What is email marketing?
The concept of email marketing is simple. Essentially, it is using emails to send commercial messages to a group of people.
The main reasons for sending emails are to build loyalty, trust, or brand awareness. You are sending emails to your current customers and to potential customers because it is a chance to speak to them directly - and at the end of the day, it results in making sales.
Many new internet brands nowadays overlook email marketing, thinking that is not something for their company and simply ignore it. Silly, isn't it?
But the fact is - email marketing is more effective than social media when it comes to converting people > subscribers and customers! Here are some main benefits:
📋 Emails are easy, effective, and inexpensive
📋 You can measure them and their traffic
📋 You can track who has opened your email, which links were clicked, and how many people unsubscribed
“Email allows us to engage our audience in a creative, personalized way that blog posts or tweets can’t.” - Corey Dilley
But how do you do to make more sales with email marketing?
There are several ways to generate sales with email marketing. In this post, there are 7 easy ways to make it happen.
👉🏻 Use automation
As the word states, this is about letting emails move automatically. Meaning; without doing the work all the time, you can create emails with the right message to reach the right people at the right time.
For example, welcome emails we receive every time we subscribe to a company's mailing list aren't really necessary, but people notice when there isn’t any email welcoming them for subscribing.
And according to Mailchimp, 74% of people expect to receive a welcome email when they subscribe to a mailing list. Crazy, right? Automated emails make subscribers more receptive.
Other emails are the 'abandoned cart' emails. Sometimes, shoppers on your website add things into a shopping cart, but for different reasons, abandon it. These emails can help you recover those lost sales. You just have to know your audience, and then you can start recovering their interest. A good platform for marketing automation is Wishpond. You can automatically send welcome emails, content and reminders which will allow you to spend more time focusing on more important things. You can even personalize this content and close deals faster.
According to Harvard Business Review, sales and marketing arising have ranged from 10% to more than 30% and investment returns have often exceeded 100%.
Sounds too good to be true, right? Let us take advantage of this excellent opportunity.
👉🏻 Personalize your emails
Personalized emails are targeted emails made to reach the subscribers by leveraging the data and information you have about them. The most used data is their name.
According to Campaign Monitor, personalized emails are 26% more likely to be opened. So, it is granted that using subscribers’ names in the subject line of any email will make them click on your campaign.
Obviously, not every one of them will click on it, but at least you know that at least half of them will.
Birthday emails are quite effective. Imagine getting a special promotional code just you and only you, because it is your birthday 🎂🎉. According to Experian, these emails have:
📧 179% higher unique click-through rate
📧 342% higher revenue per email rate
📧 481% higher transaction rate. Subscribers are incredibly more like likely to purchase from the Birthday emails than a normal promotional email.
Right here is a good example of email personalization from Spotify. This action encourages the recipient to attend some artists events with Spotify, based on the data collected (which is the location in this case).
At the same time, it helps to ensure that the user is actively using the platform, and therefore continuously reminded of their value.
👉🏻 Add a sense of urgency to your emails
Adding urgency in your emails could put subscribers under pressure to act as quick as possible. Adding content that helps nudge your subscribers to act right away. The secret to creating a sense of urgency here is word choice. Words like:
“5 more days left to register”
“Limited time only”
“Last chance to purchase”
Here is a great example of urgency in emails from END.
You can see words like “last chance” and “only 24 hours remaining” telling the subscribers to hurry up. Everyone acts under urgency situations. It is assumed that in this way, you will convert subscribers unto customers and drive sales up.
👉🏻 Use the word “You”.
This word is very powerful and adding it into your emails could be very useful. CareerAddict listed the word "you" in the Top 1 of the 8 most persuasive words in the English language.
Everyone loves hearing this word. This is because people tend to react and be more open when they feel that you are talking directly to them. It is likely for them to read emails like this - because they feel personalized.
Imagine adding the subscriber's name within a sentence and implementing the word “you” in the message.
🤩 Now, that is what I call conviction.
So, start getting your emails open by using "you" in them!
👉🏻 Use social proof.
Implementing proof where other users and customers have confirmed that they liked a product or service, will pull the potential customers’ emotions in an attempt to get the same results as the rest of the satisfied customers.
Just by implementing reviews, comments, recommendations, or social sharing from customers in an email will definitely lead to sales.
The reason it works is simple. It gives users an example of who is using the products, what they think of them, and if they work or not.
You can implement customers testimonials because it is a way where customers talk about how much they liked a product and allow potential customers to see that passion.
This is an example of testimonial about Human Headphones:
Customers reviews are also a great way of social proof. Combining it with other information and visuals increases the chances that people will click through and make purchases.
An example of how important customers reviews are: Airbnb
Since customers cannot check the stays they will be living in, they need social proof to make sure it is worth making the purchase.
The same with your emails. Make subscribers find it worth it to click and purchase the product.
But be careful:
1. You do not want to show only a little amount of social proof.
You cannot be having 70 negative reviews and 4 positive ones and pretend to engage customers 👎🏻
2. Not having enough reviews shows potential customers that not many people are using this product and that it is probably not worth their time. You will lose customers and not make sales 👎🏻
👉🏻 Make them easily readable on mobile devices
According to HubSpot, mobile opens accounted for 46 per cent of all email opens. The iPhone is the most popular mobile client for reading emails with 29 per cent of all opens occurring on this platform. Gmail is a close runner-up at 27 per cent.
With those facts said, we can say mobile is the future of everything and that desktops are dying little by little.
✨I suggest you check out our guide of the Top 10 Email Marketing Tips for Entrepreneurs for some key points for email mobile-optimization.
✨Over half of the customers have unsubscribed from the brand’s promotional emails because they did not display on mobile. Others have marked them as spam.
✨Optimizing your emails for mobile is crucial, otherwise, they will not even be opened. People will delete or just ignore them.
✨Consider the use of mobile-responsive design. Platforms like Mailchimp offer templates that can suit your needs, and by that way create mobile-responsive emails.
✨Another aspect to consider is the use of buttons instead of links. When using fingers on a touchscreen, buttons are more attractive than links in an email.
One final thought:
Your website must be mobile-friendly as well. Imagine a person clicking the amazing red button on the email with their phone and then being redirected to a website that looks downright horrible on the phone.
No way! That person is for sure closing the browser and going back to whatever he or she was doing 👎🏻
It needs to be perfect.
👉🏻 Choose the correct time to send emails
You can get more clicks on your emails, more subscribers and more customers if you send them at the right times.
According to Sleeknote, emails sent at 8 AM, 1 PM, and 5 PM perform the best. Use these time slots. You can also consider sending emails based on each recipient’s time zone.
But always remember:
👁 It is the time that works best for your specific audience.
👁 Every email list is made up of a different group of people and different habits.
👁 Your audience behaviour will determine the best hour to send your emails.
It is a matter of analysing your subscribers’ responses. Analysing the clicks and visits to determine the best time in the day.
🎯 With these different tactics, you will definitely increase the number of sales 🎯
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About the Author
Peter is a Spanish Marketing Intern at Profile High Club. He studies a BA in Business Management with Marketing at London South Bank University. He is passionate about travelling, and loves learning and discovering new things. Peter, having grown up in Spain, can speak 2 languages fluently, and hopes to improve his French very soon.
Find Peter on LinkedIn.
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