Needless to say that email marketing is one of the most effective channels which allow delivering the necessary information to customers and increasing sales. But it is only possible if you know how to do this. Any email campaign can crash and have a long negative influence due to improper organization. Further, we will take a closer look at email marketing and identify the most important aspects of making this channel as effective as possible.

If you have client’s email that means you are able to send your message. It sounds very clear, but it is necessary to remind that an email inbox is a private online environment, so when you send emails to someone you actually invade their personal space. People use e-mails for different purposes.

1. Segment clients to offer useful and relevant content

Of course, you do not know each customer well enough to prepare a special offer according to their specific requirements but you can create the segments. The more thorough your approach to clients’ segmentation is – the more effective the email campaign becomes. In other words, proper segmentation is the key to success.

2. Use personalization

Personalized emails present one of the most effective ways to catch the attention of your recipients. It’s not a guarantee, but at least you have a chance to make the email more eye-catching. If you have a good clients’ database you can make your message more personal. Of course, in this case the probability that the messages will be read is higher. There are a lot of email services that allow including several personal fields in the email templates and automatically send emails to each recipient.

3. Think carefully about a subject line

The subject line is a very important element because it influences the opening of the email. It is hard to advise what text should be there but your task is to catch recipient’s interest. There are some tips:

• Keep in mind that emails with personalization in the subject lines have 26% higher unique open rate than emails without personalization.
• 33% of email recipients open email based on the subject line only and 66% of the recipients mark the email as SPAM after only reading the subject line, as well.
• The word “you” in the email subject line causes such emails to be opened 5% less often than the emails without this word.
• The word “Free” in the subject line has positive effect and such emails are opened 10% more often.
• The word “Tomorrow” in the subject line can attract users and such emails are opened 10% more often.
• The word “newsletter” has negative effect and causes 18.7% decrease in open rates.
• The word “alert” causes 61.8% increase in open rates.
• The words “Sale”, “New” or “Video” in subject lines have positive effect and can increase open rates.

4. Use all possible services and tools for automation

Most of eCommerce platforms allow you to automate various processes including sending emails. For example, you can identify abandoned carts users and plan special communication with them through email. You can remind them that the product that was chosen is still in the cart and available in stock, so it is possible to buy it. The main point here is that you have to plan this activity and don’t do it chaotically. If you send remaindering e-mails every week, it is most likely annoying and has a negative influence.

There are a lot of tools which allow you to work with your leads . Such approach guarantees that you methodically stay in contact with your potential customers and send them special/personalized content. You can be sure that you will not leave any client without your attention. There are some examples of the segments where automation can help:

• Abandoned cart reminders
• Reminders according to the search history
• Reminders according to the previous purchases

5. Use URL builder tool and include such links in the email template

If you add unique campaign indicators to your URLs in the email, this will allow you to analyze results more effectively. The Google URL builder tool can help you to do this. When users click on one of your links in the e-mail, the unique indicators are sent to your Google Analytics account, so you can see how many recipients clicked on your links and determine the URLs that are most efficient in attracting recipients in the email message.

6. Add relevant images to your email

The general idea is that one well-chosen picture is worth 1000 words. When a user opens the message, with a very high probability they will stop reading it in the first three or five seconds. The relevant images help the user to understand the general idea in a very short time and, if it is interesting, to continue reading the content of the email.

7. Take care of the people who will read an email on a mobile device

Do you know that 40% of emails are opened on mobile devices first and an average mobile screen can only display 4-7 words? The number of such users is going to rise, so it is important to care about responsive design in your email marketing strategy.

8. Think carefully about a Call-to-Action

After expending time for the planning of an email campaign, many merchants forget to include a very significant element – Call-to-Action (CTA). Without this the email message is not complete. The reader should understand what to do, so such words as “Buy”, “Register”, “Order” give accurate directive to the next step. Keep in mind that several CTAs can frustrate or mislead your recipients, so it is better to avoid such approach and create one clear Call-to-Action.

9. Organize A/B Testing of an email template

A/B Testing allows checking different versions of a prepared email template to understand how minor changes can affect the perception of content and consequently affect the results. You need to choose the elements you’d like to test. It can be the subject line or personalized elements, changes in the text and so on. Usually several short lists of recipients are created for testing. After sending them different versions of your email, you can compare results and choose the winner.

10. Be prepared for the results and a significant positive effect

Of course, there is statistics for different industries about a number of feedbacks you can expect. But it is only statistics. In real life, the most positive marketing effect of the campaign can give a negative result, because the company was not prepared to satisfy so many clients. After the campaign has been completed, you can get a lot of calls or email requests and orders that need to be answered. Online store staff should be prepared to work more. Increasing of sales may cause logistic service to be overloaded. You need to plan reserves in stock to be able to sell more. Otherwise, even the most efficient campaign may fail due to the fact that the online store is not not ready for this.

In conclusion, we’d like to point out that email marketing can’t “work” alone. It is only one of the channels to communicate with the clients and a part of the marketing strategy. Marketing is a system and each element of the system affects the result. Only a systematic approach to marketing activities of online store can guarantee successful development.