In the competitive world of eCommerce, it is not enough for you to just use email marketing the way every other business uses this channel. Want to unleash the complete power of email marketing? You have to make sure that your email campaigns are effective, efficient, and personalized to help you stand above your competition. It’s certainly a daunting task – but not impossible.
What is email marketing?
Email marketing is a powerful marketing platform that, along with direct marketing, is a form of digital marketing that utilizes email to promote your company’s products or services. It can help keep your customers informed of your latest items or offers by integrating them into your marketing automation efforts. It can also play a vital part in any marketing strategy, including lead generation, brand awareness, building relationships, or engaging customers between purchases through different types of marketing emails.
A brief history of email
The first email was sent by a computer engineer, Ray Tomlinson, in 1971. The message he sent was just a chain of numbers and some letters, but it was the starting of a new communication era. Tomlinson was also the person who introduced the use of the “@” symbol in email addresses.
In 1978, a marketing manager at Digital Equipment Corp. named Gary Thurk used this new way of direct communication to send the first-ever business email to enable people to know about a new product. His email list only comprised 400 addresses, but the emails he sent resulted in about $13 million in sales.
By the 90s, the Internet had become commercially available to the public. The way people communicated with each other began to change dramatically, and marketers found that email could be an effective way to advertise. The emergence of marketing email also introduced the need for regulatory updates; For example, the UK’s Data Protection Act was adjusted to require an “opt-out” option for all marketing emails.
Advantages of email marketing
An email has become such a popular marketing tool for businesses partly because it compels the user to take some sort of action; An email will remain in the Inbox until it is read, deleted, or archived. But email is also one of the most cost-effective tools available. In fact, a 2015 study by the UK-based Direct Marketing Association (DMA) found that for every $1 spent, email has an average return on investment (ROI) of $38. To learn more about the power of email marketing, check out our email marketing statistics by industry.
Email marketing can help you build relationships with your audience, as well as drive traffic to your blog, social media, or anywhere else you want people to see you. You can also segment your email and target users by demographic so that you can only send people the messages they want to see the most. Here are some email marketing campaign tips to get you started.
Email Marketing allows you to run A/B tests of a subject line or call to action to identify the best-performing message using email marketing software that can also be easily configured to send emails. Check out Mailchimp’s email templates to see what else you can do with email marketing.
4 outstanding ways to boost your email marketing for sales
Gather Organic Leads
Before you see your sales skyrocket, you need to build a list of customers who are interested in your offering. The best way to grow your email list is to create customer personas based on your target audience, and then do marketing to those individuals.
If you want to create a useful image of your ideal customer, you’ll need a variety of information. Start by considering your audience’s pain points and goals, and start thinking about how you can solve their problems. Next, think about the personalities of the people you hope to reach. For example, if you are a marketer, you may avoid sending a funny message to your audience, but someone in the pharmaceutical niche will need a more formal approach. . Use this information to create your brand voice and style.
The more information you have about the people affected by your marketing campaign, the more success you will have across all campaigns.
There are many places where you can find more data about your ideal customers. We recommend that you add Google Analytics to WordPress and monitor relevant social media groups so that you can track objective data and know-how your audience thinks.
Maximize on-site email captures
Now that you have come to know more about the people visiting your website, it’s time to start collecting leads. The more interested consumers you have on your email list, the more potential sales you can get through your email marketing campaign.
The best way to generate leads that are genuinely interested in your product is to offer a lead magnet that solves a problem for consumers. Generally, lead magnets are ebooks, checklists or comprehensive guides that your audience can use to solve a pain point related to your business.
For example, a pet store owner might offer guides for cat and dog owners, as they are the most popular pets. Most visitors to the site will find this information useful and may exchange their email addresses for your guide.
Business owners can use a variety of tips to get leads on the site, but we recommend OptinMonster. OptinMonster is the best way to generate leads for your email marketing campaign because it allows you to create custom pop-ups that target customers based on their behavior on the site.
Segment your lead list
Segmenting your lead list is a great way to increase your sales and open rate. The process of segmenting leads involves taking another look at your Google Analytics information and current email customer statistics. The goal is to divide your customer list into different groups based on their needs and interests.
Let’s go back to the pet store example mentioned in the previous tip. If you are the owner of the business in question, you might want to divide your leads into at least three groups. Specifically, you would create a list with cat owners, one with dog owners, and one for all pet owners.
Using analytical data, you will determine where customers are segmented based on their behavior on your website, or where they competed when they signed up, based on data entered in a user registration form.
You should then create different content based on your products and your segmented lead lists. The owner of the pet website can create a list of suggestions for new dog owners in the form of a lead magnet, and cat owners can view an offer that includes discounts on all cat-related products. Knowing more about your potential customers can help you develop lead magnets relevant to your industry.
Conclusion
When we think of email marketing, we often think of the direct messages we send to our customers. The truth is that a successful email campaign doesn’t just require a catchy title and good copy.
You need to make sure that your emails are reaching customers, that you are sending personalized content, and that you are consistently generating new leads and developing your customer persona. Once you are able to fit all of these pieces together based on your business, you will be able to use your email marketing campaign to increase your sales and leads.
