How to Increase Sales Through Email Marketing

Increasing sales through Email marketing is an effective technique for retailers and e-commerce brands to communicate discounts, new product launches, and timely promotions to their existing customers. On average, for every $1 spent on email marketing, businesses can expect to generate $38 in return through new and repeated purchases.^1 Statistics show that:

• 21% of purchases are directly attributed to emails from brands.
• 53% of consumers make a purchase within 24 hours of receiving a promotional email.^2
• Customers who receive 0-1 emails per month have an average order value (AOV) of $75. While customers who receiving an email 16 or more emails per month have an AOV of $135.^3

By setting up an email marketing strategy, businesses can reach large audiences of customers and prospects already in their lists to increase sales through email campaigns. With well-targeted creative copy and segmentation, email continues to be one of the most cost-effective digital marketing channels.

Setting Up Your Email Marketing Campaign

The first step in implementing an email marketing strategy to boost and increase sales with email marketing is to select an email service provider platform. The top three platforms used for email marketing are Mailchimp, Constant Contact, and AWeber. Each platform has its strengths, so it’s a good idea to evaluate features and pricing for your business needs.

Once you’ve selected a platform, you’ll need to build your subscriber email lists. The best way to collect email signups is by placing a signup form prominently on your website’s high-traffic pages using a tool like Mailchimp’s or AWeber’s signup forms. Be sure to properly incentive signups by offering a free guide or discount in exchange for their email.

It’s also important to segment your email lists for more targeted messaging. common email marketing ways to segment include:

• By product/service purchased
• By subscription tier (basic vs premium)
• By geographic location
• By repeat versus new customers

Proper segmentation allows you to personalize content in emails based on subscribers’ attributes and behaviors. For example, you could send discount codes to recent buyers to encourage re-purchases. Segmentation leads to higher engagement rates and sales from emails.

Once your lists are built and segmented properly, the next steps are designing your email templates and developing an editorial calendar to plan content production. Templates control the look and feel of your emails while the calendar ensures a consistent, well-timed flow of communications. Both require testing to optimize over time.

Overall, taking the time upfront to thoughtfully develop your email marketing technical framework sets the stage for long-term results. With the right platform, segmentation strategy and production tools in place, you’ll have an effective channel ready to roll out campaigns that increase sales.

Writing Effective Email Subject Lines

The email subject line is one of the most critical elements to get right, as it often determines whether a subscriber will open your email or not. On average, subject lines with around 50 characters that clearly indicate what the email is about tend to perform best.

It’s a good idea to test different subject line variants that include different benefits, calls-to-action or language to see which ones generate the highest open rates. Here are some examples of effective subject lines:

• Save 15% Off Your Next Order (Offer-focused line)
• Our Top 3 Spring Selling Products (Product-focused line)
• January Deal – 50% Off Sitewide (Promotion-focused line)

You can also try including social proof or urgency:

• What 450 Customers Are Raving About
• Last Chance: Sale Ends Tomorrow

Monitoring the analytics from your email provider is key for optimizing subject lines over time. Continually tweak and test new versions against your highest performing templates. Once you find subject line patterns that drive open rates above industry norms, start applying those patterns to new campaign subject lines. Testing is important since audience interests can change over time.

In addition to strong open rates, effective subject lines should motivate clicks and conversions as well. The goal is to pique interest in your email content and compel subscribers to interact further.

Crafting Engaging Email Content

Once subscribers have been enticed to open your email through the subject line, the next opportunity is the content itself. Proper use of imagery, formatting and copywriting can significantly boost both engagement and sales. Some best practices include:

• Utilize high-quality images and graphics to make emails visually appealing. Stock photos rarely perform as well as original lifestyle images.
• Embed relevant videos directly into the email or linked from within with a play button graphic. Keep videos short at 30 seconds or less.
• Incorporate customer testimonials, social proof and user-generated content to add authenticity and social validation.
• Use a maximum of 3-4 fonts for variety yet consistency. Sans serif fonts like Arial generally work best for on-screen reading.
• Limit blocks of text by breaking up copy with well-formatted subheads, bullet lists, charts or more images wherever possible. 3-4 sentences maximum per paragraph.
• Optimize emails for mobile by designing content that looks good in narrow inboxes on phones. Use clickable call-to-action buttons.
• Write in an informal, conversational tone similar to how you would talk to customers in person.

Testing different content styles and formats against your analytics can provide insight into what resonates most with your unique audience. The goal is engage subscribers and compel them towards a desired goal like a purchase.

Driving Clicks Through Strategic Calls-to-Action

To generate sales from email marketing, strong calls-to-action (CTAs) are essential for motivating the next desired customer action whether that’s visiting a webpage or completing a purchase. CTAs should be prominently placed and easy to identify at a glance.

Some email marketing best practices for CTAs include:

• Place primary CTAs at the top and bottom of your emails for maximum visibility.
• Use specific, trackable phrases like “Shop Now” rather than vague ones like “Learn More”.
• Link CTAs directly to pages like your homepage, sale landing page or shopping cart for quick conversions.
• Style CTAs to stand out with bright colors, larger text size, borders, or all caps formatting.
• Include relevant offers that incentivize clicks like “15% Off Sitewide” or “Free Shipping on Orders Over $50”.
• Use progress bars to compellingly frame CTAs if completing multiple actions like “Sign Up > Download > Purchase”.

Testing different CTA styles, copy, and placement against one another provides insights into maximizing click-through rates and sales. Optimizing CTAs ensures subscribers easily understand how to respond to your emails.

Some businesses even include entertainment content solely designed to boost open and click rates initially so promotional pitches land in front of more eyeballs.

Tracking and Measuring Email Campaign Results

To truly optimize your email campaigns strategy over time requires tracking crucial metrics that provide insight into what’s working and what needs improvement. The top email marketing tips to increase metrics and track include:

• Open rates – Percentage of subscribers who opened an email
• Click-through rates – Percentage of opens that resulted in a click
• Conversion rates – Percentage of clicks that converted into a desired action
• Revenue generated – Dollar sales directly attributed to each campaign

Tracking individual metrics:

• Subject line performance
• Day/time of sending
• Segment (location, product etc)
• Device (mobile, desktop) performance

Most email marketing services providers make this tracking seamless through integrated analytics dashboards. Companies should also setup goal-oriented landing pages to directly tie campaign performance to:

• Signups
• Downloads
• Purchases
• Pages visited

Regular A/B split testing allows optimization of subject lines, copy, calls-to-action, and design elements proven to perform best. Consistent analysis ensures resources focus on activities generating highest engagement and sales. Monitoring trends over time also provides clues to adjust strategies during different seasons or events.

Proper campaign metrics combined with testing ultimately lead to continuous email program improvement. The right email marketing measurements enable companies to maximize ROI from their email newsletters.

Conclusion

In conclusion, ecommerce email marketing offers e-brands an effective way to regularly communicate special offers and promotions that can significantly boost sales over time. However, it requires some initial setup to establish the right technical framework of marketing automation tools, segmentation strategies, template design, and editorial calendar for planning content.

Testing different email subject lines, copy, formatting and calls-to-action variations against open, click and conversion rate benchmarks provides data-driven insights into optimizing campaigns. Integrating email campaigns into other digital channels like social media, paid search and digital ads also builds traffic and awareness.

Leveraging customer purchase history and behavioral data allows personalizing emails with targeted, relevant messaging per subscriber group. Nurturing new subscribers with informative content builds trust and loyalty before pitching promotional deals. And consistent analysis of key metrics exposes what’s working or needs to improve your email for driving ongoing sales growth through email.

Overall, a carefully managed email marketing program optimized through persistent A/B testing and data analysis presents a lucrative opportunity for businesses to expand reach and drive increased profits. When properly executed, email remains one of the most cost-effective digital marketing channels available.