has consistently shown that permission-based, opt-in generated email lists perform better than purchase or scraped lists. Scraped or purchased lists can possibly violate laws of compliance, and as such can hurt your business’ credibility as a brand.
Actionable Strategies For Building an Effective Email List
To attract high-converting subscribers to your email list, your business should consider a value-driven approach to opt-ins. Some ideas you may consider include the following:
- Offer special discounts or offers, or provide early access to a promotion, only to your email subscribers.
- Create useful content that can be downloaded as a resource, such as a guide, checklist, or webinar.
- Utilize sign-up forms on high-intent pages, such as product pages or
Customizing Your Email to Influence Customer Buying Behavior
Now that your email list has been created, the next step is to create relevant content that engages your audience. All companies involved in email marketing agree that personalization is one of the most critical factors in driving sales.
What is Personalization in Marketing Today?
Email messages that have been customized via personalization consistently outperform generic emails in email marketing. Subscribers are significantly more likely to open, read and click a link in an email when they see the information in the message relates to them personally. Personalization involves not only using the person’s name in the subject line of an email but includes creating customized content based on the subscriber’s past purchases, behavior or interests.
There are three methods of customizing emails for subscribers:
- Product recommendations based on past purchases
- Triggering emails based on web/purchase behavior
- Sending emails based upon the time of day or location of the subscriber.
For instance, let’s assume an eCommerce company sells product A and when someone clicks on A and looks at the details about A they do not buy A. They store that person’s name and information and after a couple of days, they send that person an email that includes similar products to A. This is a good way to build trust with your customer and provide valuable information versus trying to sell them something.
How to Differentiate Yourself from Other Generic Campaigns
Historically, mass emails have treated everyone on the email list the same way. This has produced low engagement rates and high unsubscribe rates. Using segmentation to target email campaigns allows marketers to tailor their email messages to where the target customer currently is in the buyer’s cycle. Unlike other types of advertising (which only works when there are funds available), an email can continue to bring in revenue, even after all of the funds are exhausted.
Using Automation and Optimization to Boost Sales
Combining email marketing with automation and optimization based on data makes email marketing even more effective. By leveraging these tools, companies are able to scale their efforts while remaining relevant to their audience.
Using Automation to Send Timely Messages That Drive Sales
With automation, marketers can send automated messages at the appropriate time without requiring manual effort to do so. Automated email sequences are one of the highest performers at driving sales because they trigger when real, live customers do something.
A few typical high-performing automated emails include:
- Welcome sequences introducing products as well as value of brand
- Recovering lost revenue through abandoned cart reminders (drives immediate return)
- Encouraging upsell or repeat purchases through post-purchase emails
For example, abandoned cart emails often lead to immediate sales because they target customers who have already demonstrated interest in purchasing. Most other marketing channels would find it difficult to achieve this level of timing.
Measuring & Optimizing The Performance Of Your Campaigns
To be successful over the long term, marketers need to continuously improve their campaigns. Marketers have access to detailed metrics provided through email tracking that can inform them on how well their campaigns are performing.
Key performance indicators to consider include:
- Open rates and click-through rates
- Conversion rate and revenue per email
- Unsubscribe and bounce rates
- A/B testing subject lines, calls to action and email layouts enables marketers to optimize their campaigns over time.
calculation
Email marketing has always been a powerful way to create demand and make sales in today’s world of digital marketing. By providing targeted, relevant content to a qualified list of customers through email, businesses can effectively drive revenue from their emails.
In the future, we can expect continued evolution of email marketing performance due to new techniques being developed in regard to customer data analysis and technology to improve customer experience. Brands that implement better ways to segment their email lists, practice ethical use of data, and constantly test what works will put themselves ahead of the game compared to their competitors.
The call to action
If you want a reliable way to measure success, build strong relationships with your customers, and create recurring revenue from your marketing, you should start refining and including your email marketing activities as an ongoing strategy for growing your business.