How to Use Email Marketing to Boost Your Sales

What is email marketing?

Email marketing is a form of digital marketing that involves sending promotional messages or newsletters via email. It is a way to communicate with potential or current customers who have opted in to receive messages from your business.

Email marketing campaigns typically include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Product Updates
• Special offers
• Invitations to events
• Bulletins

A business can use email marketing to build customer relationships, increase traffic to its website, increase sales, and build brand awareness.

Why is email marketing effective?

Email marketing is a great way to reach current and potential customers because people are constantly checking their emails on multiple devices. This makes it easy to get your message to your target audience on a regular basis and make a lasting impression.

Email marketing also forces people to take action. Once a message enters a person’s inbox, they must make a choice: delete it, save it to return to later, or read or even forward it.

Highly cost-effective, email incurs very little additional cost for mass mailing. There is virtually no limit to the number of people you can reach.

Different Types of Marketing Emails

Françoise Sonnet, Senior Business Advisor at BDC Advisory Services, says that when deciding what types of emails to focus on, it’s a good idea to consider who your target audience is: businesses (B2B) or consumers (B2C). If you’re marketing to other businesses, it’s best to stick to newsletter-type articles. They build customer loyalty by sharing news, how-to information and industry trends. Businesses can be turned off by promotional emails that encourage them to make purchases.

However, retail-focused businesses that market directly to consumers have more latitude to send transactional or promotional emails, Sonnet says. These people expect and generally appreciate a certain number of emails about upcoming sales or discounts.

7 Steps to Creating Your Email Marketing Strategy

According to Françoise Sonnet, before you rejoice in your 800-word update and hit send, take a step back and look at the big picture: ideally, you should have a 6- to 12-month strategy.

“It’s not enough to send an email today and forget about it for the next couple of months, ” she warns. “Think about why you’re sending the email, who you’re sending it to, what information the recipients want from you, what you want to tell them, and when you want to tell them.”

1. Decide whether or not to segment your target audience

Consider tailoring your message to specific groups to more directly appeal to their interests. For example, you might divide customers by:

• type of business
• region
• age
• shopping habits
• product preferences

However, consider your capacity. If you’ve identified four distinct groups and plan to email them unique content on separate schedules, you’ll have your hands full brainstorming and sending.

2. Create an editorial calendar

Create a schedule that outlines when you will send your usa email list and what topics they will cover. Try to outline what you want to cover over the next 6-12 months. This will help you think strategically about what you want to convey and make sure you don’t repeat yourself.

3. Decide on the frequency

Françoise Sonnet says most small businesses should aim to send emails about once a month, or more often if the pace suits your industry and you have the capacity.

4. Implement a dual registration process

The “double opt-in process” ensures that after agreeing to be on your mailing list, a customer must still confirm their interest by clicking a link your calls with the top ai phone caller in that initial email. This approach can reduce the likelihood of messages ending up in spam folders, help you build a quality mailing list, and increase your chances of generating sales leads.

5. Test a prototype

Known as “A/B testing,” this approach involves sending slightly different emails to two groups of recipients and measuring their response. You vary the elements you want to test—like headers , images, design, length, or call-to-action buttons—and measure the response from both groups to determine which approach works best.

6. Create your mailing list

You need to build a list of addresses to  send cz lists mass emails. To do this, you can use mailing list management software . Some customer relationship management applications now include email marketing features. Although they are usually more expensive, specialized tools can integrate your emails with your website, social media, and other marketing tasks.

7. Track your results

Most businesses use analytics to assess the effectiveness of their website, social media posts, and email marketing efforts. You’ll need to determine some key performance indicators (KPIs) to know if your strategy is working. Here are some things to measure:

• Conversion and click-through rates
• List growth
• Email sharing and forwarding rates
• Unsubscribe rate
• Overall return on invested capital

What is open rate in an email marketing campaign?

According to Françoise Sonnet, there are two key indicators to monitor when measuring the success of your email marketing campaign.

• The open rate, which is the percentage of people who open your email.
• Click-through rate, which is the percentage of readers who take the next step, such as registering for an event, reading a blog post, or browsing your website.

According to GetResponse, an email marketing technology company, the average open rate in North America is 23.5% and the average click-through rate is 3.86%.

It’s a good idea to track your rates because it helps you benchmark your performance against competing companies and measure your own progress over time.

Best Practices for Email Marketing Success

Françoise Sonnet offers some suggestions to help businesses increase their conversion and click-through rates. The most important: make a good first impression. This first email is important because it contains the subscription confirmation link, which is essential for the person to continue receiving messages.

Create an attractive concept

Françoise Sonnet suggests adding a photo or other colorful image at the top of the email. She adds that photos of people tend to generate more responses.

Make sure the email subject line is concise

Subject lines should be no longer than 40 characters (six or seven words). Remember that many people will open your message on a mobile device, not a laptop.

Limit email reading to five minutes

For the average person, a five-minute read is best, or 800 to 1,000 words , or two pages at most.

Projecting your image

Make sure the look and writing style of the email reflects your business, not a competitor’s.

Include a call to action towards the end

Invite the person to take action, whether that’s reading an article on your website, registering for an event, or forwarding the email to their friends and family. Keep your message clear, concise, and action-oriented.

For small businesses, Sonnet suggests that hiring a marketing agency to write emails can be a good idea. Such an agency can help you get good results without having to develop that expertise and capacity in-house. Ask the agency’s writer or editor to interview you to better vet the message, and make sure you and others read the text before it goes live.

Comply with spam laws

Canada’s anti-spam legislation is among the most stringent in the world, and the penalties for not complying can be steep. Before you begin your campaign, make sure you know what’s acceptable. Obtaining recipient consent and having an unsubscribe mechanism in place are two key elements of the law. See BDC’s article Canada’s anti-spam legislation : Your questions answered .

Next steps

Find out what it takes to build a successful online brand in BDC’s free guide, Attracting Customers and Selling Online .