If you’re like most businesses, every dollar invested in marketing counts. All successful brands leverage email as an essential way to drive marketing effectiveness and efficiency. It’s core to the Marketing Mix and whether you are a category-leader or just starting your brand, a focus on email marketing will pay off almost immediately.
There are a lot of different marketing platforms out there but email marketing should be at the top of the list. It’s effective, affordable and it guarantees that your message is showing up in your customers’ inboxes. And you can track virtually every aspect of its performance - how many receive, how many open, how many click through and how many take actions on your site from the email. Priceless!
As for how effective email is, the stats show:
Customers who purchase through email spend an average of 138% more than those who didn’t convert through email.
80% of retail professional say that email marketing is their biggest driver in customer retention.
For every $1 you spend on email marketing, there’s an average return of $44!!! (yes 44:1)
Klaviyo (I love) and MailChimp (I like) are both easy to use, flexible and offer a ton of sale-enhancing capabilities with minimal incremental investment.
Here are some of the most frequent questions I get and helpful tips for bringing your brand to life and growing your sales through email marketing.
Email Content: What Should I Send?
Deciding what sort of content you want to share through email is an important place to start. There are a number of options when it comes to what information you should be sending in email. This includes:
Automations starting with a Welcome Series, introducing new prospects and customers to your business and to who you are. Other automations include Abandoned carts where customers start a purchase and leave before completing.
Share content that’s valuable to your customers so that even if they aren’t ready to buy today, they have a reason to engage and don’t simply forget about you.
News about promotions, sales, and discounts. This can be store-wide or exclusive to select customers.
News about your business, or new product announcements.
Sales emails advertising products and services.
Information about events that you’re hosting.
Follow up email campaigns (which can be automated or sent manually).
The Importance of Personalization
Personalization in marketing will go a long way—and that counts for email, too. The more personalized an email message is, the better the open and conversion rates will be. Personalization reflects an understanding of a customer’s behavior so that you can focus your efforts and motivate customers to take that next step to purchase.
Here are a few examples of how to use Personalization in any business:
Offer customers products or services that are directly relevant to them.
Send emails based on customer relationship, like welcome emails to new leads and loyalty program emails to long-time customers.
Distribute emails about certain products based on customer actions on previous emails sent.
Streamline Your Email Marketing with Automations
In addition to sending out subscriber content like new product updates, triggered autoresponders also have an important place in email marketing. They’ll help you streamline some of your important communications like welcome email series or even follow-ups and they can increase your marketing capabilities with options like abandoned cart campaigns.
Here’s how they work. A user adds a product to their cart but doesn’t convert. Twenty-four hours later, they get an email from you reminding them they forgot to purchase. Maybe there’s a discount code to entice them to do so, or sometimes the reminder is enough. They purchase (for whatever it’s worth, the average order value that comes from abandoned cart emails is 58% higher than those that come with direct sales.
Most email marketing software platforms have triggered autoresponder campaigns that you can use to do everything from send users retargeting messages to follow up after the purchase and ask for a review.
When Should I Send Emails?
There are several things people mean when they ask, “when should I send emails?”
The first is, what time of the day or the day of the week? As it turns out, email open and reply rates are highest on the weekends when the inbox competition is lower and customers have more time on their hands, and the best time to send the emails is in the morning or in the early evening (this may not be true for some B2B campaigns, but it holds true for most B2C businesses).
The second meaning is, how often you should send emails? This will vary based on your business model, your audience, and the types of content that you’re sending.
Some businesses are all-in on sending twice-a-day emails, but that’s how you end up with a high unsubscribe and low open rate. Instead, your best bet will be to send emails to your customers only as often as they’re relevant and valuable to your audience. For many businesses, this is around once per week, but you can test this out.
And finally, the “when” can refer to how long you should wait after certain actions are taken to send certain autoresponders. This again will vary based on your business, product and audience, but some good rules of thumb include:
A welcome email should be sent immediately after users subscribe
Order confirmation emails should be sent immediately after purchasing and a second email should be sent after the order has been sent
You can send an initial follow up the day users are expected to get the product with more information about how to use or care for it
Request reviews several days-to-a week after the customer is expected to have received the product, giving them enough time to have used it, but while it’s still fresh in their memories
Send retargeting campaigns based on site views or abandoned carts within 24 or 48 hours of the action being triggered
EMAIL & MESSAGING
Ultimately, great email is simple, compelling and punchy and clear. You have just a few seconds to capture someone’s attention before they are onto the next thing.
Another important note: use clickable CTA buttons whenever possible. Having clickable CTA buttons in your emails are going to give you a huge edge. It immediate draws the eye and it makes it easy for users to click and get to where they want to go. It will absolutely increase your conversion rate.
Market your email list - it’s a steady process. Mention it in your blog posts and on social media. Have an opt-in box when users are purchasing from you. Have a side-bar widget with an opt-in form and pop-ups that offer discounts in exchange for email subscriptions. Use any and all tactics that apply to your business.
Offer value. Your email content should be valuable to your target audience. That’s what will keep them opening those emails. Do you offer great content about how to care for the product? Great! Are you sending them discounts to save them money, or industry news you know they’ll love? Also excellent. Just keep your audience in mind here.
Have strong subject lines. Your subject line can determine whether or not users open the email in the first place. You can be clever, but remember to keep it short and descriptive. If possible, explain exactly why readers should open the email by offering the value up front and adding in some urgency if possible.
FINAL THOUGHTS
As the Holidays near, it’s essential to have a solid email game plan. Email is a critical relationship-building tool; it’s an essential direct sales tool and it gives you valuable information about what different customers care about. Moreover, you will find it’s one of the most important ways to drive incremental sales during the holiday season where ad rates on Facebook increase by over 40% and clutter increases exponentially.