Best Email Marketing Strategies That will sky Rocket your Sales.

Starting your new business and you're looking for the best way to nurture your leads and make great sales.

Or you're probably reading this because you've tried email marketing for your business but you still not getting the result you need.

And you're still doubting if email marketing can work for your own business.

My name is Soctsi, I have written effective strategies that will work for you here! Do well to read to the end.

So because of the growing technologies and how old email marketing is (since 1978) with all the new innovations, chatbots and AI.

Thinking, email marketing is dead?

No, because there is an expected growth of users to more than 4.3bill worldwide by the end of 2023, in fact it has come to stay!

Compared to other Digital Marketing platforms Email Marketing is the best way to reach and engage your leads in a way to turn them into buyers.

In fact invisioncommunity ranked email marketing the 3rd most effective marketing channel in 2020.

If you say it is "dead" then why is the number of business and consumer emails sent per day exceeding 293bill in 2019 and is forecasted to grow more than 347bill at end of 2023?

Research has shown that it has about $44 expected Return on investment (ROI) for every $1 spent, obviously it is the most economical and effective way of nurturing leads to customers.

So if you are not engaging your target audience through Email Marketing a lot of money is sipping through your fingers.

Here, I've written down the best and effective Email Marketing strategies for you which you can carryout no matter the business you do. Just if you follow the strategies accordingly.

But before that, taking email marketing in an approach stated below would be best for you;

• That you are sending an email to a friend,

• And as a friend.

These will help you as most times why people fail at email marketing is because they tried to sell directly to their subscribers instead of building a relationship with them first (buyers journey).

Imagine meeting a friend today and without building a strong bond or good relationship you are proposing to marry already 😂lol, as that might sound crazy I think that it is the reason why email marketing doesn't work for some.

Now without so much delay, I am going to share with you effective email marketing strategies you can use to move your business to another level. Its a long read so do get yourself comfortable while reading :)

Effective Email Marketing Strategies

1. Define and set your goals

2. Build your email list

3. Segment and Personalize

4. Use attractive designs

5. Create compelling Subject lines and great Content

6. Mobile friendly emails

7. Scheduling and Timing

8. Use automations when necessary

9. A/B testing campaigns

10. Analyze your campaigns

#1 Define and Set your Goals

As a new business startup, depending on the kind of business you are doing either you sell products or services, you need to set your goals based on where opportunities are, Growth, and what you want for your business.

Setting your goals before you start is very important as it gives you heads up and guideline on what campaigns to set and what not to.

Let your goals be precise and measurable then write them down, you are more likely to achieve your goals if you write them down.

This gives room for understanding the kind of business you're running, even if it is an ecommerce store for shoes or wristwatches, to cosmetics store or even b2b.

Considering where opportunities are and the ones you have, the more certain and realistic you are in setting your goals, the easier you can get yourself to creating great content for your campaigns.

After setting your goals, you will know what you want your subscribers to do and your CTA will be based on it. For example if your goal is to drive more sales then your CTA will be a link for purchase.

Lastly, after a successful campaign your defined goal will help you measure how much you've achieved your goal.

#2 Build your email list

An email list is a collection of email subscribers who have opted in to receive your emails. They are people who have agreed to receive emails from you and have interest in your product or services.

They are more like your potential customers that you can nurture and make sales from them.

Without your email list you can't get your message across to them.

Building your list is very important but buying a list isn't advisable as your reputation is at risk and it may turn out that your unsubscribe rate go high and your emails maybe blacklisted.

So how do you build your list?

You can build your list by adding a subscribe form on your website, also you can drop offers (something of value that you're giving for FREE, usually its called a freebie) in exchange for their emails like an ebook from your website.

They have to see the need to give you their email.

You can do that by creating a popup, asking them to subscribe for more of your newsletters or anything on your landing page.

Email address should be a requirement when visitors make purchase from you for the first time.

While doing that you can also ask for more details that you may need to understand them well and help you send them the right emails.

N.B Be sure not to ask too personal questions but when you do, you should let them know you're not sharing the details with a third party, and their information is safe with you.

Additional information like location or even gender may help you in segmenting your email list, which can help you send more personalized email campaigns.

(If you're having issues creating good blog or email contents like this, email me at ksoctsi@gmail.com)

#3 Segment and personalize

Segmenting your email list using the additional information you've gotten from your subscribers is just what you might need to sending them more personalized emails.

Segmenting your email list means grouping your list into categories they have in common.

You segment your list using the data you got when people subscribed to your emails or you can also make a survey asking your subscribers more about themselves so you can understand them better.

Segmenting your email list can be based on location, date of birth, and even gender,

Email service providers have made it easy so you can segment your list into different categories you want.

For example an online store that sells clothing can use location to know the weather condition of their leads and hence, if its winter for a certain location which was already segmented, they can send sweaters and jackets at discounted rates as emails to subscribers in that location.

It is just a way to show that you care about your them, while you're adding more value to them at the right time.

Create relevant content they don't know they need using the data you got from them.

While segmenting your list gives you an edge, Personalizing your message can give you an average open rate of 18.8% and a click rate of 2.1%.

Personalizing your messages actually goes beyond adding names to emails.

You can personalize your messages more with humor,

Its the coolest way to break the ice, remember I mentioned earlier that you need to approach them as a friend, now this is one of the ways u can do that effectively.

#4 Use attractive Designs

In as much as you might think Designs don't really matter, for a huge brand design matters and can be the reason that person went on to read your mail.

On a conflicting side,

Solopreneurs, bloggers and small businesses aren't advised to use designs.

One of these reasons is because you want to increase personality in your emails, in that you can't send an email or letter to your friend or sibling with so much designs all over, you would rather want to keep it real and simple.

this way, you use personality to approach them in an informal but formal way.

But like I said, designs are important for huge brands.

Do you know that it takes 13milliseconds for the brain to process an image?

So when someone opens your email within a glance he can decide to continue reading your email or stop and close it.

Why?

Because designs for a huge brand are more like their reputation.

With an attractive Design you can capture more attentions and get that person to continue reading your message.

So how do you create Designs that capture more attentions?

Here are some things you should consider:

• Let your most critical content pieces be at the top and/or left aligned.

• Short and concise

• Use few vertical grid lines it will help make your work look more organized.

• Associate your email header with your logo and a link to your website.

• Your footer for feedback.

If you still find difficulty in creating Designs there are some available design templates by email service providers like campaign monitor, mailchimp and so many others you can choose and start working with them.

#5 Create great content with compelling subject line.

Creating your first email content is like making your first impression. You will never get a second chance for that.

So why waste the chance of giving good impression?

Create relevant content for your subscribers always. By doing this they will be anxious to open your emails which is a plus for you as it increases your email open rates.

Your content is the key to creating good relationship with your subscriber.

With a series of valuable information you set your subscribers on a "buyers journey". You provide great contents every time making them have no doubts to why they shouldn't pay for your service or products.

So content creation is a necessity for good conversation rate.

Now that you know following up your subscribers with great content improves your brands voice.

How do you create content?

You create contents based on your company's goals, what you want to achieve, and your customers interest.

Understanding the way your business runs will help you create good contents, I've also put down some type of email contents you can create which are;

• Welcome emails

• Promotional emails

• Newsletters and/ Announcements

• Include explainer videos

• Surveys and so on…

Now imagine spending millions to create a product and then you package it in a plane brown box to sell.

Will people buy?

That's the power of email subject lines. After creating great contents you need to package your emails with killer subject lines to get people to read your emails always.

After all what is the use of creating good contents without people reading them.

Your subject lines are like a hook, it has the power to make people stop what they are doing, just to open and read your mail.

Optinmonster has got a list of subject lines you can use for your emails. You can use them and relate them to fit your content.

Be careful not to sound deceptive to your readers because your emails might end up in the SPAM folder.

Include the word "video" in your subject lines if you added a video in your email or the website you directing them to, it can help improve your open rates.

Lets move on to the next one.

#6 Mobile friendly emails

You will agree with me that people use their smartphones almost every time, and as a result they are more likely to receive and read your emails on their phones.

Report by litmus says that 53% of emails are opened with mobile.

What does this mean?

When you send emails, the probability your email is to be opened with a mobile device is high and its more likely that most of them who read them used their mobile phones.

And if you don't design your emails to be mobile friendly your subscribers will find it difficult to read and might end up unsubscribing.

Now, how many subscribers are you ready to lose because your emails are not compatible on their smartphones?

One? Two?

And if you don't know, research shows that you spend more in gaining a customer than keeping one.

With this obviously you won't want to lose even a single customer.

Now how can you optimize your emails to be mobile friendly?

When creating mobile friendly emails you have to consider some basic things,

• how your email is going to appear and then,

• How you want it to appear on the screen of any device.

Having that in mind you will be able to note that:

Keeping the length of your subject lines short and also keep the important words among the first 20-30 characters will help in mobile friendly subject lines.

In as much as you want your subscribers to read your email because subject lines have an impact on your open rate.

You will also have to consider if they are reading it on their smartphones or a PC.

That's why you have to keep your subject line characters short, so they could appear on any device the way you want it.

Be aware that not all mobile devices display images on default.

So organize your emails in a way that with or without images they will still have good experience.

#7 Scheduling and Timing.

The time you send emails might not matter to you because you might think no matter the timing your email will still appear in your subscribers inbox.

But timing and scheduling is actually a factor you need to consider when sending emails to your customers.

When someone joins your email list,

What do you do?

How long does it take before you send a mail?

Which day of the week is favorable to send mails for your business?

What time of the day do you send it?

To be able to get the best result out of your email marketing campaign you need to answer all these questions.

There might not be an accurate time when you can send your emails but you can carry out simple A/B testing with different time variations and scheduling to see which is best for you.

#8 Use Automations when necessary.

Just as how you want to get your hands off the system, you have to set the system running even with your absence.

Email automation is a special way to respond to your leads due to a defined action they take.

It is an automatic response that you set.

When a subscriber joins your list you would want to send a confirmation/welcome email, which is good.

But then what if you receive a hundred subscribers,

Would you manually send these confirmation/welcome emails?

Well, that's time consuming and stressing. but with automated emails you don't have to worry.

Email service providers gives room to automations.

You can set an automatic response to when someone joins your email list.

They then get a confirmation/welcome email.

Automated email marketing are meant to notify your subscribers based on their actions

Other examples of automated emails are:

• Birthday promo or anniversaries

• transactional emails like password reset, payment receipts...

• thank you for your order email

• 5 days freelance training course

Before I move on,

I guess you noticed something with the last example,

It's different from the rest.

Now when setting an automated email, you must know which category it is. Either

• Triggered or

• Drip campaigns

The last example there falls under the category of Drip campaigns.

Drip campaigns are set based on a series of content.

While Triggered emails are as a result of the behaviour of your subscribers.

Personalize your automations too it could be of great help engaging your subscribers so they feel you just sent them that email personally.

#9 A/B Testing.

Wondering why you don't get the conversation rates you deserve?

Even with the best content, you can still be lagging in your conversations.

Little things matter and the only way to understand this is to test an element with different variations.

What do I mean by an element with different variations?

If you want to test why your emails aren't converting, choose an element that affects conversations like CTA, an element you can use, while the variations can be the button size.

You're going to test and compare two emails, one with the button size you used before (Email A) and the new one you created (Email B).

Every other thing should not be changed only the button size of your CTA should change,

Then you divide your email list into two equals and send each half Email A and the other half Email B.

With good analysis you can see which variations perform better and you can make your conclusions.

These process is called A/B testing, also known as split testing.

There are many other elements you can carry out your test on them like;

1. Design

2. Subject lines

3. Timing

4. Content length or depth and so on.

#10 Analyze your campaigns.

After sending emails you will need to analyze your campaigns and see the results you've gotten.

With Analytics and metrics you can measure your success and your failure.

Comparing your results with the goals you've set, is a very good way to know if you're sending the right emails, and know how much you've achieved your goals.

Analysis is next to A/B testing.

There are so many tools for gathering email marketing data.

Email service providers have features that give you these data after sending an email.

So with these kind of data you can calculate metrics like;

• Open rates

• Clickthrough rates

• Conversation rates and so on…

these kind of data are called clickstream data.

With these metrics you can see how much you've achieved your goals and also know what to improve on.

Get yourself started

There is no limit to what business email marketing is for. Either its a B2B or B2C, email marketing will still work for you.

Email marketing is a very good way for customer acquisition and retention.

Start email marketing now for your new business and see the difference.

Are you still trying to figure out how to start email marketing for your new business?

Or you're too engaged and you don't have time?

I can help you!

PS. For new businesses, startups I can help you grow your brand with content writing & email marketing. you can reach out to me at ksoctsi@gmail.com.

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Drop your comments and your views.

Thanks,

Soctsi Kifasi.

Content writer & Email marketer.