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The average ROI for email marketing is $42 for each dollar you spend.
If you’re not getting at least this much out of your emails, it’s time to go back to the drawing board and make some serious changes to your email marketing strategy!
In this post, we’ve packed some actionable email marketing tips to help you accelerate your email marketing and take your eCommerce store to the next level.
You’ll also learn how to create a successful email marketing campaign from scratch as well as look at some inspiring email examples to get your creative juices flowing.
Ready? Let’s get started!
6 Best Email Marketing Campaign Tips (& Tricks)
1. Optimize your subject line to grab attention at first sight
When it comes to building an effective email, the best place for marketers and small businesses to start is the subject line.
The subject line is one of the first things a subscriber sees when your email lands in their inbox.
Take this opportunity to capture their interest and get them to open your message!
Here are some tactics you can use to optimize your email subject line:
- Add personalization. Whether it’s using your subscriber’s name or the city they live in, personalizing the subject line can increase your email open rates by 50%. People don’t want to do business with machines, they want to build relationships with brands that walk the extra mile and respect their individuality.
- Communicate value upfront. Using creative copy and word play in the subject line is not enough. Instead, tell subscribers how your email will benefit them. Whether it’s a sale announcement, a freebie, or a content marketing promotion, mention it in the subject line so they know exactly why opening your email will be worth their while.
- Avoid using spammy language. Avoid using unwanted techniques like ALL CAPS and lots of exclamation marks!!!! They can immediately make your email look like spam, and might even prompt contacts to unsubscribe. It’s okay to use humor, puns, and even words like “Free” or “Hurry up”, but only when it’s appropriate and delivers value.
- Keep your promise. There are a lot of shady (and dishonest) ways you can get people to open your email, but if they find out you tricked them, they’re not going to like you for it. In fact, the CAN-SPAM act states that it’s illegal to mislead subscribers with your subject line.
- Optimize the preheader text. Treat the preheader text — the part of your email content that a subscriber sees next to the subject line in their inbox — like an extension of your subject line. It should offer a sneak peek at what’s inside, but just enough so it makes your subscribers curious to read the rest of it.
For more tips, tricks, and examples, check out our in-depth article on the best subject lines and how you can create effective ones for your own email marketing campaigns.
2. Personalize your emails to stay relevant to all subscribers
The subject line and preheader text aren’t the only elements you can personalize in an email.
Personalization can take various shapes and forms, and you can go much deeper than just using a subscriber’s name or location.
For example, you can personalize your emails based on the gender of your subscribers. Consider these two emails from an online brand, Johnny Cupcakes.
You can clearly tell which email went to men and which one went to women.
Using a simple detail like this to tailor their emails helped Johnny Cupcakes see a 141% increase in revenue!
This is exactly what makes personalization so powerful — it helps you stay relevant to your subscribers. And the more relevant you are, the more likely subscribers will be to engage with your emails and convert into paying customers.
Other than demographics, there are hundreds of ways you can personalize your emails. It all depends on the kind of data you collect, and how you choose to use it.
From age, location and interests to past purchases and website behavior, the deeper you dive into who your subscribers are and how they interact with your brand, the more ammo you’ll have to shoot high-converting and engaging emails at them.
Based on various data points, you can then create
So, what exactly can you personalize with this data?
Here are some ideas:
- Email design. Personalize the colors and visual elements to make your email look more attractive to your subscribers. For example, pink colors might work better with your female subscribers, and blue hues might work better with males. Also, make sure your email design is responsive so it looks amazing on both desktop and mobile devices.
- Email copy. Tailor the messaging, language, tone of voice, length, and wording you use in your email copy and call-to-action to each subscriber or segment. For example, the words “Follow us on Social Media!” might not drive as much action as “Follow us on Facebook!”
- Email content. Personalize the type of emails you send based on subscriber behavior and characteristics. For example, you can send product recommendation emails showing necklaces to customers who previously bought a necklace from your store, and earrings to customers who previously bought earrings.
With Sendlane, you get access to plenty of features that let you personalize your emails based on the teeniest details about your subscribers.
For instance, you can integrate your Sendlane account with your Shopify store, and add the dynamic abandoned cart block to your emails.
Sendlane will automatically pull information from your Shopify store and show each customer the photos and names of the exact products they abandoned in their carts!
Business owners are also able to create hyper-targeted segments based on multiple variables at a time!
Need to create a segment of 18 y/o females who live in Ohio and have bought a tote bag from your store in the last 30 days? Sendlane got your back!
Learn more about segmentation and the best types of eCommerce segments you can create in Sendlane.
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3. Add value to your emails to make them worthwhile
Don’t just send emails for the sake of sending them. Every email you send should have a purpose behind it, and should benefit your subscribers in some way.
This perceived “value” can be anything, from monetary value to informational value to emotional value.
To successfully add value to your emails, you need to think about why you’re sending this email in the first place. Ask yourself:
- What do you wish to achieve with this email?
- What action do you need subscribers to take after reading this email?
- What problem does this email solve for your subscribers?
Let’s say your goal is to convert your email subscribers into customers. The action you want them to take after reading the email is to visit your online store and make a purchase.
Here are some ways you can add value to your email:
- Monetary value: For eCommerce customers, value has a lot to do with money. Offer subscribers a discount or a perk, like free shipping, to entice them to buy from you and make them feel like they’re getting more bang for their buck.
- Informational value: Sometimes, a lack of information can be the #1 reason why subscribers don’t convert. To tackle this, you can educate your contacts on how your product works, how it can benefit them, and how they can use it. This will help reduce the uncertainty gap, which can often translate into a sale for you.
- Emotional value: Customers value emotional support just as much as monetary or informational benefits. Even a simple “Happy Birthday” email on their big day can make subscribers feel special and emotionally connected to your brand. Throw in a “Treat Yourself” product recommendation to prompt them to visit your website and make a purchase.
Remember this: adding value is the only thing that will drive high engagement and conversion rates from your emails.
People have signed up to receive your emails for a reason. You need to ensure your subscribers’ needs are met, and that they’re getting something in return for leaving their precious details with you.
4. Experiment and track performance to constantly improve
Even if you’re the best in your industry, there’s always room for improvement. This goes for every aspect of your business, including email marketing.
That’s why you should never be afraid to experiment with new email content, copy, design, style, CTAs, and techniques. You never know when you might hit the engagement jackpot!
If you’re using a tool like Sendlane, you’re lucky to have features like Experiments and a robust analytics dashboard to help you test and track the performance of every email campaign you run.
Let’s find out how these two features can help you boost your email marketing campaigns:
- Sendlane Experiments: Experiments is Sendlane’s multivariate testing feature, which is much more advanced than simple A/B testing. In A/B tests, you can only test two versions of an email at a time, but Experiments lets you test up to four email versions simultaneously, while modifying a variety of campaign elements.
- Sendlane Analytics: Sendlane’s powerful analytics dashboard lets you track dozens of metrics, from the open rate and click through rate to who is opening your email and on what device. The dashboard uses colorful, visual charts and graphs to present data, which makes it easy to understand email performance at a glance.
5. Optimize email timing to reach contacts when they’re most active
Even the best email marketing campaigns can fail if they’re sent at the wrong time.
Your subscribers are likely in different time zones, with varying schedules and routines of their own. Your brand needs to seamlessly blend in with their lives instead of interrupting them.
Make sure your emails are sent when contacts are most receptive and active.
For example, if most of your contacts in the US engage with your emails around 10 am, that’s probably the best time for you to send these contacts all your future emails, too.
It increases the chances of opens, click throughs and engagement on your emails, making your campaigns more successful and cost-effective!
You can get your hands on this data using Sendlane’s analytics, and then create segments based on location and time zones to manually schedule your emails.
Or, here’s an even better idea: use Sendlane’s Machine Learning Open Predictability feature!
Machine Learning Open Predictability (MLOP) takes away the headache of scheduling your emails for different types of subscribers.
How? By automatically sending your emails to each individual subscriber at the optimal time.
All you need to do is check the Machine Learning Open Predictability box when you’re scheduling your email, and then sit back and let Sendlane do the rest!
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6. Prevent emails from landing in the spam folder
Did you know that 1 out of 6 emails never makes it to your subscriber’s inbox?
Some of the factors that affect your deliverability have to do with how your emails are being sent (A.K.A the email marketing service you’re using.)
Others have a lot to do with what your email looks like.
If your email looks like spam, your subscribers might throw it in the spam folder or *gasp* even unsubscribe from all your future emails.
This is bad news for your sender reputation — email clients like Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo! won’t hesitate to block your emails if they receive too many spam complaints.
Luckily, there are several things you can do to ensure your emails land in the right folder:
- Send emails that subscribers want to receive. This may sound straightforward, but this can actually be hard to achieve if you’re not leveraging data to drive your email content, using automation, or personalizing your emails extensively.
- Maintain list hygiene. Clean your email lists regularly to rid them of inactive and outdated contacts. The healthier your email lists are, the more engagement you’ll get on your emails. Check out this guide to setting up automated list hygiene in Sendlane.
- Always ask for permission. Do not send emails to people who didn’t voluntarily opt in to receive your email newsletter. Unsolicited messages likely won’t get you any engagement. They will, however, get you more unsubscribes and decrease your sender reputation.
- Allow contacts to opt-out of your emails. If a contact doesn’t want to receive emails from you, they should have the option to easily opt out of your email list. Make it tough for them, and you’ll not only risk getting into legal trouble, but also cultivate hate for your brand. Sendlane automatically adds an unsubscribe option to the bottom of all your emails.
- Avoid spam language. Just like you shouldn’t use spammy words in the subject line, you should avoid using "email curse words" anywhere in your email. Adding too many links, making spelling mistakes, and sending deceptive content are also big red flags for both email clients and subscribers.
Boost your email campaigns with marketing automation
It’s no secret that marketing automation can help your business drive more revenue, improve sales productivity and reduce costs.
Yet, only 20% of marketers actually create automated email marketing campaigns!
Shocking, right?
The truth is, automating your email campaigns is one of the best things you can do for your eCommerce store.
Imagine being able to send the right email at the right time to the right person — every single time. That’s what you get with automation!
Automation lets you set up multiple emails to be sent automatically based on specific triggers, such as when a customer makes a purchase or signs up to your newsletter.
In Sendlane, setting up automated email campaigns is a breeze. You can even choose from pre-made workflows, such as Welcome emails and Abandoned Cart sequences.
Check out this article on how to set up an email automation workflow in Sendlane.
If you want to learn more about the types of automated email campaigns you create to maximize sales and engagement, here’s a useful guide with practical examples!
Level Up Your Email Marketing Campaigns With Sendlane
Email marketing should be an essential part of your digital marketing strategy.
If you’re not sending successful email campaigns, you’re missing out on a ton of ROI and losing money you could otherwise invest in growing your business!
With the tips above, eCommerce businesses like you can easily create email marketing campaigns that drive sales, customer loyalty, engagement, and more.
Ready to start sending personalized and targeted emails that actually get your results? Sign up for Sendlane’s 60-day free trial and take it for a spin!
