Email marketing has an annual revenue of 8,49 billion dollars. Its highest return on investment (ROI) is noted among businesses in retail, eCommerce, and consumer goods – $45 for $1 spent.
If you are wondering how to get your share of the market, you came to the right place. In this article, we are going to walk you through the four best strategies for email marketing that will help you increase your sales.
1. Choose the right email software for your business
There are 4,17 billion email users worldwide and 319,6 billion sent emails every day. You can’t reach them all, so if you want your email marketing to be successful, you have to target the right people at the right time by segmenting your audience and creating more personal targeted emails.
You can segment your audience manually, but the best and fastest way to do it is to use one of the email marketing software available.
65% of marketers worldwide are using software for their email marketing, and for good reasons too. This software allows you to create engaging email letters, send personalized bulk emails, manage your contact list, segment your users into groups, and track the performance of your email marketing.
Here is the list of the top three email marketing software that can help you optimize your email marketing.
Their free version allows you to store an unlimited number of subscribers, create custom signups and popups, build your landing pages, track your online ads, and more.
It is a great tool to start with. The price for more advanced HubSpot features starts at $45 per month.
This beginner-friendly software allows you access to an unlimited number of emails, easy tracking, built-in tools for social media sharing, list segmentation, eCommerce integration with Shopify, end more.
They offer a 60-day free trial. The starting price will be $9,99 per month upon the free trial completion.
This is another user-friendly email marketing software. It allows you to send transactional emails, segment users, select the best time for bulk emails, create workflows for automated follow-up emails, and more.
The free version will cover an email marketing plan with unlimited contacts and the possibility of sending 300 emails per day. The paid version starts from $25 per month.
2. Find the right balance with your email cadence
How often should you send emails to your subscribers? This is one of the toughest questions that marketers have to face.
If you over-send your emails, you risk less engagement, more complaints, and more spam reports.
On the other hand, under-sending can result in missed revenue opportunities, lowered lifetime value of your subscribers, and unsatisfied customers.
Instead of giving you an exact number, we are going to look at some studies that will help you get insight into subscribers’ decision-making process.
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This chart answers the question: “How often, if ever, would you like to receive promotional emails from companies that you do business with?”
[Source: marketingsherpa]
Around 62% of people who have subscribed to email lists say that they expect to receive at least one email a week.
One of the most wholesome case studies on this topic was conducted by Returnpath. They divided subscribers’ accounts into three categories – the primary (most engaged users), secondary (semi-active users), and dead (inactive users).
[Source:returnpath]
Here is what they’ve concluded: “In simple terms, we found that engaged, Primary accounts will tolerate up to about five emails per week from a given sender. Beyond that, the ensuing complaints increase dramatically, and read rates drop significantly.”
Another analysis conducted by Zetta Sphere provides us with a more precise answer. Based on 199 million email analyses, they’ve concluded that the ideal number of email campaigns per week is 6,21.
[Source: zettasphere]
These studies should help you get a general idea of how many emails you should send to your subscribers. If you want to tailor the number to fit your business’ needs, try answering the following questions:
- How often will you have something valuable to send to your subscribers?
- What do you sell?
- How big is your business?
- What is your direct competition doing with their email campaign?
- What do you expect to gain from your email campaign?
3. Deliver relevant quality emails
The average time that your subscribers spend reading your email is 10 seconds. This is how long you have to capture their attention. Here are five tips that can help your emails stand out from the crowd:
Open with a short but valuable subject line
Personalize your subject line by adding the recipient’s name. This will give them the feeling that you are speaking directly to them.
It is advisable to keep the length under 30 characters for your subject line and make sure it is a precise description of the content in your email.
Write in the second person
Use pronouns “you,” “your,” and “yours” to give the impression that your email content is not about your business but about your reader.
Use actionable language in your call-to-action (CTA)
Make your CTA easy to spot. Use words that drive action like “Buy Now” or “Sign Up Today”. Make sure you implement several CTAs throughout your email content and create landing pages.
Have a look at how Netflix created their CTA
[Source: campaignmonitor]
You can’t miss that red button as it is made to contrast the background.
Keep it simple
Don’t use difficult language or technical jargon. Instead, try to set the tone as if you are speaking to a friend. Be to the point and make sure your content brings instant value.
Use videos in your emails
Using videos in your emails is a sure way of attracting your readers’ attention. 47% of businesses use videos for their email marketing. You can use videos to announce an upcoming event or a new product launch, or you can use them as bonus content for your readers’ pleasure.
4. Make sure you create mobile-friendly emails
More than 50% of email campaigns are viewed on mobile devices. To make sure your emails are readable on small devices, try doing the following:
- Keep the number of your subject line characters between 25 and 30;
- Use pre-header text;
- Keep your CTAs front and center;
- Make your content click-friendly.
If you are not sure how to optimize your emails for mobile devices, consider hiring a professional web design agency to help you deliver quality content to your mobile users.
When opened on a mobile device, your email should look something like this:
[Source: sleeknote]
Summary
When creating the strategy for your email marketing, always have your target audience in mind. Make sure you deliver quality content readable across all devices. Use email software that best suit your business needs to get faster to the ultimate goal – increased sales.
If you find email marketing a bit too complicated and time-consuming, you can always outsource it to one of the best email marketing companies.
We hope our article helped you understand what to do to make a successful email marketing campaign that will drive sales, increase revenue, and expand your subscribers’ list.