The first step in email marketing is to get the users to subscribe to newsletters. Offering discounts on the first purchase or providing useful information in white papers, ebooks, or buying guides are popular techniques to encourage people to sign up for the newsletter. Personalized newsletters help build strong relationships and gain the loyalty of the customers. Loyal customers respond positively to future promotions and upsell efforts. They are more likely to leave positive reviews and refer other people to the business.
Email marketing is the most effective marketing channel to achieve a high ROI from a loyal customer base through email newsletters campaigns. A successful email marketing strategy is more than tactics.
Email marketing outperforms all online marketing strategies, including SEO, PPC, and content marketing in terms of ROI. An email marketing strategy is an important part of any digital marketing campaign. Email is the most cost-effective digital marketing channel to promote products, communicate with customers, and reach business goals.
***Email Marketing Pro Tip – Use Choice-supportive bias in Email Marketing
People tend to believe and remember the choices they made as better than they were. Your customer chose to purchase the product or service from your business. Validate their choice and praise them for making a great choice in follow-up transactional emails. Pepper your newsletters with affirming messages, and congratulate your customers whenever they purchase. It would prove beneficial when you would send them a personalized email in the future with products or services add-ons (upsell and cross-sell) that closely match their buying history.***
11 Most Popular Email Marketing Strategies-
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Personalize Email Messages and Subject Lines
Personalization refers to using customer data to create a personalized message for specific customer segments based on their buying behavior and purchase history.
A great example of a company that does personalization well is Amazon.
Most of Amazon’s emails are personalized.
It’s not “Dear valued customer,” but “Dear Elizabeth.”
It’s not “You might like these… (Randomly generated)”, but “You might like these (based on buyer history).”
To Amazon, email marketing is not just another marketing channel. It’s key to the overall customer experience. And it’s not just Amazon that has seen these kinds of results through personalization. Personalizing emails help business stand out against the competition.
The simplest form of personalization is to address the reader by name. Most email service providers (ESP) offer this within their functionality, and this tactic alone will improve email marketing campaign performance.
Email subject lines that are personalized with a recipient’s first name can vastly increase the open rates.
Instead of no-reply emails, give a real reply address to improve credibility and appear more personal. Contact information within the email, especially in the email signature, offers readers the opportunity to contact the business or connect online, which helps build a relationship with them.
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Strategic Sign-up forms
Data such as name, date of birth, gender, company, and location help personalize communication. It is suggested to ask for the minimum information needed. Offer a free trial, ebook, whitepaper, case study, or discount codes to people for subscribing to your newsletter.
***Pro Tip – Exclusive Discount Offers
Offer exclusive discount deals through your newsletter. For that to work, provide your newsletter subscriber with better offers and discounts than available otherwise on your website or through affiliates network. ***
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Subscribers Segmentation
Segmenting the customer database makes it possible to target the right audience demographic through email campaigns. The segmentation is simple and can easily be done through CRM software. As a result, email marketing KPIs performance can be made better when businesses segment their email list.
By segmenting subscriber lists, you can see better open rates, revenue, leads, transactions, and more customers. There are lower spam complaints, and unsubscribe rates drop.
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Responsive email design (RED)
Creating a responsive email design means that the user experience is optimized regardless of the device or screen they use. Most email service providers (ESP) offer this solution within their email functionality. You should regularly A/B test the newsletter template design to know the preference of your subscribers and increase engagement and sales.
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The short subject line and pre-header
The subject line of an email is crucial. Short subject lines let the reader knows exactly what the email topic is about. The pre-header text (also known as snippet text) must include a call to action (i.e., Use “FREESHIP” to get free shipping).
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Automated email campaigns
Trigger-based emails are emails that are sent out automatically based on user behavior. The most common trigger emails are ‘welcome’ emails, ‘thank you’ emails, and ‘transactional’ emails, such as order confirmation emails and email receipts. The data behind trigger emails shows us that trigger emails perform much better than traditional emails.
The average click-through rate (CTR) for trigger emails is more than double that of traditional email click-through rates. The best converting websites in the world convert as much as 40% of their traffic using trigger emails.
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Competition Analysis
It is important to know the offers, content, and new products your competitors offer to their newsletter subscribers. Sign-up for your competitor’s newsletter and keep regular track of the content of their newsletters. This would help you remove the deficiencies in your newsletters and give you a better idea of the competitive landscape.
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Gain Reviews through Newsletters
Periodically, send emails to your satisfied and regular customers, asking them to leave their reviews on Google, Yelp, Facebook, and other review platforms. Reviews and customer testimonials are important factors in buying decision process. Create an email marketing strategy to gain maximum reviews of your products and services on major business review platforms.
After a successful sale, you can send a thank-you email to encourage customer reviews. It is best not to offer anything in exchange for a positive review. A simple thank-you email states that you value your customers’ feedback and would be glad if they could spread the positive word about your website on Google, Facebook page, or another review platform of your choice. Don’t forget to give them a link so they can leave a review of your business on the required review platform.
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Power of SCA (Shopping Cart Abandonment) Emails
If the customers add the product to the cart but eventually drop out during the checkout process, send them a reminder email of the items present in their shopping cart. Create a chain of SCA emails that is sent to customers periodically. For example, the first email can be out informing them that their cart is still saved with you, the second email can accompany an offer or discount code, and the third email can induce urgency by stating that it is their last chance to buy the product at a reduced price or discount coupon that will expire soon.
***Pro Tip- Use the principle of Anchoring in Email Newsletters
SCA emails rely on the principle of Anchoring or focalism (The first piece of information that someone acquires on a subject). For example, the first price that the customer sees on the website will affect their purchase decision in the future. Therefore, if the first price customer saw for a Chair was $190, and then the customer sees it reduced to $150 in your SCA email, the customer will be more likely to make a purchase.***
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Highlight value preposition – Upsell and Cross-Sell via Emails
Personalization and customer segmentation allow you to show your customers the exact type of products and deals that they are more likely to avail. Use email marketing to upsell and cross-sell your products. In the newsletter, tell customers which products are frequently bought together or what to buy with the products they have already purchased. If you offer EMI or ‘buy now pay later’ services, highlight them for big-ticket items in your newsletter.
***Pro Tip – Use Pre-order strategy
Ask your newsletter subscribers to pre-order your new product and get extra features or free goodies. Your email subscribers are the best source to create buzz around your newly launched product and generate positive word of mouth. ***
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Integrate Email Marketing with Offline Marketing- (Entice Zero Purchasers)
There are bound to be a large number of people who signed up for your newsletter but never made a purchase. To engage such customers, you can integrate online and offline marketing.
Email template for Zero Purchasers to Increase Sales
For example, David is your zero purchasers.
Send David the below email-
{
Subject– David- We’re missing your shipping address!
Body–
We are missing your shipping address,
We just had a look at your profile in our system, and we realized that we don’t have your shipping address!
…..and that means we couldn’t possibly send you our ‘Giveaway Gift Product/ Case-Study/DVD/ Sample pack (or anything that would help you re-engage with the customer and nudge them towards purchase) for which you only have to pay minimum shipping charges.
More information about our free offer is here- Link
You can create your account here- [Link to the account creation page].
}
You can use this email marketing strategy to persuade your subscribers to create an account and re-engage with your business.
If you offer Giveaway Programs, send the email to your zero purchasers informing them about your Giveaway program.
If you already have the shipping address of your zero-purchases who had previously made their account on the website, you can opt to send them postcards or free samples with creative packaging inserts.
