5 Email Marketing Strategies to Generate More Sales

People use emails to connect with friends and relatives. Businesses use it to connect with their customers.

Despite the rise of social media over the past years, email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter, according to McKinsey.

Email delivers the highest ROI for marketers.

72% of people prefer to receive promotional content through email. 17% prefer social media. So, you should be doing email marketing.

Email is a powerful way to connect with prospects.

In this article, I will reveal 5 effective email marketing strategies you should be using to generate more sales for your business.

Email marketing strategies have changed over the years. What worked five years ago, now no longer works.

But it's still a key player to any marketing strategy.

In fact, for the very best online marketers’ email marketing is their go-to marketing channel.

Why, you ask?

It's because it brings in the results and delivers the best marketing ROI:

Channel ROI Ratings

1. Personalize your messages

When we say personalized email marketing, we don’t mean that you send an individual email to every single subscriber. Personalization means that you use customer data to create a personalized message.

A great example of a company that does personalization well is Amazon.

All of Amazon's emails are personalized. 

Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO is an email mastermind. Jeff Bezos understands the value of emails and has been known to read through customer complaints. It’s also why more than 35% of all product sales come from recommendations (both via email and on screen).

And it's not just Amazon that have seen these kinds of results through personalization.

A study by Experian found that personalized emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates!

Let’s break this down into numbers we can all understand:

The most recent research found that email marketing generates $0.08 in revenue per email.

That may not sound like much...

But if you send out an email campaign to 500,000 subscribers, you can generate up to $40,000 in revenue.

That's a lot of additional revenue!

But, if you use personalization in your emails, you can expect a lot more!

According to brand new research,

Personalization can generate $20 in ROI for every $1 invested.

How's that for a revenue opportunity?

The best part is this:

70% of brands do not use personalization within their email marketing strategy.

This means that by personalizing your emails, you stand out against the competition.

The simplest form of personalization is to address the reader by name. Most email service providers (ESP) offer this within their functionality and this tactic alone will improve your campaign performance.

For example, Email subject lines that are personalized with a recipient’s first name can increase open rates by 16% higher open rates.

Sign up for a free trial on Getresponse and start your first email marketing campaign.

2. Segment your subscribers

According to email marketers, segmentation is second on the top initiatives list this year.

Do you know why it is so high?

It's because when you segment your database, your email campaigns become much more targeted to your audience.

Let’s take a look at an example:

You're hosting a networking event for small business owners located within a 20 mile radius.

How can you expect to get the best turn out for your event?

The answer is segmentation.

The best way to get small business owners to turn up to your event would be to create a segment of people who list themselves as a small business owner that lives within 20 miles of your event and then send them an invite by email. The segmentation part is simple and can easily be done through CRM software.

Compare this to sending one email to your entire database, with subscribers spread across the country (or continent).

How annoying is it to receive an email that invites you to an event that is located on other side of the world?

It's very annoying!

Before you start segmenting your database, let’s take a look at how valuable it can be.

A study found that all email marketing KPIs perform better when you segment your email list.

Here's an example from our own email marketing campaigns:

We recently sent out two email marketing campaigns. Both campaigns had the same subject line and the same content.

The first campaign was sent to our non-segmented email list, while the second was sent to our segmented list (segmented by interest).

The first non-segmented email earned an impressive 42 % open rate and a 4.5% click-through rate.

However, the segmented email campaign earned a 94% open rate and a 38% click-through rate!

3. Send mobile friendly emails

In 2012, 27% of all marketing emails were opened on a mobile device.

By 2014, that number jumped up to 42%.

Now, it’s as high as 61%!

These are huge numbers!

Worse still, our own email marketing research found that 20% of email campaigns are not optimized for mobile.

Yet on the opposite end of the scale, and when email campaigns are optimized for mobile, they generate a lot of revenue!

When you send an email to a subscriber who reads their emails on their mobile device, but the email is not optimized for that device, what do you think they do with?

Mostly, they will unsubscribe or delete it.

So why is it that almost half of all emails are still not mobile friendly?

The average revenue per mobile email is $0.40, which is more than 4x that of a desktop email click, according to Yesmail.

55% of smartphone users have made at least one purchase after receiving a mobile promotional email.

4. Test copy, design and buttons

Whether you test your home page, landing pages or email templates, testing provides us with data to make practical decisions that will improve our marketing performance.

And email marketing is no different.

Most marketers have A/B tested their email campaigns.

(You can use GetResponse to run a series of tests that will assist you send the most reliable messages to contacts. This can be achieved through A/B split tests that let you try various newsletters, subject line variations, e-mail content, time of sending, and many other elements.)

If I had to guess, I'd say you’ve tested your email subject line, right?

President Barack Obama raised an additional $2 million in donations by split testing his email subject line

But it's not only subject lines you can test through email marketing.

You can also test:

From address: The name that appears in the “from” field has a huge impact on whether the reader opens your email. In fact, the sender name is the main reason why people open your email. Test your from address by sending your campaigns from a person’s name, person + company or from your CEO.

Plain text vs HTML campaigns: Like most marketers’, I’m sure you are already sending a plain text version of your email. However, have you thought of testing an email campaign that is plain text only? And when you add an element of personalization, plain text emails appear to be written just for the reader.

Long vs short emails: You can keep your emails short and sweet or, you can create long detailed emails. Long form emails can include more detailed copy whereas shorter emails will send the reader directly to a targeted landing page. The best way to see what works best? Test it. 

5. Automate email campaigns when possible

Trigger-based emails are emails that are sent out automatically based on user behavior.

The most common forms of trigger emails are ‘welcome’ emails, ‘thank you’ emails and ‘transactional’ emails, such as order confirmation email and email receipts.

Trigger emails perform much better than traditional email.

For example :-

You visit a website, browse the product line and add items to your shopping cart but, you begin to have doubts and decide to leave before completing a purchase.

Sound familiar?

This happens to every single eCommerce store, every single day.

But what if, one hour later, you receive an email that includes the exact product you were shopping for?

And what if this email included not only a quick-link back to your shopping cart but, a free shipping code or 10% discount?

You’re now more likely to complete your purchase, aren’t you?

That’s the power of trigger emails.

Conclusion

Email marketing still works because email remains the best medium to reach and connect with customers in a personal way.

Almost every internet user has an email. It’s free and does not incur charges like texting.

Using these email marketing tactics will help you increase the numbers of sales you generate.

Thanks for reading.