Despite what some skeptics believe, email marketing is still incredibly effective for a variety of goals. However, if you are struggling with email conversions, you might need to reevaluate your current strategy. Hence, here are the ten effective email marketing strategies to generate more sales.
#1 Know the Basics
First and foremost, you need to start with the basics. When you know the most commonly used techniques for increasing sales through email marketing, you can use them more effectively. Here’s what you should start from:
- Sales. Send emails to your subscribers to inform them about the sales you are holding. These can be holiday, seasonal, and other types of sales.
- Discounts. Likewise, send emails about the discounts currently available for one reason or another (e.g. items are part of the sale, special offer discounts).
- Gift cards. Inform customers about the gift cards they can buy as presents or the gift cards they get for special occasions as a freebie from you.
- Special offers. Create special offers for different customers and send them emails about these offers.
#2 Optimize for Mobile
Though it goes without saying that your emails should be optimized for mobile devices, it’s still worth discussing the topic. Optimizing your emails for mobile is essential for your overall email marketing strategy because a large portion of your audience likely checks the inbox on the go.
Make sure that your emails appear the same way on mobile devices as they do on desktop screens. They must have the same functionality and must adjust to the size of the screen. The same goes for optimizing your website. When a subscriber opens your email on their smartphone and clicks a link that leads to a landing page on your site, they need to get to a page that is also mobile-optimized.
#3 Segment and Personalize
Segmentation of your target audience is essential for launching successful email marketing campaigns. When you work with segments, it is much easier to personalize the emails you send and make them more effective. The more generic your emails are, the less of a response you can expect. That’s exactly why segmentation and personalization are key.
Logan Smith, an expert from the writing services reviews site Writing Judge, says, “Email marketing can give you a surprisingly high ROI. However, to achieve such highs, you need to get more nuanced with your strategy. You can’t treat your audience as a monolith. Work with segments and personalize emails as much as possible. That’s when you’ll see results.”
#4 Re-Engage Inactive Subscribers
One of the biggest problems you can experience is that a part of your subscribers could become unresponsive over time. Some people subscribe and then end up never actually checking your emails. Others will get annoyed or bored by your emails over time. Whatever the case is, you need to try and re-engage inactive subscribers.
There are different ways to do this, but the key to doing it successfully is finding a different approach to every segment of such subscribers. Analyze their past behavior and think about how you can capture their attention again. For example, some people will respond to special offers while others are waiting for an opportunity to find good deals at a holiday sale.
#5 Give Away Valuable Things
While you will have subscribers who provided you with their emails for all kinds of reasons, there is one thing that will likely be true for every person: they will be glad to get something for free. Consequently, giving away valuable things for free could be a great technique for you to use.
This can be anything from free shipping options to free content (e.g. e-books) to free products. In the last case, customers who try your products for free could end up purchasing them later on. Likewise, some people could share their reviews of your products online, thus spreading the word about your brand.
#6 Combine Email and Social Media
Email marketing and social media marketing are both incredibly popular techniques thanks to their effectiveness. This is precisely why combining the two will be particularly powerful. Try to align the type, content, and timing of the content across the social media platforms you use and the emails you send.
Caroline Barrett, an expert from the custom writing reviews site Best Writers Online, explains, “You can cross-promote your email newsletter and your social media accounts, but I would urge you to go even further than that. For instance, if you have a giveaway on social media, ask your audience to subscribe to your email newsletter. Or, on the contrary, inform your email subscribers about the said giveaway being hosted on your social media.”
#7 Schedule Emails Smartly
As mentioned above, the timing of your email and social media activity needs to be aligned. Moreover, you should also take care of scheduling your emails specifically. When you send your emails can greatly influence how many people open them, read them, and respond to them.
The best approach is to run some tests and see when your emails perform the best (and what types of emails these are). You can also consult studies on the topic, but doing your own testing will probably still work best as it will be specific to your current audience.
#8 Use Urgency and Scarcity
FOMO or the Fear Of Missing Out has been a staple in marketing for many years now. Consequently, using urgency and scarcity in your emails to utilize FOMO could help you increase your overall conversions and sales.
How does this look in practice? The basic approach is that you offer something for a limited time or offer only a limited number of items. It doesn’t have to be the product itself – free shipping for a limited time could also be effective.
#9 Send Exclusive Content
While it is definitely important to give away some valuable things for free, you should also care about the quality of your emails as a whole. This is why sending exclusive content at least from time to time will help you establish long-term relationships with your subscribers and will make them more loyal to your brand.
Exclusive content can come in different forms. For instance, you could be conducting interviews with the industry’s leading experts or influencers. Alternatively, you can perform research in your niche and provide the results as valuable insights to your subscribers.
#10 Utilize Social Proof and UGC
Last but not least, don’t forget to utilize social proof and UGC (user-generated content). You probably already have a section on your website with customer testimonials, so why not add some of them to your emails? This way, you can deliver past customer reviews right to your subscribers and persuade them to make a purchase.
UGC can also be included, even if it’s from social media. You can use both quotes from your past customers and photos they share where your products are featured. Just make sure to reach out to the said customers to confirm that they are okay with you using their reviews.
Final Thoughts
To sum up, your current email marketing strategies can definitely be improved, which could help you get more revenue in the long run. Use these email marketing techniques to renovate your strategy and start getting more sales.
About the Author
Rossana Yoder is a professional content writer, copywriter, content strategist, and communications consultant. She started young with her writing career from being a high school writer to a university editor, and now she is a writer in a professional writing platform – her years of expertise have honed her skills to create compelling and results-driven content every single time.