email marketing strategies

Email Marketing Strategies: Best Practices that Produce Results

Written by: Marissa Romano, Email Marketing Strategist

Since the early ‘90s, email has played a key role in marketing, with good reason. It’s tried and true: email marketing yields a serious return on investment (ROI). On average, for every $1 spent, $44 is returned. Nice! Email marketing keeps you top of mind, allows you to measure explicit customer behavior and can make mass sales within minutes. So, batch ‘n’ blast everyone and anyone, just find email addresses and send! Right?

Well, not exactly. There is a bit more of an art form behind a successful email marketing strategy.

The Marketing Sales Funnel

Found between consideration and conversion, email marketing continues the contact through action, loyalty, and advocacy. It’s a nurturing tool for a warm lead or for someone who’s already converted. Email marketing is used to gain, retain and cement loyal customers.

So, be aware that your subscribers are most likely at different stages of the marketing sales funnel.

Some subscribers may want to understand your product or services better before making their decision. Others may want to learn more about your company. Or, maybe they’re just looking for you to send them a good deal.

Fundamental Email Marketing Strategies

  • Conversation in email marketing should engage communication when a user opts into your newsletter or VIP club. You’ll want to understand what the customer wants to hear from you in order to deliver purposefully and keep them engaged. This is where segmentation and personalization come in.
  • Sales Techniques through email marketing can drive sales immediately. Highlighting a specific product with a vibrant call-to-action can convert your customer immediately; essentially creating a micro-site that displays your best, most relevant pieces.
  • Enhance the Experience of each customer touchpoint through automation. Utilizing triggers from customer behaviors to send highly relevant and timely emails can increase your revenue up to 8x. An example of this would be an abandoned cart email that reminds a customer to finish checking out.

Ultra-Personalized Email Marketing Strategies

Email marketing is heading down the ultra-personalized path. Like any marketing strategy, sending the right message to the right person is key. But how do you achieve this strictly through inbox interactions?

  • Delight your customer by sending the right message to them at the right time. Get to know the customer. Unsubscribes, open rates, and click-through rates paint a clear picture of what interests your customer. Analytics allow you to alter your content strategy to deliver what the customer wants. This also gives you an avenue to send e-gifts to thank your customers or to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries.
  • Segmenting your customers in order to serve them personally relevant content is the first step towards effective messaging. Say you’re a brand that carries both dog and cat toys. Customers subscribed to your email list actively use it to make buying decisions. The last thing you want is to serve up cat towers to a St. Bernard owner. Utilizing purchase history to establish which pet they own allows you to split your list, leading to more effective messaging.
  • Personalization should go beyond “Dear {FIRSTNAME}”. Utilizing customer behavior to create individualized content and engagement is becoming the norm. Personalized messages include thanking customers for being a top customer in a particular category; curating a list of trending products they may be interested in; or populating recipes, books, or articles in which they’ve shown similar interests.

List Building, Growth & Health

It is as important to regularly be sending emails as it is to be building, growing, and maintaining a healthy list. A large list of unengaged contacts is not as effective as a smaller list of engaged contacts.

Building your list is reliant on multiple options for opt-ins as well as consistent and frequent communication; properly building the relationship and engaging with the consumer from the start.

If you’re looking to implement email marketing best practices and strategically engage your customers, Leverage can help.

Leave a Comment