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Email is one of the oldest forms of digital marketing and some think it's dead or dying. But the truth is, as long as emails are used as a communication tool, email marketing can generate results just like any other online marketing platform. In fact, according to Google, there are 1.8 billion active Gmail users.

Email marketing generates results, but the outcome will be highly dependent on the marketing strategy that a company follows. In general, there are 4 KPIs that help to measure the success of an email campaign:

  1. Deliverability - Landing on the receiver's primary inbox (most promotional emails end up in the promotions tab, or their spam folder)
  2. The open rate of the mail.
  3. Number of clicks or the actions that are taken on the call to action.
  4. Sales generated through the campaign.

This article lists 7 tips to help you generate sales through email marketing.

1. Be Human

According to Google, what they try to offer their users is a human first experience. Your campaign needs to sound like a human talking to another human and it has to create a digital handshake. You have to use a language that's compelling and interactive. Many suggest that writing your promotional emails as a 3rd grader will generate more engagement and help you to land in the primary inbox of recipients. The optimal word count of an email is 50-150 words. Another best practice would be to address your recipients with their names. And when being human, you have to think like a human too. You have to make sure you don't spam them by sending the same email to the same recipient multiple times. You have to give them the option to unsubscribe if they don't want to hear from you anymore.

2. Be resourceful

There has to be value for the recipient when they read an email. There's no point in sending them information that they already know. Depending on the situation, you have to identify the values you can create and deliver them. Let's say, for example, someone created a user account on your website and added a product to the cart and didn't proceed with the checkout. There's no point in sending them an email about the products that you sell. That info is useless as they have already added what they wanted to the cart. You have to be resourceful by providing them with an extra incentive to complete their purchase decision. It could be an offer, user reviews or experience about the product or an after service that you offer for that particular product.

3. Time it to perfection

Despite the notifications we receive, we don't check our inbox throughout the day. So understanding your audience and their user behaviour is important and you have to time your emails accordingly. Let's say someone subscribes to the weekly newsletter on your website, the best time to send them that newsletter will be the time of the day they signed up.

4. Try to avoid the promotional tab

As marketers, we always like to use colourful imagery and catchy phrases like 30% off, Best deal, Buy one get one free, and so on. But all of this will result in our emails landing in the promotional tab. Once that happens, we will be among tens and thousands of other promotions and the chances that the recipient will even notice us is incredibly low. It's important to have text-based emails and also to have only 2-3 links including the unsubscribe option. It's also important to have only one call to action to make it less confusing for the recipient.

5. Use emails to upsell

Upselling is common in every eCommerce website. But the moment someone purchases a product, they may not have enough of a budget for accessories (as an example). They will find those accessories more useful after they receive and begin using the product. So, running upsell campaigns to customers and timing it perfectly will help generate more sales.

6. Scrub your mail list

Marketers use 3rd party tools like MailChimp to manage and automate their email campaigns. They never encourage you to clean up your mailing list as it affects their bottom line. But you have to do this because it makes sense. What's the point of having someone who didn't open your emails for the past year remain on your mailing list. By actively managing your list(s), you get a better insight into the KPIs like open rates and click-through rates, and that helps you to make better decisions with your future campaigns.

7. Do the necessary tweaks

Unless you are a digital marketing expert, it's hard to achieve success with your first campaign and it's not that easy to define the best strategy that works for every eCommerce business. So you have to try a-b tests and perform small tweaks to find out what works best for you. For example, you have to find out what's the ideal time of the day to send your newsletters. You can try A- send it in the morning and capture the result (open rate), and B- send it during the night and capture the result. From there you can analyse the results and decide what time of the day to send newsletters. Also, you will have to try a variety of sales strategies to find out what generates the best results. For example, would your email recipients respond more to an old fashion 20% off offer over a BNPL offer?

How Maytech can help

We are an Australian based software development company that specialises in bespoke web and mobile application development, eCommerce solutions, process automation and staff augmentation. If you find this content relevant, we are sure that we can help you improve the way you do business. Contact us to find out how our technical expertise and 16 years of industry experience can deliver results for your business.

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