Despite the fact that there are so many tools available for the digital marketer, email marketing is still one of the most powerful tools that are available. The major benefit of using email marketing is its high ROI whereby for every dollar spent, the returns realized are about $42; this means that any business that implements this form of marketing is likely to experience increased customer interactions and sales. However, with peopleâs inboxes getting filled with more and more emails from different companies, it is necessary to be smart about it. In this article, weâll discuss 5 effective email marketing tips to increase sales and as a result, enhance the performance of your email marketing campaigns.
1. Email Marketing Tips: How to Build a Great Mailing List for Email Marketing
The quality of your email marketing campaign will always depend on the list of subscribers that you are working with. This is because when you have a strong, targeted and quality email list, then you are sure that the people you are marketing to are people who are interested in what you are offering to sell.
How to Build a High-Quality Email List
- Opt-In Forms: Include attractive, but simple opt-in forms on your website, blog or landing pages. Some ideas are promoting free eBooks, coupon codes or special content in return of email addresses.
- Segmentation: It is as soon as you find yourself building your list that you should begin to segment your subscribers depending on certain parameters such as demographics, past purchases, among others. This will make the email marketing strategies more specific, and therefore more effective.
- Double Opt-In: Therefore, it is crucial only to include people to your list that would really like to receive your messages. C) Always use double opt-in method of subscription where user has to confirm his/her subscription which not only helps in gaining subscriberâs trust but also minimizes the chances of getting flagged as spam.
With this in mind, you will be able to reach out to a clientele list that is most likely to convert, thus having higher open rates, click through rates and sales.
2. Personalize Your Emails
The use of a bunch of generic messages sent to all subscribers has become ineffective in the past days. The use of personalization as a way of enhancing the performance of your email marketing strategies is more crucial than ever today. The audience wants to receive content that is targeted at them with relevant messages and offers as well as timely information.
Steps to Personalize Your Emails:
- Use the Recipientâs Name: The following is a few examples of how to begin an email: Hi [First Name] makes the email more personal and friendly. Nearly every email marketing service provides you with the ability to easily place merge tags into your emails.
- Recommend Products: Look at the behavior of your subscribers in the past, the pages they have visited, the products they have bought, and the items they have left in the cart and recommend products to them.
- Tailored Content: Share the content that has some relevance to the experiences and behaviors of your subscribers. For instance, if a customer had some interest in a certain product category, then sending him or her emails containing similar products would be ideal.
More specifically, segmentation of the email list allows for the creation of a more individualised message that can be more effective at driving consumers towards the purchase of a product or service.
3. Create Compelling Subject Lines
The subject line of your email is the door to your content. A study reveals that 47 percent of the recipients open the emails that are based on the subject line only. Subject lines are very important in the success of the email marketing strategies that you are undertaking.
Best Practices for Writing Engaging Subject Lines:
- Keep It Short: In an idea world, it should contain 6-10 words. This ensures that they are well visible on mobile devices and also get the readerâs attention within no time.
- Create a Sense of Urgency: Some of the phrases that should be included in the email are âlimited time offerâ or âlast chanceâ to get the subscribers to act. For instance, âOnly 24 hours left: 30% offâ.
- Be Specific: An ambiguous subject line cannot interest the reader and will not make him or her open your email. Employ the use of numbers, statistics or a specific promotion. For instance, âSave 20% on Your Next Purchaseâ is easy to understand and it is something that the customer can do.
- Use Emojis: You can use emojis in the subject lines and this will make your email to stand out from the rest especially if you have used the right emojis that are related to the content of the email. However, do so with caution, for overusing them could be rather unprofessional.
Subject line is crucial as it can help to make recipients open your email and getting a sale is easier when people open your emails.
4. Optimize for Mobile Devices
Over 50% of emails are being opened on a mobile device and so, itâs imperative that your email is mobile friendly. Any email not optimized for mobile will be deleted within no time and thus demark the success of your email marketing strategies.
Key Tips for Mobile Optimization:
- Responsive Design: Make certain that your emails are designed to be mobile friendly; in other words, they should work well across all devices. However, most of the email marketing services provide the features of the responsive templates, so it is better to use them.
- Short and Scannable Content: Length of your email should not be too long, the message should be clear and concise. It is also important to use bullet points, bold text and short paragraphs to make sure the content is easy to read on a mobile screen.
- Clickable Call-to-Action (CTA): Ensure that the CTA buttons are relatively big, especially if you are targeting the mobile users. It should also contain a clear and direct CTA such as âShop Nowâ, or âGet the Discountâ, which has to be easily visible and clickable.
This way you do not lose potential sales in the process due to poor user experience.
5. Test and Analyze Campaigns
Current successful email marketing strategies are based on the analysis of data. This is because evaluating your email campaigns make you know the best strategy to use when dealing with your audience as well as make improvements where necessary.
How to Implement Testing and Analysis:
- A/B Testing: This is also referred to as split testing, here you send two different versions of an email to a small part of your list to compare the performance of the two. It helps in the testing of the various aspects of the email such as the subject line of the email, images, call to action buttons and the content of the email.
- Monitor Key Metrics: Make sure you monitor the open rates, click through rates and conversion rates among your subscribers. These will assist you to determine the effectiveness of your campaigns and give you a clue on the changes to make.
- Refine Strategies Based on Data: Ensure that you use the information that you get in improving your email marketing strategies in the future. If the subject line format that you use brings more opens, make it a key element of your future work.
It is therefore imperative to test and analyze in order to realize improved performance in email marketing and increasing the engagement and sales.
Conclusion
Email marketing has continued to be one of the most efficient ways of communicating with your target audience and increasing sales. These include ensuring that your email list is of high quality, ensure that you are customizing your emails, it is very vital to ensure that your subject lines are enticing, ensure that your emails are optimized for mobile and always endeavor to test and analyze your campaigns.
Implementing these email marketing strategies not only help in the conversion of leads into customers but also helps in building a long term relation with the customers that result in repeated sales.
If you want to get more detailed information on how you can enhance your email marketing approaches with the aim of increasing the effectiveness of your strategies, you can read this ultimate guide.