One of the challenges that many small businesses face is finding a cost-efficient way to reach their audience on a budget.
This is where email marketing comes in. Email offers one of the most effective ways to grow your business and increase revenue.
Compared to other marketing channels, email delivers a high return on investment. You can generate a return of $42 for every dollar you spend on email marketing.
If you’re not using emails in your marketing, you’re missing out on sales opportunities. Here we’ll provide an overview of what email marketing is and look at successful email campaigns that you can learn from.
What is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is the use of email to promote a product or service. The goal here is to let your audience know about your offer and generate more sales.
Emails aren’t strictly limited to promotions though. You can use email marketing in your business to build relationships and keep customers informed of new updates.
Email offers a cost-effective way to reach your audience. It’s also one of the most widely used content distribution channels just behind social media (95%) and blog posts (89%).
One way emails can be used in your marketing is through a welcome sequence — a series of engaging emails that you send to a new subscriber to build a relationship and explain the benefits of your offer.
Here’s an example of what a typical welcome sequence looks like:
There are a number of email marketing tools you can use to automate your email campaigns and manage your list. Using software makes it easy to segment your list and personalize your emails to individual people.
For example, you can segment your list and send relevant offers based on products that subscribers have purchased in the past. This kind of personalization can lead to increased sales.
It’s clear that email marketing works. But what if you have never created an email campaign before? The good news is you can draw some inspiration by looking at successful campaigns that companies have put out.
7 Email Marketing Campaigns You Can Emulate
The following is a list of email marketing campaign from different companies. Looking at these emails can be helpful to inform yo
ur own.
BuzzFeed: Keeping Daily Emails Short
BuzzFeed is a popular entertainment site that aggregates content from all over the web. Visitors can subscribe to their newsletters to keep up with trending buzz.
Here’s an email they send out to new subscribers for BuzzFeed Daily:
The email gets straight to the point. There’s no lengthy introduction and even the text is only a few sentences long.
BuzzFeed also uses images in its emails to increase engagement. Finally, there’s a call to action button that prompts subscribers to click through to see what’s trending.
One important point is to be mindful of any internet abbreviations you use. If you do (as Buzzfeed does in some of its emails), try to stick to some of the more common chat acronyms.
Key takeaways: Your subscribers are busy. Keep your emails short and include a call to action with a link to drive traffic to your site.
Converse: Offering Discounts and Personalizing Email Subject Lines
Converse sells a wide selection of sneakers and lifestyle brand footwear. The company offers a 15% discount to encourage new visitors to sign up to their email list:
Offering a discount is a win-win — a shopper saves on their next purchase and Converse gets a new subscriber that they can send additional offers to.
Here’s the welcome email that Converse sends to new subscribers:
What stands out about this email is that it includes the individual’s name in the subject line. Why is this important? Because it’s been shown to increase open rates by 26%.
You can use a subject line optimizer to help you craft subject lines that engage and convert!
Key takeaways: Entice new visitors to subscribe to your list by offering a discount. Make your emails more personal by adding their names to the subject line.
3. Urban Outfitters: Bringing Shoppers Back to Their Shopping Carts
Urban Outfitters is a multinational retail store that sells a range of lifestyle clothing for men and women as well as vintage-inspired furniture. Shopping cart abandonment occurs when a shopper adds a product to their cart but doesn’t complete their purchase.
Urban Outfitters brings shoppers back to their store by sending them an email with a reminder that they still have items in their shopping cart:
This email from Urban Outfitters is simple, yet effective. It includes a link for shoppers to easily return to their shopping cart and complete their purchases.
Key takeaway: If shoppers on your store are abandoning their carts at a high rate, consider following up with personalized emails to capture more lost sales. There are a number of automation tools you can use to make your emails more personalized.
ContactMonkey: Welcoming New Employees With Internal Newsletters
ContactMonkey is a company that offers software to measure internal communications using Outlook and Gmail.
Email marketing isn’t strictly limited to sending transactional emails. You can also use automation software to create and send internal employee newsletters.
Here’s an example of a company email that welcomes new employees and shares some facts about them:
The email even includes a button next to each employee profile, making it easy for others in the organization to say hello and introduce themselves.
Key takeaways: Use emails within your organization to improve internal communications and increase engagement. Send newsletters to welcome new employees, celebrate major milestones, and share important updates to keep everyone informed.
Asana: Touching on Pain Points
Asana is a simple project management software that enables teams to get more work done. They offer a solution that makes it easy for teams to manage their projects and stay on track.
The company touches on several pain points in its welcome email that many professionals undoubtedly face in the workforce:
The image that Asana uses in its welcome email is actually a GIF:
The short animation adds a fun and engaging element to the email. It’s eye-catching and illustrates how tasks are handled when they’re complete.
Visuals can make your emails more appealing. But it’s important to use any images or animations sparingly as adding too many can make your emails load slowly for your subscribers.
Key takeaways: If you have subscribers who are not yet customers, touch on their pain points and offer your products or services as the solution. Another way to make your emails more engaging is to include visuals like images or short animations.
Neil Patel: Offering Free and Valuable Resources
Neil Patel is a digital marketing entrepreneur and founder of Crazy Egg and Hello Bar. He regularly blogs at NeilPatel.com where he shares insights on increasing website traffic and generating more leads.
Here’s an email he sent to his subscribers containing a link with a list of marketing worksheets and templates.
You don’t always need to include images in your emails as shown here.
This email is in plain text and only includes a single link. He also follows basic SEO copywriting practices in each email, such as outlining a clear benefit and using short sentences with paragraph breaks for improved readability.
There’s also no hard sale in the email, which helps him build credibility with his list. He’s providing something of value completely for free.
Key takeaways: It’s okay to use emails to send offers to your list. But you should also find ways to provide value. Examples can include sharing free resources to your subscribers (as shown above) or even curating a list of helpful tools.
SleepJunkie: Providing Regularly Updates
SleepJunkie is a blog that provides comprehensive guides and product reviews about sleep health. Visitors can subscribe to their newsletter to stay up-to-date on new content.
SleepJunkie regularly sends out emails to their subscribers with content that’s relevant to their interests. One email they sent to their list contained a link to the following page:
SleepJunkie understands that finding the best mattress isn’t easy — it’s a time-consuming process that involves comparing different mattresses and the features they offer. So they put together an in-depth buying guide to help their visitors.
Key takeaways: One way to use email in your marketing is to provide product reviews and compile buying guides to help your audience. You can also include custom images in your email campaigns that take visitors to your content.
New Best Practices: Improve Your Email Marketing Campaign Performance
Traditional email campaigns and landing pages are text-heavy. Unfortunately, this does not work when your audience is easily distracted and overwhelmed with information overload. You can use email tools to know whether you’re following all the recommended best practices or not.
We recommend the following proven best practices that will help you maximize engagement with your leads:
- Keep your messaging relevant to the target audience – focus on their problems and why they should care about you.
- Try to deliver your message in under a minute.
- Capture and retain their attention with stunning rich media content – videos, animations, infographics, illustrations, photos, and very little text.
A new generation of cloud-based solutions such as Zoomifier will enable you to wow your audience even if you don’t have any prior experience. Furthermore, CustomShow enhances your campaign analytics by giving more in-depth content analytics. This is really cool.
The rich media does not have to put a big dent in your marketing budget. Here is a link to dozens of sites that provide very high-quality free stock videos, animations, photos, illustrations, icons, and more.
Conclusion
According to the Marketing Manager from Money Beagle, Email marketing offers one of the most cost-effective ways to reach your audience and grow your business. You can also use emails to develop relationships with your customers and drive more traffic to your site.
As you start using email to engage with your audience, it’s important to provide value. If you bombard your list with pushy sales messages, your subscribers will be more likely to unsubscribe from your newsletter.
Are you using email marketing? Or do you have any tips you’d like to share that you’ve had success with? Then be sure to let us know in the comments below!
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[…] In this post, you will get to know about some of the most common email marketing practices that stand a huge chance of hurting your email marketing campaign. […]