Best Practices for Email Marketing

Do you feel like you need to improve your email marketing efforts? In this post, you will find email marketing best practices for online businesses.

Email marketing is one of the most powerful tools for e-commerce websites. If well-crafted and used on time, it drives purchases and provides subscribers with an incentive to stay in touch. New and growing online businesses can use email marketing to reach their customers with personalized messages and generate more sales.

What makes email marketing such a valuable strategy for online websites is that compared to traditional modes of campaigning such as print ads, television, and radio, emails have a lower cost. Furthermore, by sending emails, you are motivating customers to check your website pages to see the products you offer, which in turn translates to more visits to your sites and an increase in conversion sales.

It’s easy to assume that sending emails to several people will lead to positive results. After giving it a go and not getting enough people to engage with your brand, you can quickly give up on the idea. However, successful online retailers know that a great email marketing campaign is relevant, personalized, and timely.

7 Practical Email Marketing Tips to Boost Sales

Whether you want your e-commerce business to maintain an excellent relationship with loyal customers or target new clients, including those from foreign countries, email marketing is productive in enhancing your brand. But how do you make an email campaign more effective? By understanding the listed below best practices, you can start getting better results from your email marketing.

Speak to Your Customers in Their Language

Online buyers often get all sorts of emails from different companies. Therefore, when it comes to marketing, you have to send emails that will build relationships and grow revenues. A recent study shows that 4.24% of visitors from email marketing purchased on e-commerce sites.

This means that you can use emails to reach a vast number of customers. With a professional translation service by your side, you can craft emails with words that are culturally relevant and complete sales in different languages.

Convince Your Readers to Open the Email

When your email hits the inbox of your target customer, you have to be sure that they will open it. How do you do that?  Make sure your subject line and pre-header text stand out and convince the reader to take action. Here are some of the tips that successful email marketers have used to craft a compelling subject line:

  • Always write your subject line first

One of the biggest mistakes that people make when writing emails is to forget the subject line. Emails with a blank subject line can easily remain in a cluttered inbox.

  • Keep it short

A typical inbox will reveal the first 60 characters of an email subject line. So get straight to the point and make sure the message you are trying to convey is understood by staying within the ideal character count. The trick to creating a compelling subject line is to place the most important words at the beginning.

  • Be clear and specific

Your subject line should be clear and tell subscriber precisely what the email is about. Be specific about the topic of the email and do not create any room for misunderstanding. Make sure that your marketing email is focused on one action only. Remember, to remove any unnecessary words which can be included in the body of the email.

  • Use action-oriented words

Your subject lines should act as your calls to action in that it should instill urgency and inspire the reader to click on the email. Use a button image, bright or contrasting colors to ensure your CTA stands out.

Sending an Email Is as Important as the Content It Contains

When is the best time to send your emails? The right time to send an email campaign is during peak purchase times. If you are not sure when during the day is your online store peak times, then use Google Analytics to track the process. Remember, you don’t want to be labeled a spammer so send out emails to your subscribers.

Craft an Email Body That Gets Read

The content featured in your email has to fulfill what you promised on the subject line. It is also essential that your email body is easy to read, and is written using the correct language. Keep paragraphs short and don’t be afraid to use bullet points to make the text scannable.

Divide Your Email Subscribers into Smaller Targeted Groups

Every subscriber on your email list is different. So how do you send the right message and ensure your email isn’t ignored? Use email list segmentation. Segment your email list according to buyer’s persona, age, gender, and geographical location.

Track the Performance of Your Emails

How will you know that your email marketing campaign is valid unless you measure its performance? You can track the results of your emails by monitoring the right metrics such as bounce rate, click-through rate and the opt-out rate, which is the number of customers that unsubscribed from your email list.

Repeat Your Successful Emails

When you create an email marketing campaign and make it successful, you should replicate the same process to new customers as well as subscribers that have not made a purchase. This strategy will not only help you understand your prospects but also give room to increase your sales.

What Are the Types of Marketing Emails?

Email marketing is going to work if you know the type of emails you can send to customers. There are three main types of marketing emails:

Promotional Emails

They work to convince a customer to purchase as they often contain a call to action. These emails can contain announcements about new products that the customer might be interested in or, exclusive offers, deals, and a special sale. Therefore, the content of the email should convince customers to take action within a specified time.

Transactional Emails

These emails contain essential information that the customer needs to know, like shipping notifications, password resets, receipts, and account updates. While they do not have to include a direct call to action, they provide an excellent opportunity to gather feedback and encourage conversation. It is best to use transactional emails in response to a customer’s action or inaction.

Lifecycle emails

Sometimes customers abandon the online shopping cart before completing a sale. In such a scenario, a lifecycle email can help resolve any lingering hesitation that a person might have. These emails are sent to customers who have added a product to their carts but failed to click the checkout button. According to SaleCycle, there is an average of 74% cart abandonment rate. But, more than 50% of all cart recovery emails are opened and over a third of the clicked emails convert to a sale.

Email marketing does not have to be an overwhelming or complicated process. By applying the tips above, you will be taking the necessary steps to improve your email marketing. Remember, by using email marketing campaign best practices, you are likely to see positive results in your e-commerce business.