There’s been a lot of talks lately that email marketing is either dead or
dying. It seems that we no longer trust emails. And, frankly speaking,
browsing through your inbox has become quite a tedious task. Now you have to
dig useful and needed emails out of the huge pile of garbage, namely
promotions and spam.
These days you can find a lot of communication channels to invest your money
into, such as social media, search engine optimization, link building, and so
on and so forth. Maybe, email marketing is no longer among top priorities of
lead generation.
We wanted to answer this question ourselves. Take a look at what we've
found out.
You don’t like email marketing? You just don’t know how to use it. And if you
still haven’t increased your sales numbers by at least 20% using emails, you
should definitely check out these tips. With over 144 billion emails sent
each and every day, email marketing remains one of the elite channels of
business communication. So, why not increase your profit in one click? This
click is all that’s required to start implementing these overly-helpful tips
right now!
Image for a Lead Magnet
The Ideal Newsletter Checklist
Why should a
salesperson use email marketing?
Ways to increase sales with email marketing
Email tips and tricks
Best practices of email marketing
10 tips to increase sales through email marketing
Top 10 free tools for an email marketer
What can you expect after using these tips?
Conclusion
Why should a salesperson use email marketing?
Email marketing has been proving itself useful from lots of different
perspectives. Marketers and salespeople are still holding on to it quite
strongly for the following data-backed reasons:
1. Email marketing is an excellent method to keep in touch with your clients
Let's say your task is to raise brand awareness without spending a large
amount of money on advertising. Here, email marketing is exactly what you
need. In fact, despite a common belief that customers get irritated by
constant emailing, Nielsen report proved that 28% of US shoppers subscribe to
store newsletter or product emails to remain in touch.
Also, you can increase your sales with email marketing by delivering valuable
content to the potential clients of the company. In 2013, the Relevancy Group
reported that companies which sent videos as part of their emails had their
revenues increased by 40%. In 2018, with the impressive growth of Youtube,
Facebook Live, and overall video content this percentage is, perhaps, even
more remarkable.
2. A straightforward method to reach smartphone users
Email Marketing Practices
A study conducted by Litmus shows that almost 60% of emails in 2017 were
opened on mobile devices.
Therefore, email marketing is a cutting-edge approach to replace mobile and
SMS-promotion. It possesses series of benefits that neither SMS nor mobile
calls have:
email marketing works on all mobile devices, not just phones;
emailing is free for your customers, while some telecom operators charge for
texting;
emails have more possibilities: you can send images, video, Flash-elements,
etc.
3. Email coupons increase the rates of both online and in-store sales.
This statement is backed by the data of Deloitte recent study. It showed that
65% of customers value coupons while doing grocery shopping. Speaking of
that, a study for National Retail Federation has proven that over 60% of
email campaign target audience has used an email coupon at least once.
If you give customers a chance to save money, it will increase sales rates
and improve the customer-brand relationship. Email marketing is a fine
approach to accomplish it.
4. Email marketing is cheap compared to other marketing channels
Many entrepreneurs tend to believe that using mass mailing services will lead
to more expenses, so dreaded by companies and, especially, startups. In fact,
they couldn't be more wrong. The amount of money (and effort) you spend
on such services solely depends on how wisely you choose your email marketing
platform.
With NetHunt in your email marketing process, you receive high-grade CRM
solution to segment your mailing lists according to your customers'
experiences, needs, and desires. Naturally, this results in customers loyalty
and more revenue for your company. So by paying less, you actually do receive
more.
Besides, the pricing is very reasonable, taking into account that this system
allows you to complete numerous tasks without ever leaving Gmail. By paying
only $24 a month you can send up to 2 000 emails via email campaigns DAILY.
But there's more: with this plan you receive an unlimited number of users
in one workspace as well as email and link tracking. Pretty sweet, right?
5. Helpful for lead nurturing
Email marketing has a strategy that allows marketers to send messages to an
interested audience, known as targeted messaging. As you know, prospects are
in different stages of sales. Some of them are close to a purchase, others
are actively considering buying an item or service, and some are just
browsing. Email marketing is a way to address each of these groups of people
with customized messages.
Use NetHunt CRM to group your leads by stage, location, interests, problem,
etc. to approach them with the message they long to hear but instead end up
receiving impersonal and vague newsletters. Sending emails that resonate with
prospects' problems and provide them with solutions will definitely put
you ahead of your competitors.
Also, letters from mass mailing platforms are almost always recognized by
email services as promotional and go directly into the corresponding folder.
It just so happens that people ignore everything that appears in the
"Promotions" folder.
The good news is that now you can run email marketing campaign and be sure
your emails will end up in clients' main inbox, totally for free. Since
NetHunt sends emails using Gmail directly, your newsletters will appear right
in the primary inbox. This means that your emails will never ever be ignored.
Here's what a Gmail integrated CRM looks like:
Email Marketing Practices
It should be noted that with the help of NetHunt CRM anyone can set up an
automated sending of fully personalized emails based on the variety of rules
and conditions. However, once the emails are sent the work is not done. You
still need to analyze how everything went, and to do so statistics is very
much needed.
That's why NetHunt provides you with invaluable insights by tracking not
only emails but also links. Choose the links you need to be tracked either
for each campaign or by default. Also, see who hasn't read your
newsletter. Later you will be able to send customized emails to the leads who
opened the letter and separately for those who for some reason didn't.
Email Marketing Practices
The major convenience of such sending is that you do not need to select each
customer manually. You do not even need to input their name each time. Once
you add them to your contacts, fill all the required fields, and assign a
respective group, you can set conditions and rules for sending. Organizing a
dispatch to hundreds of people takes no more than 5 minutes. And they all
will receive a unique letter with their own name and title mentioned.
6. Boosting brand awareness
With recent Facebook News Feed changes, it’s getting harder to rely solely on
social media to support brand awareness. Turns out, email marketing is an
effective tool to keep your prospects interested.
If someone has subscribed to your newsletters, it means there is some level
of interest in your company. With email marketing tactics, you can nurture
this curiosity and turn someone who barely knows the brand into a devoted
fan.
In order to build brand awareness, you do not necessarily have to throw four
daily emails at your subscribers. Instead, with the help of an email reminder
service make some weekly digests, listicles, letters with lifehacks in your
niche. Even if the letter doesn’t sell itself, it can still generate a lead.
So, as you can see, even though email marketing as a promotion tool has been
around for a while, it is yet the tried-and-true way to move your target down
the sales funnel and turn a prospect into a loyal customer. All you need to
do is to use effective strategies and techniques.
2. Ways to increase sales with email marketing
Some tips for increasing sales with email marketing prove themselves to be
extremely efficient.
1. Use coupons to encourage people to subscribe to your newsletter
If your shop already has clients, you can import their emails into your
subscribers’ list. If it doesn’t, there is another solution:
Create a pop-up on your website that will offer your clients a coupon.
Email Marketing Practices
It’s important that you don’t request an email address immediately. Let your
customer click the button with a Call-To-Action (CTA), and only then ask for
an email.
As long as people get a promotion coupon, they will be eager to get what you
offer, as well as subscribe to a newsletter.
P.S. If you run your website on WordPress, you can install the pop-up plugin
here.
2. Share useful stuff that somehow relates to your products
If you don’t feel like lowering the price of the product, there is another
strategy to please both clients and subscribers: deliver value.
When planning on how to increase sales using email marketing tips, think
about questions people have when using your products. You can answer them and
present a comprehensive How-To manual. Then place the pop-up on your website
and ask people if they want to download a useful manual in exchange for the
email address.
Email Marketing Practices
3. Start a contest
Here's some universal truth: most people like playing. And more than
that, they definitely like winning. This fact can help you get new leads. You
can hold a giveaway as well as something that requires creative work: it’s
for you to choose.
Contests help generate a lot of sign-ups, but there is a risk of getting a
pile of irrelevant subscribers, ending up with a high rejection rate, and
having your emails marked as spam.
You can either set up a pop-up that tells subscribers about the contest and
asks for their email addresses or create a landing page and promote it.
Email Marketing Practices
4. Welcome letter campaign
There was an experiment published in The Marketing Land which proved that
welcome letters are read by 42% more subscribers than promotional ones.
Marketers and salespeople should take a note of this data. Make your welcome
email not just a hollow “hi there”, but an encouragement to buy something,
visit your blog, etc.
Here's a great example of an engaging welcome email:
Email Marketing Practices
It’s a welcome email with a coupon: a great way to convince prospects to buy
something at your store.
3. Email tips and tricks
One of the main purposes of emails is to deliver value. That’s why
instructional letters perform very well. Here’s what you can share:
hacks on how to use your product;
tips on something related to the industry;
expert opinions about your product or the type of solutions you provide.
Email Marketing Practices
Connect your email to seasonal events
In email marketing, it’s important to be at the right place at the right
time. It’s no secret that sales rates in December get higher than ever, all
because of Christmas and New Year’s Day.
Marketers and salespeople can use holidays to their own advantage. For
example, think about how your solutions can be linked to certain events. Try
to be creative with some fresh ideas.
Tip: if there’s no creative spark, sign up for mailing lists of a few brands,
and you will get inspiration delivered straight to your inbox.
Email Marketing Practices
Write Cart Abandonment letters
It’s a good method to reach out to prospects who visited your site, added a
product to the cart, and left without purchasing, and turning them into
customers.
Cart abandonment letters are an extremely powerful tool for e-commerce
practices. Statistically, 68.9% of shopping carts end up being abandoned, and
30% of sales are possible to be recovered with such a letter:
Email Marketing Practices
For additional efficiency, consider adding a promotion coupon to the letter
or offer free shipping to motivate people to check out.
Let your subscribers know when new goods arrive in the store
Of course, in order for you to win sales using this technique, you have to
update your stock frequently and inform your customers about the new arrival
with the help of one of the many email reminder services. Also, it’s more
efficient if the goods are something to shout about: a clothing brand
everyone was asking for, a gadget that is popular on the market, etc.
Speaking of examples of Stock Update emails, the picture below is a good one:
Email Marketing Practices
Segment your emails
These days personalization matters. People get piles of emails, so they only
get interested in the ones that respond to their interests and which match
their experiences.
However, if you have a large number of readers, it’s hard to write an email
that could meet all their needs. That’s why segmentation can come in handy.
You can make segmented lists based on different criteria:
hobbies of your subscribers;
behaviors (groups of products they browsed);
stages of sales funnel consideration, ready-to-buy, etc.);
location (newsletter for Americans, Russians, etc.).
Odds are, segmentation will dramatically boost up your return on investment
(ROI). At the very least, the opening rate will be higher than it was before.
Why? The answer is simple: people are exhausted of being buried in tons of
irrelevant emails. Take a look at the following data:
Email Marketing Practices
As you can see, almost 50% of respondents get irrelevant emails daily. Most
of them end up in the Spam folder for different reasons:
Email Marketing Practices
Being flagged as Spam is one of the worst nightmares that could happen to
your email campaign. It can drop your deliverability, and subscribers won’t
even get your next letters. An effective way to avoid this is to employ CRM,
thanks to which the letters will always get to clients’ inboxes. This ensures
that your letter will be seen and significantly increases the chances that it
will be read.
If you segment letters, your subscribers can get news about the offers that
match their interests. A research conducted by TechnologyAdvice determined
several ways for email marketers to improve their strategies.
Email Marketing Practices
Do you know what is good news here? Email segmentation covers top three
points, therefore, immensely improves your marketing strategy.
Reward customers for being loyal and re-engage the old ones
Do you have people who have been consistently buying your products during the
last year? Email marketing is a great way to say “thank you”. Here are some
ways to do it:
a “thank you” letter;
a gift card of a certain value;
a free product.
This technique will get you some devoted fans and brand advocates.
Email Marketing Practices
If you have old clients who haven’t bought anything from you during the last
year, use email reminder service as a re-engagement tool. Send your old
customer a gift card to remind them that you are there for them.
Segmentation Via Shopping Behaviors
The idea of segmentation via shopping behaviors is somehow similar to cart
abandonment emails, but not by all means. The idea behind this is to reach
out to the customers who visited your website, even if they didn’t add
anything to the cart.
This algorithm has been implemented by a significant number of retailers all
over the world. It is very efficient as a reminder for people who might have
forgotten to check out because they switched to some other activity.
Email Marketing Practices
Send follow-up emails
Most shops don’t deliver products right after they’ve been ordered online.
Odds are after your clients made a purchase, they’ll have to wait for a
while.
Don’t leave them disoriented. A follow-up email is a great way to keep your
client posted and inform them on what they can do afterward. Here’s what you
can write about:
thank a client for a purchase;
update them on the status of their product;
remind that you have customer support ready to answer any questions.
A follow-up email is quite a little detail, but it’s a great way to keep in
touch with your clients.
Email Marketing Practices
Ask Subscribers For Insights
This is by far the most productive way to develop your email list: asking the
readers themselves to influence the business they deal with and the service
they receive.
This strategy is winning because of its transparency. A user can know what to
expect from your brand, therefore your emails won't get high rejection
rates or be flagged as Spam.
4. Best practices of email marketing
No matter if you run or work for a B2B or a B2C company, there are universal
email marketing tips to boost up sales.
Conduct A/B testing
When you think about how to increase sales with email marketing, there are
some key components that need testing. You never know what is the right
subject line, when it's better to send an email, etc, for your audience
until you try several options and choose the best one among them.
These are the elements you need to test:
Sender Name;
Subject Line;
Time of the Day To Send;
Time of the Week.
The subject line testing
According to a research carried out by MailChimp, if you use specific words
in a subject line, you could significantly increase open rate.
Email Marketing Practices
As you can see, words “New” or “Discount” are no longer in favor as they used
to be. Instead, email with the word “posts” have the highest open rate. For
email marketers, it means one very important thing: people value information,
and you should deliver it in your newsletters.
Pay attention to these top-5 words to use in your subject line:
posts;
jobs;
survey;
week’s;
e-newsletter.
Also, you should be careful because some words can be considered as spam.
Those are, according to that exactly report, "upgrade",
"features", "confirm", "raffle",
"magic". Sure, you can test those yourself to see how they
influence your deliverability, but as for what the study recommends, it’s
better to avoid using them.
Of course, there are no strict rules as to which subject lines will work, and
which ones will fail. So all you should do here, simply be creative. Just as
Barack Obama did in his newsletter subject lines. The former president used
short titles, but they were very well-received by the public:
Email Marketing Practices
How long should your subject line be?
It’s important to have the right length of your subject line. Once again,
there is no “magic number” that will fit for every industry, and that’s why
you should test lines of different length. However, a study performed by
SuperOffice, suggests 6 to 10 words to be the best option.
Email Marketing Practices
As you can see, emails with long subject line have low open rates. That
happens because some words are cut out and readers don’t see what the letter
is about.
Statistics show that using a subject line with a recipient’s name performs
more effectively than the one without it.
Email Marketing Practices
One of the undeniable practices in email marketing is using song lyrics or
movie lines in subject lines.
Testing sending time
If you need to figure out the best time to send an email, find out a lot of
information about your audience. A good recommendation here is to try all
days of the week to figure out the best one for your subscribers.
But if you have neither time nor resources to do the testing, here is what
researchers are saying: statistically, the most appropriate day to conduct
email campaigns is Tuesday.
Email Marketing Practices
Obviously, weekends perform horribly because your subscribers want to spend
time with families, not check their emails.
The time of the day is just as important as the day of the week. Once again,
every data on this matter is highly individual, yet trustworthy.
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Statistically speaking, the best time to send an email is 3 pm. However, you
can test the time from 12 till 3 pm to see whether the data from the study is
good for your email campaign.
Creating a landing page for every campaign
It’s needed to A/B test emails in order to have the best open rate possible.
However, you shouldn’t ignore setting up the destination your subscribers get
to when they click the links in the letter. Traditionally, it is usually one
of three following ways:
the homepage of your website;
a deeper link to a blog or another page: a new product, feature, etc;
a separate landing page.
According to the research performed by MarketingShepra, dedicated landings
have better conversions than other destinations.
Here are two simple reasons why dedicated landing pages perform so well:
they do a better job matching visitor expectations because you can link the
landing page content to one of the emails;
visitors don’t get lost whereas on the homepage of a website they have to
look at a page where they can read about the product, make an order, read
reviews, etc.
But what can you do if you lack the budget to set up a landing page for each
new campaign? There is a solution: as you share a link to any page of your
website with your subscribers, make sure it has a banner or a pop-up that
reminds of email marketing campaign or reflects the offer mentioned in the
letter.
Ask for social sharing
You will reach out to a lot of customers with the means of email reminder
service, especially by making your emails optimized and creating dedicated
landing pages. But why stop there? You can do more than that by asking your
subscribers to share newsletters with friends.
As claimed by GetResponse in their study, emails with social sharing buttons
demonstrated 55% Click Through Rate (CTR) higher than those without ones.
A/B test your offers
If you claim to be aware of your customer’s wishes, A/B testing of subject
lines might not be very effective. Although, such a test can be a fine
approach to check the offers in your letters.
For starters, present two offers (a discount and a free shipping, for
example), and find out which one performs better during the campaign.
However, as time goes by, you will need to test new offers as well as
readjust to the current marketing trends.
A/B testings, as well as email optimization for sharing on social media, are
important practices. Implementing those, you will boost both the image of the
company and sales rates.
Email Marketing Practices
What is the easiest way to do this?
If you work with Google services, you would best choose one of the numerous
compatible CRMs. Using such a system allows you to conveniently collect all
the files associated with a certain customer in one place: emails in Gmail,
chat messages in Hangouts, reminders in Calendar, and handwritten notes in
Keep.
You can get an idea of your workflows, analyze the current situation or
discover trends, classify customers, and find the right data through advanced
search capabilities.
For example, NetHunt can be connected to your Google account to enhance its
already wide capabilities, allowing to create and manage sales pipelines,
organize support services, manage hiring, run marketing campaigns, and much
more.
Email Marketing Practices
Capabilities of Google-connected Nethunt CRM:
Turn your emails into CRM records;
Organize and manage sales leads, marketing outreaches or support cases within
customizable views;
Group records by assignees, stages, deal sizes, urgency, etc.;
Check and update client data without leaving Gmail;
Generate reports to analyze your sales results;
Use advanced search capabilities for finding any data stored in CRM.
Organizing a test mailing to your customers using this system will help you
figure which topics, time periods, and other influential factors are
essential for your sales.
5. 10 tips to increase sales through email marketing
So far we have looked at the importance of email marketing, how sales can be
increased with its help and what efficient practices there are. Now,
let's go through the tried-and-true tips to generate even more revenue
with the help of email marketing.
1. Find and test the most effective email formats
The advantages of plain text:
Lower risk of being marked as spam. Due to the flood of promotional emails
with pictures, videos, and links, spam-checkers are now very cautious
regarding rich HTML. Plain text, as well as basic HTML, don’t stand the risk
of being considered spam.
Suitable for mobile devices. Plenty of modern smartphones display nothing but
text. By sending a plain-text message to subscribers, you can be sure that
they will see it on their devices just as you intend them to be shown.
More personal. Plain text emails are perceived as much less commercial than
bright HTML-templates. You’ll be creating the effect of personal
communication, hence looking more trustworthy.
The disadvantages of plain text:
Limited forms of content supported. You can’t use bright pictures, GIFs,
links, and videos. Therefore, the text is your only hope of winning your
subscriber’s heart. Plain text emails are not visually powerful, therefore
you’ll have to work twice as hard on your copy;
Lack of visual appeal in displaying links. In order to put a link in a
plain-text email, you’ll have to fully type it. Since some links are long
enough with strange characters in them, and most of them don’t look pretty,
it may be hard to encourage the reader to click them.
When should you use HTML?
It’s clear that you need minimal efforts to write a plain text email. With
HTML, however, you’ll need someone to code it for you, optimize it both for
computers and mobile devices, test it on different screens. Sounds like a lot
of hustling. Is the result worth all the trouble?
There are some undeniable advantages of HTML emails that you should take into
account:
They promote brand awareness. In a plain text email, you cannot put your
brand logo, images, custom fonts, etc. HTML opens a lot of visual
possibilities, so the reader can remember your company better.
Strong visual appeal.HTML-emails are bright, fancy, and captivating. You can
challenge your creativity adding images, GIFs, and videos of all kinds;
Easier for a reader to scan. Most of the HTML-templates are designed in the
way that it’s not even necessary to read them. Your reader can just scan the
letter and focus on the most important parts (for example, the offer).
Nowadays, when most of us have a short attention span, having a chance to
read emails in few seconds can be a huge advantage to your subscribers;
You can use clickable buttons and hyperlinks.With the help of HTML,
you'll be able to format the link the way that’s going to be the most
appealing to readers. Make it either as a hyperlink or as a button;
The possibility to measure the efficiency of performance. With HTML-emails,
you are free to use all kinds of metrics: open rates, click through rates,
etc. You’ll always know exactly how your campaign is performing.
Disadvantages of HTML
Takes much more time and effort to create. You’ll either need to dive into
coding yourself or hire someone who can do it for you. Also, the code should
be as clean as possible, otherwise, welcome to the spam folder;
Is associated with promotional emails. Most of HTML-emails your readers get
are promotional. Therefore, our trust to beautifully coded and bright letters
is quite low. Chances are, no one will even read an HTML-email.
Basic HTML vs Rich HTML
As was mentioned above, plain text can outperform HTML due to the two main
reasons: people feel suspicious about bright letters with lots of pictures,
buttons, etc., and spam checkers filter HTML.
However, those problems usually come up when we think of Rich HTML format.
It’s the one that’s all bright and shiny, like this:
Email Marketing Practices
If you don’t want to appear aggressive, consider using basic HTML. The
difference between two formats is that basic HTML is, in fact, your average
plain text email where HTML is used only to add several simple elements, such
as headlines and clickable links.
Email Marketing Practices
What do your subscribers think?
To every format, there are pros and cons to consider. Sometimes it’s not that
easy to make up your mind. Here’s a solution to that: find out what your
readers want to see in their inboxes.
2. Make your email mobile friendly
Among the other tips to increase sales with email marketing, this is probably
the most important one. It is a crucial thing to remember about because over
60% of people read emails using mobile clients. Good news is making your
email mobile friendly is really a walk in the park. All you have to do is to
follow some simple tips:
Email Marketing Practices
1. Use one-column template
Mobile screens have limited navigation possibilities. Therefore, consider
creating your letter using a single column template. It’s compatible both
with tablets and phones and is more straightforward for different email
clients.
2. Your emails should be up to 600px wide
These days, most of the modern gadgets can handle responsive templates.
However, on less recent devices, viewing a complex design can still be a
problem.
In order to deliver any notification or news to your subscriber in its best
quality, we suggest you keep your emails up to 600 pixels wide. You can do it
by setting a “width” attribute or a CSS width property.
3. Use a larger font size
10 px font is hard to be read even on a computer. On mobile gadgets, there is
a tendency that small fonts become even smaller. That’s why you should use 16
or 18 px for a newsletter. 14px font is fine as well.
4. Don’t use images or display them
When people use mobile Internet, it’s mostly 3G. So, in order to load an
image, your subscribers will need to use more traffic and subsequently spend
more money.
The simplest way around is to reduce the number of images. You won’t suffer
much. On the other hand, if visuals are important to you, think about
optimizing them accordingly.
We recommend that you shrink the image by 50% and compress it slightly. Also,
if you have some coding skills (or someone on your team does), apply the
practices of responsive coding.
5. Don’t use an image as a call-to-action
Some email clients only show images if they come from verified addresses. If
you state your CTA in a form of an image, and it’s not displayed,
congratulations, you’ve lost the most important part of your email.
If you have decided to go with an image for CTA, don’t forget about ALT-tags.
Make sure each your alt-tag precisely reflects the message the image would’ve
brought.
Email Marketing Practices
6. Avoid stacking links
The finger tap is not half as precise as the click of the mouse. When you put
a stacked link in your emails, it’ll look like this:
Link 1
Link 2
Link 3
For a user who reads on a mobile device, it’s going to be extremely tough to
click the right link. Instead of the first one, they can accidentally tap on
the second or even third. Irritating.
If you need to include multiple links, the solution is to separate them with
text, images, or blank space.
7. Test your emails on multiple devices
Of course, it doesn’t mean that you have to buy phones with different screen
sizes. There are tools such as Litmus that will help you see how a letter
will look on different devices.
In order to run such testing, you’ll only need to have an HTML-template of
your email.
Email Marketing Practices
3. Test your email campaign
It’s important to be sure that your email is proofread before you hit “Send”
in your email reminder service. Hyperlinks that don’t work, pictures that
don’t show up, a tags that are somehow left out in the test, and spelling
mistakes: all this can jeopardize your chances of winning your next client
over.
Double-checking your email campaigns can be stressful: you don’t know where
to start or what to look for. That’s why we came up with a simple yet helpful
checklist to spare you the trouble:
Start with copy: grammar, spelling, the accuracy of dates and time,
capitalization, punctuation, etc.;
Your email address;
Subject lines: typos in subject lines are the worst. Don’t lose face because
of them;
Send yourself a test email and make sure it looks okay because that’s how
your subscribers will see the letter;
Look for design flaws in both desktop and mobile versions;
Send your test to a colleague. A fresh set of eyes matters, so ask someone to
proofread your letter.
Double-check subscribers lists and segments: is everything okay?
Press “Send”, you are golden.
4. Communicate with individuals, not crowds
You don’t talk to companies, departments, or any other crowds. You talk to a
specific guy or girl, face-to-face. The personalization of your emails should
go beyond using someone’s first name. In order to do that, here are some
things to take into account.
1. Find something common that’s uncommon.
We unite because of our interests and feelings. And so do your readers. We
all tend to trust someone similar: perhaps, it goes far back to the time when
people lived in tribes and preferred sticking with the ones from their own
village.
However, looking for a common characteristic of your subscribers is not that
easy. Perhaps, your first temptation will be to look for something that’s
100% true: “We know you like listening to music”, “You enjoy having free
time”.
There’s nothing unique in the statements above. Almost everyone can relate to
those things but they won’t unite you.
Hint: look for something you have in common with your subscribers but it’s
not particularly common.
2. Find some mutual connections
Another way to gain trust is to underline some connection that you and your
subscribers have in common. There are two ways to look at it:
Find a real offline connection. Maybe, you collected subscribers’ emails
because they were the members of a conference. Then your subject line can be:
“I saw you at the [Name of Event']". Even if you didn’t, there were
thousands of people attending events, so how can your subscribers check?
Refer to someone they respect and trust. For example, as you reach to a
subscriber, name-drop a trendsetter one reads. Speaking of that, why not to
write something like “What have we learned from Neil Patel?”. When a
subscriber sees a familiar name, she’s more eager to read the email and
relate to it.
3. Use subscriber’s name (and MORE than once).
Addressing a subscriber using their first-name is already a mainstream.
However, it rarely goes beyond the subject line. Such a small detail as
mentioning your reader by name more than once can have a surprisingly good
effect.
4. Use praise for personalization
Check whether your readers have had some big achievements lately. Read more
about them. Then praise your subscribers in an email.
Try to go beyond “I’m amazed by you”. That sounds a little bit hollow,
doesn’t it? It’s better to go with something like “I’m amazed you won [the
name of award].
5. Reuse successful campaigns
It’s totally okay to be using the same letters twice. This time, you’d be
reaching people who didn’t read your email the first time. Maybe the timing
was wrong or they were too busy to open the email.
Give your successful campaigns a second chance. It’s going to save you time,
and results won’t be disappointing.
6. Use storytelling
People love listening to stories. In fact, that is the reason why we play
games, watch movies, and read books. In marketing, storytelling works as
well. However, when you sell with stories, they should be the ones worth
listening to.
Here are some tips that will help you incorporate storytelling into your
email marketing strategy:
1. Don’t make up fake stories
People can feel when they are lied to. We can sense if someone is trying to
fool us. More importantly, we hate being fooled more than anything else.
That’s why you should aim for true stories in your campaign. Of course, it
might seem that you have nothing to tell. In that case, take some details,
feel free to exaggerate, but leave the base of your story real.
Take a look at how Uber does it. They had a beautiful story about a driver,
who saved passenger’s lives. It doesn’t sell the idea to order Uber but
implements the message that Uber is safe. It’s much better. Now people will
want to call Uber.
Email Marketing Practices
2. Tell your customer’s stories
“Happy clients” is the easiest kind of stories. Here, you don’t need to write
a long story or be a big brand. Even ambitious yet small companies have
clients that enjoyed the product and will be happy to speak about their
experience.
7. Use the power of P.S.
It’s also one of the fine marketing tips to increase your sales. As you know,
P.S. stands for Latin “post scriptum” which translates to English as “written
after”. We are using it in email marketing a lot, all because first and last
sentences are usually the ones people read.
Here’s what you can add to your P.S.:
The hyperlink. The hyperlink. You can include the URL in your P.S. to
increase the chances of the click. It’s fine to mention your selling points
in Post Scriptum, but make sure they have a new angle than the ones you’ve
written about before.
Create urgency. P.S. gives your email the feeling of immediacy. Therefore,
it’s a good chance to talk about limited offers and promotions.
The Bonus. It’s by far the most effective kind of P.S. It gives your readers
a sense of surprise. They’ve been reading the letter, haven’t expected
anything, and then boom, you have free stuff for them.
Testimonials. P.S. is basically your last chance to reassure an indifferent
subscriber and turn them into your customer. So, an endorsement from someone
who’s already tried the product can be a fine approach to change one’s way of
thinking.
8. Show your subscribers what they will miss
According to the article “How loss can be a Winning Strategy” posted by
Neurosciencemarketing, people are so scared of losing that it even pushes
them towards an irrational and illogical decision. We are all loss averse,
and marketers can use it.
The first thing you can do is simply reframe some data. Everything can be put
as a win or as a loss. For example, you have $50. I’d say you can keep $30 or
gamble with a risk to lose all you have. It’s non-optional. As it turns out,
most people are willing to keep the money they already have.
Here’s another scenario. You have $50. I say you have to either lose $20 or
gamble and risk losing all your cash. The situation is the same: even in case
you lose $20, you still get to keep your 30 bucks. But the perception changes
everything, and 62% of people are now willing to gamble.
That’s the approach you can use in email marketing: frame the alternative to
buying as a loss.
9. Don’t sell until the target’s ready
It’s like winning somebody's affection. Until you do, you get to be a
friend, a teacher, a shoulder to cry on: anything but a salesperson. Sell
yourself before you start pushing the product.
10. Tackle the information gap
There is a powerful force that gets people to as far as abandoning basic
survival instinct, not to mention opening the email. It’s called curiosity.
If you want to increase open rate, appeal to your readers' interests.
Think of some ways to wake up the sense of curiosity. Those could be:
1. Outperform the expectations.
The idea is to write a subject line that will turn readers’ world inside out.
Basically, you have to turn this headline:
How To Increase Sales By Using Email Marketing
into something like this:
1 Campaign, 6 Emails, 20% Higher Sales Rates
The second subject line makes readers wonder about something. It gives
something you don’t expect.
According to the research by Loewenstein, curiosity increases if you cover
someone’s knowledge gap in the are of interest. So make it happen.
2. Tease your reader
There has to be a little bit of teasing. It’s not irritating, but
interesting, and tempting. In order to do that, assure that you are talking
about something extremely new. In the same research, it says that people
assume that they know a lot more than they do in reality.
However, if you offer some unique knowledge that your subscriber can’t
possibly get elsewhere, you’ll increase their curiosity.
Compare these subject lines:
5 Lessons For Email Marketers
and
5 Lessons For Email Marketing Only Gary Vaynerchuk Can Teach
In the first case, a person can assume that he/she already knows those 5
things. The second one is backed up by a trusted source, therefore giving
much more value to the content.
These tips will help you increase conversions and click-through rates of your
email campaign. Also, you can do email marketing even more efficiently, if
you have additional tools to help you.
Email Marketing Practices
6. Top 10 tools for an email marketer
There are a lot of instruments that can help you achieve peak efficiency in
starting, managing, and tracking down email marketing campaigns. We’ve
created a list of our favorites, take a look.
Getting to Know Your Subscribers
1. ActiveCampaign.com
Email Marketing Practices
This tool can be used by email marketers to create a subscribers base and
segment it.
Features:
Import your contacts’ addresses as a file or from other services;
Find out more information about your contacts: their social media profiles,
interests, etc., in order to create personalized emails;
Choose a subscription form for your website.
Pricing:
The tool doesn’t have a free plan. You can pay for the subscription to the
following plans:
Lite: $23/month
Plus:$55/month;
Professional: $129/month;
Enterprise: $229/month.
2. Sendloop
Email Marketing Practices
Features:
Segmentation and management of subscribers lists;
Subscription form templates;
Integrate easily using Webhooks;
Send Welcome Emails automatically.
Pricing:
Up to 500 contacts: $9 per month;
Up to 2500 contacts: $24 per month;
Up to 5,000 contacts: $39 per month;
Up to 7,500 contacts: $49 per month;
Up to 10, 00 contacts: $59 per month;
Up to 25,000 contacts: $149 per month.
3. Drip
Email Marketing Practices
Features:
Integration with most used marketing tools, like Shopify;
Track down the shopping behaviors of subscribers and website visitors;
Find out on which stage of sales visitors and subscribers are right now;
Track down the conversion of your campaign.
Pricing:
The tool is free for users with less than 100 contacts. For the rest of users
there are paid plans, such as:
Basic (up to 2,500 subscribers): $41 per month;
Pro (up to 5,000 subscribers):$83 per month;
Enterprise (over 5,000 subscribers): custom prices.
Universal Systems
4. NetHunt CRM
Email Marketing Practices
Features:
CRM designed specifically for Gmail;
Send personalized bulk emails using customers' data;
All your emails go into primary box.
Pricing:
You can use a free version of NetHunt and get 2 500 records. If you feel like
your business needs more, then check these plans:
Professional: $24 per month (25 000 Records);
Enterprise: $48 (250,000 records).
5. UniSender
Email Marketing Practices
Features:
The tool is integrated with most popular CRMs;
A wide range of templates to choose from;
advanced analytic tools.
Pricing:
The tool has a free plan which is, however, limited to 100 subscribers and
1500 emails. For more advanced usage, there are several paid packages:
Light: $0.005 per letter;
Pro: $10 per month;
Wholesale: $165 per package.
6. GetResponse
Email Marketing Practices
Features:
500+ ready templates;
Over 1000 stock images to choose from;
Built-in mobile preview of emails;
Auto-respond to emails;
Delivery optimization according to the timing;
Track the effectiveness of campaigns.
Pricing:
Email: $15 per month;
Pro: $40 per month;
Max: $165 per month;
Enterprise: $1,199 per month.
7. SendPulse
Email Marketing Practices
Features:
Email templates are compatible with any screen resolution;
A/B testing for several versions of emails;
Scheduled automatic sending;
Create a subscription form for the website;
Mobile app for better management of campaigns.
Pricing:
A free plan applies for lists up to 2,500 subscribers and with a chance to
send up to 15,000 emails. There are also paid subscription plans:
Monthly subscription (prices vary depending on the number of subscribers);
Pro: $40 per month;
Pay as you go: pay per email (prices vary due to the size of your list);
VIP Plan for lists with over 1,000,000 subscribers.
Email Reminder Service
8. Right Inbox
Email Marketing Practices
Features:
Email scheduling: create the email with your great ideas right when they
strike you, and send it later;
Email reminders service: increase your productivity by adding a reminder to
an email, get notified when you need. This email reminder service will help
you maintain your inbox clean and tidy;
Recurring emails: let this email reminder service do all the monotonous work
and have your recurring emails delivered at a chosen repeating frequency;
Private email notes: keep your private data in your emails without anyone
seeing it. With the help of this email reminder service, you can also add
private notes directly to your emails.
Pricing:
Free: 10 emails per month;
Monthly plan: $7.95 per month (Unlimited quota);
Yearly plan: $5.95 per month (Unlimited quota.
HTML Coding
9. Email Framework
Email Marketing Practices
Features:
This framework is used to code HTML-emails. The interface is very
comfortable, all the tags are colored. You can optimize your email for mobile
devices, add images, links, and other forms of content.
10. Buttons.cm
Email Marketing Practices
Features:
If you are looking for a collection of buttons that will be compatible with
any email clients, on any device, Buttons by Campaign Manager is your choice.
A resource is basically a library of bulletproof buttons.
7. What can you expect after using these tips?
If you implement everything we’ve talked about, with the best email marketing
practices to increase sales, you should have a really positive impact on your
business. Here’s what you’ll experience:
1. High engagement and communication
Email campaigns will begin the interactions between customers and your brand.
You will get the link clicks, email replies with customer opinion, and better
brand awareness. According to Forrester Research, email marketing makes up
11% of overall interactive marketing.
You’ll connect with your clients and gain their dedication.
2. High Conversions
The study by Fluent shows that over 75% of people buy goods after they get an
email from the seller. If you succeed in creating a good selling copy for
your email, there is a good chance that your work will pay off.
3. Keeping in touch with all customers
Do you know how sometimes a person buys something from you and fades away?
With consistent email marketing, it won’t happen so much. Now, you are
constantly reminding your customers that you exist. You announce new services
and products, update them on the latest news, so if they need something, they
are likely to come back to you.
As for a cheap and relatively easy form of marketing, email marketing has
awesome effects on your business if you use it right.
Email Marketing Practices
8. Conclusion
If you are looking for ways to increase sales with email marketing, you have
chosen the right way. It’s cheap, easy to manage, and extremely effective.
There are some important strategies you should follow: try different formats
of letters, segment your subscribers, and personalize your emails. The help
of email reminder service, special tools and software will also come in
handy.
Email marketing is a solution to stay in touch with your customers and get
high conversions.
What's next? Go ahead and move from theory to practice by starting your
first email campaign. To do so, you simply need a tool to make your email
marketing effective. A tool like NetHunt CRM.
Not only is it perfect for mass mailing, but also with its help you can
manage your leads and create customized sales pipelines for each of them. And
the best part is that with the free version you can do all this and many
more.
