Every online store sends out email newsletters, but only a few truly use the possibilities of email marketing. Some marketers bombard existing and potential customers with a bunch of different offers in the hope that they will “take off”, email newsletters to email while others carefully select segments and create highly personalized offers, which requires a lot of time and effort. These are, of course, extremes, but if you recognize yourself at least a little, it’s time to change something.
Today we will tell you about 5 simple steps from email newsletters to email marketing, which will allow online store specialists to spend less time and earn more through the email channel.
The difference between email newsletters and email marketing
An email newsletter is when you send a letter to many people at once. It is the same for everyone, like a leaflet. Usually such letters simply inform: “Here is our new product”, “We have a discount”. They told and forgot.
Email marketing is about relationships. Here, every letter is part of a well-thought-out plan. You study what your clients are interested in. Because armenia email list 105644 contact leads what they respond to, and send not just information, but useful, necessary letters. This is a dialogue where your task is not just to sell, but to help, to interest, to show that you understand the client and his needs.
The difference is that a newsletter is just sending letters. Marketing is a strategy where each letter has a meaning and purpose. You are not just informing, you are building relationships and helping the client make a choice in your favor.
The Purpose of Email Marketing
The goal of email marketing is to make the client not only buy, but also come back. The letters should be such that they are expected and opened with interest. You want the client to remember you, trust you, and come back for more purchases.
Example:
- Welcome letter: A new subscriber receives a letter. In it, you not only thank them, but also immediately offer a couple of books that they might like. The client sees that you already know what they need.
- Recommendations: The client bought a detective story. Two weeks later, you send a letter: “Did you like the detective story? Here are five more books that will captivate you.” You briefly describe each book – why it’s worth reading.
- Interesting letters: Sometimes, instead of sales, send something useful. For example, a letter about how cult novels were created, or a selection of interviews with favorite authors. The client begins to perceive you not as a store, but as a source of interesting finds.
Email Marketing Strategy
An email marketing strategy is a clear plan. It helps you send emails consciously, not haphazardly. Without a strategy, emails get lost in the inbox, customers don’t read them, and your efforts go to waste.
Why do you need a strategy?
Strategy is needed for emails to work and bring results. Here’s how it helps:
- Achieve your goal: Letters don’t just inform, they accomplish tasks – they sell, bring customers back, remind people about you.
- Increase your return: The strategy tells you who to send the letter to and when. You understand what to write to get a response.
- Save time: A plan eliminates unnecessary thinking. You know what to send and when, so you can focus on making your emails useful.
Step 1: Personalize your email newsletters
It is worth starting work on the effectiveness of the email channel with a personalized approach to subscribers. Each of your current and potential clients has their own interests and preferences, which also change over time. It is impossible to create a mailing that will be interesting to everyone (unless, of course, you offer your product for free and with home delivery, and even then there will be people who will not like something). But a personal letter with recommendations for each subscriber is already a bid for success.
Create emails with personalized product recommendations using modern email marketing platforms. Moreover, it is not only product recommendations that can be personalized: banners with discounts and special offers should also be selected in accordance with the subscriber’s needs. This not only makes the emails more interesting and relevant, but also has a positive effect on all key metrics, increasing the revenue of the email channel and subscriber loyalty.
Online store ELC Russia sends emails with promotions and product recommendations, hand-picked. By implementing personalized recommendations in regular ones, the retailer achieved a 37.4% increase in conversion, increased the number of orders by 44.1% and generated an additional 27.2% increase in revenue in the email channel.
Step 2. Email Segmentation
Segmentation is one of the most important components of not only email marketing, but marketing in general. However, there are still online stores that do not consider it necessary to spend time on segmenting the subscriber base.
And among those who have already appreciated the importance of segmentation, many use only CRM capabilities, without taking into account interests in real time or changes in the lives of subscribers. Why is this important? For example, a children’s goods store knows from the purchase history that a subscriber has a son, and sends him offers for boys. But without tracking behavior on the site and interests in real time, you can miss the moment when the buyer began to be interested in products for a girl because of the addition to the family.
Online store Maksidom sends out newsletters to segments based on CRM data. By tracking behavior on the site and interests in real time, it managed to expand the segment with interest in a certain category of goods, which seven digital habits for children to an increase in conversion by 199.83%, the number of orders from the email campaign by 75%, and the total revenue of the email campaign by 118.62%.
Step 3. Automate email newsletters
An important goal of an email marketer is to automate all routine operations as much as possible. Why constantly collect mailings manually if you can trust it to smart algorithms?
Online stores regularly send out emails with new products, discounts, bestsellers, etc. This process can be facilitated by automated campaigns – automatic email newsletters, personalized for each user, which are sent with any specified frequency to the entire subscriber base or to a specific segment. That is, a marketer only needs to set up the type of email campaign once, email newsletters to email and it will be sent to a specified subscriber base, taking into account the interests of each user. For example, once every two weeks you can send emails with personalized discount recommendations, alternating them with personalized bestsellers or new products.
Step 4. RFM campaigns
Many people talk about RFM segmentation, but only a few use it in practice. Segmentation based on RFM analysis (Recency — time of the last purchase, Frequency — frequency of purchases, Monetary — amount of purchases) helps to get an idea of the quality of the customer base, identify the most loyal customers and determine critical points of communication with customers.
To fully work with RFM segments, you first need to build a retention matrix that is unique for each online store. Then develop scenarios for each segment and the transition from one segment to another. And finally, set up the conditions for sending each of them. This is a long and painstaking work, but the results are worth the effort, because in the future, such mailings generate profit automatically, without the participation of an email marketer.
Step 5. Finding growth points
Never rest on your laurels, always try to increase current indicators – this is what modern email marketing should be. Therefore, it is important to constantly study the effectiveness of the channel, try new opportunities in practice and look for growth points.
You can start with the points listed above, email newsletters to email and then test sending times, the impact of dates and subscriber behavior, use dynamic content, work on service letters, and do much more. It is important to implement changes one by one to track the effect of each.
The online store Profmax.pro sent standard mailings with promotions to the entire subscriber base. After changing the mailing templates, implementing automated campaigns, working on the content plan and segmenting subscribers, it was possible to kcrj an increase in conversion by an average of 65%, an increase in the number of orders via the email channel by more than two times and an overall increase in email channel revenue of more than 250%.