Email marketing is a top choice among marketers when it comes to conversions and sales. It may be an older marketing tactic, but email marketing is one tactic that is still ROI positive when done right. In fact, 93 percent of B2B marketers use some of the email marketing practices to distribute content.
According to HubSpot, businesses can earn $38 on average for every $1 spent on an email marketing campaign. That’s 3,800 percent ROI for your business. Of course, if you don’t have the email marketing experience and know-how, ROI may not be as impressive.
This means having best practices in place, such as not coming across as a phishing scam, or not purchasing email lists. To help your business master the art of email marketing, we compiled a few best email marketing practices to follow for maximum conversions and increased sales. Let’s take a deeper look!
This is maybe one of the most important best practices. Even if you have a top-notch lead list (that you didn’t buy), and a strong offering, a phishing email will result in zero clicks and zero sales. This makes for an ROI negative situation.
Instead of being spammy and coming across phishing in your email marketing, simply make email marketing human. Sounds pretty easy right? Sadly, many businesses don’t do this. And it is not their fault. Businesses just get caught up in their offering and may have old strategies they use.
Being human when it comes to email marketing means coming across like a human. No intrusive sales pitches or corny calls to action are needed. Be personable, get to the point, have a strong offering, and act as if you are talking to the email recipient face-to-face.
You probably get emails from companies you don’t know, and businesses you never opted in to an email list for. How did they get your email? They bought it. This is intrusive and can result in poor email marketing results since it is essentially a cold call, but possibly worse.
There is also an issue with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Don’t break the rules, because you may find yourself in big-time trouble.
The fact of the matter is that email lists should be of people that opted in to hear more from your business. You can set up email capture on your website, and use social media to reach your audience for more emails too. Getting maximum ROI is about reaching those who want to hear from you via email. Not random people. It's also a good idea to use an email verifier to check your list for invalid or abandoned email addresses, this improves the deliverability and effectiveness of your campaign as a whole.
Your primary message and the offering, also known as the call-to-action (CTA), need to be above the fold on the email. It is important to remember that people tend not to read emails all the way through. In most cases, they read above the fold and scan the rest quickly.
In fact, nearly 70 percent of people won’t see your CTA if it is buried below the fold. This means you need to put your primary message and CTA above the fold. CTA should also be mentioned at least three times throughout the email, and in some visual form if possible. This can increase site traffic as well.
Personalized content is what consumers want, and your audience is most likely no different. The first place to start is your email greeting. Any emails with greetings like, “Hello Valued Customer” or “Dear Subscriber” will probably go straight to the trash.
Instead, get personal with recipients by having a greeting with their name. But be sure to keep it simple and less spam sounding. “Dear Mark Johnson” may not be as good as just “Hey Mark.” This is because people scan the greeting before opening.
Getting personal also means using trigger words like “you” and “your.” For example, a good personal email could mention an interest they entered into the email capture.
Compelling subject lines can maximize conversions and increase sales because they boost open rates. Recipients often scan the greeting and subject line before deciding if they want to open an email or not. Thus adding importance to having a compelling and very concise subject line.
A strong subject line will be 30 to 40 characters long with spaces. This is important because many mobile devices will cut off anything after 40 characters. But again, don’t be spammy. Simply describe what to expect after opening the email with a little bit of urgency.
Recipients of emails will generally not open an email from brands they don’t remember, or brands they don’t remember opting in to receive emails from. To keep your business fresh in the minds of potential customers, send an auto responder email after someone opts in via your website or other lead capture.
The opt-in auto-responder email is an email marketer's best friend since it reminds the recipient that he or she opted in to receive emails from your business. So when recipients get the first branded email, they remember the brand and open the email.
Opt-in autoresponders should be sent out no later than five days after opt-in. The opt-in can also have separate CTAs to help maximize conversions and increase sales right away.
The above email best practices are only the tip of the iceberg for email marketing success. Research more tips and tricks to reach full potential, and increase conversions and sales. What email marketing strategy do you use? We want to hear from you.
