7 ways to boost sales using email marketing

Alicja PtakJanuary 9, 2018Tips & Tricks

Factbook:

Industry expects 4.1 billion active email users in 2021
2017 average monthly open rate was at 21.8%
2017 average monthly click-through rate was at 62%
email marketing ROI at 4300%, a return of $43 per dollar invested
2% more revenue each quarter by reactivating 7% of inactive users

If you are looking to boost sales in the upcoming year, then email marketing is the right tool to help you do that. There are multiple ways in which you can monetize your emails. We’ll highlight some of the most useful tips to help you grow your business.

According to statista.com, global user reach was at 3.7 billion active accounts in 2017. It is expected to amount to 4.1 billion users by 2021.

Industry data shows* that average monthly open and click-through rates for small and medium businesses were at 21.80% and 2.62% respectively at the beginning of 2017. Taking those figures into consideration, we can see that if you sent an email offer to every active user in the world in 2017, you would get 21.1 million users visiting your website! In 2021 this figure would grow to 23.4 million users.

Smartinsights also notes that email marketing has an ROI of 4300%, that is, $43 for every dollar invested, which makes it one of the most profitable marketing strategies. Let us show you what you should do to profit from this growing user base.

7 tips for higer sales

1. Cart abandonment

Every abandoned cart is a lost opportunity to earn revenue. Although not all, many can be restored back into your shopping funnel if you only remind your customers about the products they were once interested in. There could be multiple reasons why your customers didn’t complete their purchase and some of them are possibly not related to your customer’s willingness to buy your product in general. If they got distracted, you’ll want to remind them to complete their purchase. If they continued searching for similar products to see what’s available elsewhere, you’ll want to be first to highlight why they should buy your product.

2. Upsell

You just made a sale? Great! You should strike the metal while it’s still hot. Is there any complementary product that your customers will be able to profit from? Use recommendation engines to deliver the right content to the right person. Offer them free delivery if they buy another item. Remind them about that!

According to McKinsey 35% of Amazon.com’s revenue is generated by recommendation services. Read more about it in our 2018 Trendbook that you can download for free.

3. New product email

Are you launching a new product that you’re proud of? Don’t hesitate to brag about it a little, so that you can lay the ground for future sales. Offer your customers the possibility of pre-ordering and use the hype to grow your revenue.

4. Retargeting – “We miss you” emails

If your customer didn’t visit your website for a while or he didn’t make any purchases, you can remind him of you, about all the amazing things you did while he was away. Retargeting is an amazing way to bring traffic back to your website. Remember that bringing customers back into your sales funnel costs significantly less than acquiring new customers.

5. Promotional Emails

If you’re planning on starting a big sale, you should let your customers know about it. There is a great chance that they subscribed to your newsletter because they hoped to get some special offers. Give them something extra, make them feel appreciated, reward long-lasting relationships and see your revenue grow.

6. Affiliate marketing

You can use email to recommend products and services and earn commissions on any sales made from your referrals. Make sure you absolutely love the product you are referring and that it is relevant to your customers. Partnering with other brands can be profitable for both sides!

7. Transforming inactive users into buyers

Some users sign up for your newsletter or service but don’t go through and don’t confirm their address once you send them a confirmation email. This means that you can’t contact them and that could result in lost sales opportunities for your business. Do you know that you could be earning 2% more revenue each quarter if you’d convince 7% of your inactive users to follow through with the confirmation process? These are the results Picodi achieved when they decided to make use of ExpertSender’s marketing automation workflows and automate the process by sending a series of reminder emails. Click here to discover Picodi’s case study.

With marketing and email automation, you don’t have to track what your customers are doing. You can use trigger-based marketing for events such as abandoned orders, promotions, pre-orders and restore some of your customers back into your sales funnel and grow your business exponentially. These tips might be helpful for e-commerce retailers, and service or software providers.

Email marketing is an amazing tool to help you earn money. It’s not only cost and time effective, but it helps you track data more easily, so you can make informed decisions to grow your brand. Customers who have subscribed to your newsletter, already want to stay in touch with you, so why not nurture this relationship? By keeping your customers happy, you’ll also see your revenue growing faster.

* Data derived from Smartinsights’ reports