Email marketing is crucial for any ecommerce store, providing a direct line of communication to people who are interested in your brand. When done properly, email marketing tactics work to introduce new subscribers to your brand, increase sales, and build a base of loyal customers.
But the same old email marketing strategy from 15 or even 5 years ago won’t work anymore. Your target audience gets so many marketing emails on a daily basis that you need to be really special to stand out from the noise.
If you want your campaigns to deliver an outstanding ROI, you’ll need to have an effective email marketing strategy that delivers relevant, high-value content to your subscriber list.
In this article, we’ll look at 3 strategies that will boost the ROI of each email marketing campaign you send. But first, let’s cover the basics of a good email marketing strategy.
If you’d like to skip the basics, just use the shortcuts below to get to the three email marketing strategies.
What is an email marketing strategy?
An email marketing strategy is a comprehensive plan outlining how a company will use email to achieve its marketing objectives.
Essentially, it’s the roadmap that guides the execution of email campaigns to ensure they align with the overall marketing goals of the business.
A well-defined email strategy allows email marketers to deliver relevant and timely messages to their subscribers, ultimately driving engagement, conversions, and ROI.
Why do you need an email marketing strategy?
Having the right email marketing strategy is essential for several reasons:
- It helps you build and nurture relationships with your audience. By delivering valuable content directly to subscribers’ inboxes, you can establish trust and credibility over time.
- An email marketing strategy enables you to personalize your communications, tailoring messages to specific segments of your audience based on demographics, behavior, or preferences. This personalization not only increases the relevance of the emails but also enhances engagement and conversion rates.
- An email marketing strategy also provides a framework for measuring and optimizing campaign performance. By tracking key metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates, you can gain valuable insights into what resonates with your audience and refine your approach accordingly.
- Ultimately, a well-executed email marketing strategy can drive significant ROI by maximizing the effectiveness of each email campaign.
How to create a successful email marketing strategy?
If you want to create a winning email marketing strategy, follow these key steps:
1. Define your goals
Start by identifying the specific objectives you want to achieve with your email campaigns, whether it’s increasing sales, driving website traffic, or boosting brand awareness.
2. Know your audience
Understand who your target audience is and what their needs, preferences, and pain points are.
Segment your email list based on demographics, interests, or past interactions to deliver more relevant content.
3. Craft compelling content
Create engaging and valuable content that resonates with your audience.
Whether it’s informative articles, promotional offers, or entertaining videos, make sure your emails provide real value to the recipient.
4. Design effective campaigns
Pay attention to the design and layout of your emails to ensure they are visually appealing and easy to read on any device.
Use eye-catching graphics, clear calls-to-action, and personalized messaging to encourage action.
5. Test and iterate
Continuously test different elements of your email campaigns, such as subject lines, send times, and content formats, to identify what works best for your audience.
Use A/B testing to compare variations and refine your approach over time.
6. Monitor and analyze performance
Track key metrics to evaluate the success of your email campaigns.
Monitor open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and other relevant metrics to measure the impact of your efforts and identify areas for improvement.
3 proven & high-converting email marketing strategies
Now, let’s delve into the three email marketing campaign strategies that can significantly enhance the performance of your marketing emails and drive higher ROI.
1. Segment subscribers without impacting sign-up rates
If you want your email subscribers to consistently engage with your email marketing campaigns, you need to send them content that they’re actually interested in. And that means you’ll need to segment your subscribers and send personalized emails to them.
The best way to understand your visitors’ preferences and purchase intentions is by asking them directly. This process is called collecting zero-party data, and it will help you send better and more targeted emails in the future.
A popular way of gathering this info is during the email subscription process. This is the perfect opportunity to collect information about your email contacts as they’re joining your email list. For example, while you’re asking for a visitor’s email address, you can also ask them what types of products they’re interested in.
However, there’s always a risk that adding more fields to an email marketing sign-up form can decrease conversion rates.
Luckily, there’s a solution that allows you to collect zero-party data without sacrificing any new subscribers: breaking your list-building campaigns into two steps.
First, you show your regular email marketing sign-up popup, which can look something like this:
Then, after your potential customers have signed up for your email list, you can ask them for extra information on the thank you page.
Here’s what it can look like:
Since it takes so little effort to answer a question like this, almost all of your visitors will do so. Having this extra information can give you a huge advantage, allowing you to fill up your marketing calendar with personalized campaigns for different segments.
Here’s how to set up an email list-building campaign like the one above:
- Choose one of OptiMonk’s email list building templates and customize it to fit your store’s design.
2. Add a survey form to your thank you page and ask a question that will allow you to segment your subscribers.
3. Set up the integrations to send all the zero-party data to your email service provider(s).
2. Personalize your website for your VIP customer segments
Many marketers only think about using personalization in the emails they send out. While you certainly should personalize everything from the email subject line to the content marketing within it, you should also personalize the landing page visitors see when they click through from your email campaigns.
This will ensure that your high click-through rate isn’t wasted, as the landing page will be optimized to boost sales, too. It’s also a great way to build loyalty and ensure that your subscribers are anticipating your next campaign or monthly newsletter.
Your VIP customers are your best customers, so you definitely want to be thinking about them as you’re creating your email marketing strategy. Taking the extra step to personalize the landing page your most loyal customers see will lead to an even better ROI on your email campaigns for this segment.
You can customize these landing pages with a special VIP offer, and even make the headline match the subject line of the email campaign.
Reminding your customers about your email offer throughout your site means that the on-site customer experience is directly tied to the email content. This email marketing strategy can increase the conversion rate of these segments by up to 20%.
Here’s how you can implement this email marketing strategy:
1. Choose an embedded campaign and customize it to fit your website’s style.
2. Add a coupon code and countdown element (to increase the sense of urgency) and be sure to make it clear that the offer is exclusive to your VIP customers.
3. Define your VIP target audience (If you use Klaviyo, use the “Klaviyo lists and segments” rule. If you use another email service provider, use our “Visited URL” rule.)
4. Use our Point and Click tool to place your message wherever you like.
3. Personalize your email marketing campaigns’ landing pages
Most businesses ask for their subscribers’ first names during the email signup process, which allows them to personally greet subscribers in emails and subject lines.
Why not use this data to personalize your email marketing landing pages, too?
Your visitors will be delighted to arrive on your landing pages from an email campaign and see a personalized headline like “Hey Ryan, welcome back!”
Personalizing your landing pages, not just your email content, can provide a massive boost to the conversion rate of your email marketing campaigns and make running them more cost effective.
You can set up this type of personalized content by following these steps:
- Create a Smart Tag using OptiMonk’s Custom Variables feature.
- Create a Dynamic Content campaign and rewrite the headline on your landing page.
3. Use the “Visited URL” rule and target the users coming from your email campaigns.
Wrapping up
Email marketing is an important channel for both large and small online businesses, and it’s a key part of an overall digital marketing strategy. That’s why it’s so important to stay in the know about the latest tactics to improve the ROI of your email campaigns.
In this article, we’ve given you three strategies to help you nurture leads and turn more subscribers into new customers.
With OptiMonk, you can gain access to great email list-building templates, take advantage of its integrations with most email service providers, and personalize your landing pages for visitors coming from your email campaigns.
Sign up for a free account and start achieving your email marketing goals today!
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