To help you harness the power of email marketing for your business, we’ve gathered 13 expert tips from marketing professionals and business leaders. From targeting existing customers with sales to maintaining brand awareness, discover the best practices these experts recommend for growing your business through email marketing.
- Target Existing Customers With Sales
- Offer Incentives in Campaigns
- Tell Authentic Stories, Don’t Sell
- Personalize and Segment Emails
- Boost SEO With Email Marketing
- Master Segmentation and Personalization
- Grow Repeat Business With Updates
- Boost Rates With Targeted Dynamic Content
- Provide Actionable Tips, Understand Needs
- Personalized Cold Email Sequences
- Engage With Conversation Newsletters
- Share Content in Monthly Newsletters
- Maintain Brand Awareness, Be Persistent
Target Existing Customers With Sales
One thing you should never do is neglect existing customers while you’re trying to attract new ones. It’s a simple mistake to make, and one thing you can do to remind existing customers how much you value them is to send news whenever products they previously liked or related ones are on sale. It’s a good way to drive more sales and make the most out of the discounts you offer.
Natalia Brzezinska, Marketing and Outreach Manager, ePassportPhoto
Offer Incentives in Campaigns
It’s important to offer an incentive to your email marketing campaign. Can a customer receive a discount, free shipping, or a free product? If a consumer gets something out of it, they’re more likely to sign up and interact with the content in their inbox. As a result, you’ve gained a loyal and happy customer.
Christy Pyrz, Chief Marketing Officer, Paradigm Peptides
Tell Authentic Stories, Don’t Sell
The advice I’m about to give you sounds terrible—but bear with me. I’m a professional author and my stories come with a twist.
So every week I send a monster email, often over 1,000 words. The email itself seldom sells anything. The only links are in the P.S. at the bottom of the email, where we pitch creative writing courses, editing help, etc.
That sounds like an awful idea, no? We should identify a problem, then solve it. Fast in, fast out. Our approach sounds plain wrong.
Except for people who like stories and trust authenticity. Most weeks, I approach a particular writing challenge via some kind of story. People like the story. They know I’ll make them laugh. They trust my advice. And, when they’re ready to buy a writing-related service, they’ve already made their decision.
The proof? Our open rates are way over 40+%. And well over half our sales are to the mailing list.
And that’s my advice: Tell a story. Be authentic. Don’t sell.
Harry Bingham, CEO, Jericho Writers
Personalize and Segment Emails
When a small firm could get away with sending the same basic email campaign to everyone on their list, those days are long gone. Enhancing your email marketing strategy with personalization is a great idea. Engaging subscribers and keeping them on your list is much easier with personalized emails.
Consider grouping your email lists into segments to distribute relevant content to different demographics to increase your CTR even further. Send different email campaigns, for instance, to those who are currently making a purchase, people who haven’t looked at an email in a while, and new subscribers. Avoid making them entirely promotional, since this negates the aim of segmenting your list.
Kurt Uhlir, Chief Marketing Officer, kurtuhlir.com
Boost SEO With Email Marketing
We use email marketing to support our company’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaign. We send out weekly emails to our clients and prospects that include an engaging introduction and hyperlink to our latest blog.
Those that click through from the email land on our website’s blog. This increases the number of users landing on our website. Done consistently, this increase in traffic signals search engines that our website is popular with users.
This signal encourages search engines to rank our website higher on the results pages, meaning that there is a greater chance of those looking for our products clicking on our website when they are searching for solutions. With more users who are looking for products like ours landing on our site, the number of leads generated increases. This helps us to grow our business.
John Everton, Technical Director, Bravo Benefits
Master Segmentation and Personalization
To rock your email marketing game, you have to speak directly to your subscribers, like you’re sharing an inside joke or spilling some tea. And the secret to doing that? Segmenting your audience and personalizing your messages.
First, slice and dice your email list into segments based on factors like interests, behavior, or demographics. This way, you can tailor your content to meet their specific needs and desires, making your emails feel like a warm hug rather than a cold sales pitch.
Next, amp up the personalization by using subscribers’ names, referring to their previous interactions, or even recommending products based on their browsing history. The more personal, the better!
By embracing segmentation and personalization, your emails will stand out in crowded inboxes, and you’ll see your business grow. So, get cozy with your subscribers and make email marketing work for you!
Megan Killion, Chief Consultant, MKC Agency
Grow Repeat Business With Updates
We use email marketing to grow our repeat business as opposed to new business. As a commercial photography company specializing in niche markets, our client pool is highly specific. Our clients do not require photography daily, so we need to remain top of mind for their next project(s).
Our email marketing assists with this, as we only focus on sharing quarterly updates about what we’ve been working on, as well as links to our blogs and recent case studies. We do not add any sales copy to our newsletters, as their goal and purpose are to be a touch point.
A reminder of what we are capable of and increases the likelihood of receiving future project opportunities. Every new client we gain gets added to our newsletter and we repeat the process.
Megan Lowdon, Director of Operations, Robert Lowdon Photography
Boost Rates With Targeted Dynamic Content
In my experience, the most effective way I’ve used email marketing to grow my business was through segmentation. By applying this strategy, I boosted my open rates by 37% and conversion rates by 28%.
I began by analyzing the data I had collected from subscribers, such as their interests, demographics, and engagement levels. This enabled me to divide my audience into smaller, more focused segments. For instance, I created segments for highly engaged customers, occasional shoppers, and dormant subscribers. This allowed me to tailor my messaging and offers to suit each group’s unique needs and preferences.
Next, I used dynamic content to further personalize my emails, addressing each recipient by their name and including content relevant to their interests. For example, if a subscriber had shown interest in a specific product category, I would send them tailored promotions and content about that category.
Khamis Maiouf, CEO, Book of Barbering
Provide Actionable Tips and Understand Needs
Use your expertise to give one actionable tip to your subscribers. Life is busy. Nobody owes you their attention. If you don’t offer real, tangible value in your communication, your subscribers have no reason to open your email.
That requires a deep understanding of your subscribers’ pain points and how you can relieve them. Your emails shouldn’t be an advertisement for your product. They should be an insight into your understanding of their industry and (by extension) your ability to deliver the right solution.
Benjamin Graham, Content Strategist, AnswerConnect
Personalized Cold Email Sequences
There are many ways to undertake email marketing, but cold email marketing can be a powerful tool for growing your business.
One best practice for cold email marketing is to create a sequence of four personalized emails that build on each other. The first email should always be personalized, contain a compliment for the recipient, and have a two-line case study and a call to action.
The second email should be a reminder just to get your sequence back to the top of the target’s inbox.
The third email can often contain another type of case study or social proof. And the fourth email can be what many people call the “breakup email”, which essentially says, “If you’re not interested, fair enough, although we would love to work with you.”
By following this best practice and creating a personalized email sequence, you can increase the effectiveness of your email marketing and grow your business.
Shane Mcevoy, MD, Flycast Media
Engage With Conversation Newsletters
I send weekly conversation newsletters to those on my email marketing list. I’ve found that being conversational, asking questions, sharing relevant content, and including a great P.S., has been the key to growing my business.
Analytics show that my P.S. is typically the highest-clicked link in my newsletter. And by including content that directly tips the needle in my business in that spot, I’m always on a growth trajectory.
Jenny Belanger, CEO and Creative Director, JennyB Designs
Share Content in Monthly Newsletters
Email marketing is one of the most cost-friendly ways to grow a business. We’ve used it in several ways, but we’ve mainly used it to grow our audience by sending out monthly newsletters. Doing so is a great way to share content and give your potential clients valuable information while showcasing your brand.
Diana Royanto, Writer, Milkwhale
Maintain Brand Awareness, Be Persistent
Our business uses email marketing to keep our brand on people’s minds. We are a small plastic surgery office and we specialize in a procedure called “LipoTuck”. We send out targeted emails twice a month to anyone that has either called the office for info about the procedure or come into the office for a LipoTuck consultation but has not booked surgery yet.
The idea is to keep the brand fresh in the consumers’ heads. The best practice tip I can give is to be persistent and patient with email marketing. It can be a slow process, but it pays off. I have had customers book surgery years after they contacted us simply because we kept sending them marketing emails.
Ahmad Ahmadi, Owner/Surgeon/Medical Director, Avante Plastic Surgery
