United States
Updated: May 1st, 2023
In an ever-evolving marketing landscape, one method stands the test of time and technology: email. Simple and effective, email marketing doesn’t just help drive sales—it also keeps you connected with customers at every stage in their buying journey.
To take full advantage of email marketing benefits, it’s crucial to continue experimenting and refining your practices.
Below, we’re sharing how you can optimize email marketing efforts to grow your customer base and increase sales.
Despite the rise of social media, SEO, and content marketing, email marketing campaigns remain one of the most successful forms of outreach—and for good reason.
There are three main benefits of email marketing campaigns:
You can use email marketing to:
When you do it right, email marketing campaigns work extremely well.
For every $1 spent on email marketing, you get roughly $36 back on your investment, according to The CMO’s Guide to Email Marketing from Litmus.
It takes creativity and strategy to perfect your email marketing content and distribution tactics, but in general, email marketing benefits has a low barrier to entry. You don’t need any special training or technical skills to get started.
Improving your email marketing campaign can net you more email subscribers over time, but it’s still important to actively work on increasing your subscriber list to reap the benefits of email marketing.
Here are a handful of simple but effective ways to get your target audience to sign up for your next email marketing strategy.
Before someone clicks out of your site, encourage them to sign up for your promotional emails to receive special news, exclusive product looks, or discounts.
if you share content on your business’s blog, tell people they can get more bite-sized information by signing up for emails.
Share stand-alone posts about the perks of your email marketing list in your social media marketing, and make sure to share your email sign-up link in your profile bios.
If you’ve created shopping guides, ebooks, infographics, or webinars you’d like to share, consider posting them on a gated web page, so people have to input their email addresses to receive access.
Consider doing a giveaway or contest with your customers where part of the requirement is to sign up for your email list.
Ready to step up your email marketing efforts? Consider these eight strategies to maximize the benefits of email marketing:
Every email you send should have a goal, whether it’s to build trust in new customers, bring to your website, or boost your sales on a specific product.
Behind every business goal should be a customer incentive; in other words, why would someone open and read your message?
Clarifying your internal goals and customer incentives can help you with creating personalized content, striking the right tone, and ensuring you’re appealing to your target audience.
Here are some high-level ways to compel your customers to read:
Teach your customers something new, either by sharing an important fact, doling out advice, or detailing how customers can use your products or services to enhance their lives.
Be the first to clue them in on something relevant to their lives.
Acknowledge a problem your customers might be facing, then introduce your business as the solution.
Use time-sensitive words to get potential customers to jump on an opportunity.
Tell customers when your products or services are selling out through promotional emails.
Share positive business reviews and social media comments.
Give customers a chance to escape for a few minutes with an intriguing or fun read.
Send targeted messages that give customers expert advice or reassurance.
Appeal to your customers’ sense of humor.
A welcome email is the first impression a new customer gets of your business, so it’s crucial to make it count. Your welcome email should grab a reader’s attention and inspire them to take action in some way. Here are the key components of a strong welcome message:
Depending on your brand, go for something warm, exciting, or helpful. Think: “We’re happy you’re here!” “Get ready for exclusive discounts every month!” or “Your first step to getting started.”
You want to be informative without giving everything away. Share a few details about your business and explain why your customer should care.
Here’s an example of a promotional email for a fake pet food company: “As the largest organic pet food producers in the state, we pride ourselves on delicious, nutritious recipes your animals will love! Our personalized bundles and fast shipping make it easy for you to get the formulas you need to keep your pets fed and happy. Plus, we send discounts and exclusive perks every week.”
Give loyal customers a way to keep interacting with your business and boost website traffic, either by sharing your website, linking to your social media marketing platforms, or inviting them to browse products or purchase a service. You can say “Follow us on social media” or “see more of your favorite items here.”
Just because email is text-based doesn’t mean it’s not also a visual medium. Aesthetics and formatting play a big role in how readable and captivating your email campaigns are.
The more often customers read through your entire email, the more likely they are to open the next one—and the next one, which builds customer loyalty.
So, instead of formatting your business’s email marketing campaigns like business emails, try formatting them like the cover of a print magazine. These changes can make a big difference:
Optimize email for mobile devices: More people than ever scroll through their inboxes on their phones, so it’s smart to make sure your emails look just as sharp on a smaller screen.
Different subject lines and calls to action (CTAs) get different results in email marketing campaigns. Email marketing platforms offer A/B testing—sending one variation of an email to one group of subscribers and another variation to another group—to experiment with different options and see which ones yield the best results.
A subject line is like a door into your business. If potential customers like what they see, they’ll open it and step inside; if not, they’ll walk away.
Getting people to open your email campaigns starts with creating subject lines that grab their attention or pique their curiosity.
Here are some subject line best practices:
When testing different subject lines, try these simple variations:
Whereas a subject line gets people interested, a call to action (CTA) keeps them interested. Usually located at the top and bottom of an email message, CTAs are an invitation to take a specific action, like visiting your business’s website.
Here are some CTA best practices:
When testing different CTAs, try these variations:
It’s important to note that these are general rules of thumb, but every audience is different. Find the marketing strategy that works for your customers and business voice, then try to stay consistent; that’s the best way to ensure you receive all the benefits of email marketing.
Good email marketing copy can make people feel excited, seen, inspired, connected—or all of the above. Not only that, but good copy converts, driving people to keep clicking.
Improving your email marketing copy starts with writing in your business’s voice, whether it’s professional and authoritative or friendly and lighthearted.
From there, it’s helpful to employ these five copy best practices:
Transactional emails are the ones you send when a customer buys something or schedules an appointment. They may seem formulaic and basic, but they’re actually a great addition to your marketing strategy to impress your customers and generate more business.
Here are some easy ways to take your transactional emails to the next level:
Growing your subscriber base requires tailoring your messages to customers based on their personal interests and relationship with your business.
Enter: email segmentation, which lets you send targeted messages to different customers at different times in your email marketing platform.
By segmenting your emails in your email marketing software, you can send more valuable, relevant messages to your customers—and potentially get them to click more.
There are endless ways to segment your customers, but here are some common categories to try in your next marketing strategy:
Create personalized content: If you’ve surveyed your customers before, it’s smart to segment emails according to what your customers have shown interest in, whether it’s a particular product or a certain type of email update.
Reviewing your email analytics tells you what’s working and what isn’t.
By tracking and observing a handful of key metrics, small business owners can learn how to make changes that get more people reading and acting on your emails.
Here are the three most critical metrics that measure your email marketing benefits:
The benefits of email marketing aren’t going anywhere anytime soon—so it’s a good idea to invest in improving your email tactics to secure your current and potential customers.
If rolling out a lot of changes at once feels overwhelming, just pick one or two areas to focus on first in your digital marketing strategy, then make small tweaks from there!
Paige Smith is a content marketing writer who specializes in writing about the intersection of business, finance, and tech. Paige regularly writes for a number of B2B industry leaders, including fintech companies, small business lenders, and business credit resource sites.
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