You might be wondering whether or not it is worth it to invest in an email marketer. 

This is a great question, and it’s something which is difficult to assess if you are a business owner with little marketing experience behind you.

You want to increase your customer base and drive revenue, but you are concerned that spending money on email marketing might not be effective. 

No one likes to waste money. 

As a business owner, it makes sense that you would be cautious as to where you direct your efforts.

This guide is to help you understand how email marketing works and how it can affect the way you drive sales to your website or store.

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing allows you to send commercial messages, using email to existing and/or potential customers. 

The aim of email marketing is to nurture new and existing customers, encourage them through the sales funnel and act as a revenue driving force. 

Does email marketing increase sales?
In short, Yes.

According to Hubspot, for every $1 spent on email marketing it generates $38. 

That’s a huge ROI of 3,800%. 

This makes email marketing one of the best options available. 

Does email marketing still work in 2021?

Email marketing must be carried out using the best practices, by a creative mind that has strong business acumen. It’s easy to get lost in a sea of promotional emails so it’s best to find someone who really knows what they are doing. 

Brands realise that in an increasingly competitive world, it’s not enough just to have a website and social media. Avoiding implementing an email strategy means opportunities lost.

There’s a reason high end brands like Louisa Via Roma continue to use email marketing, even in 2021. 

It just works.

How does email marketing increase revenue?

Email marketing increases revenue by adopting certain strategies in accordance with your business model and goals.

Here are some ways in which email marketing will increase your revenue:

Automated campaigns:

This is one of the most effective ways to communicate with your customer base. Email automations allows you to send targeted campaigns to the right people, at the right time.

If you want to learn more about the types of automations, how and why they work, you can refer to this guide here.

Segmentations:

Email marketers like me love getting specific with information.

Segmentations allow marketers to target consumers by splitting them into groups.

If you understand specific characteristics and behaviors of your customers you can send emails which are more likely to convert and lead to sales. 

Here are some examples of how you can segment your customers:

1. Geographical location.
2. Position in the sales funnel.
3. Gender.
4. Behavior and actions taken on your website.
5. Personal Interests
6. Engagement

There are many more, but it’s clear that these segmentations remain extremely valuable in a productive email strategy.

List building:

Email marketing allows you to increase the frequency of exposure to your customers. 

Building a list of customer contact information provides you with a wealth of opportunities. It allows you to nurture new potential customers, and turn existing ones into brand advocates.

There are many ways to encourage brand loyalty through email marketing, and don’t even get me started on the ways in which email marketing can increase your website traffic.

And you know what increased website traffic means?

Increased sales.

What is the success rate of email marketing?

Focusing on click through rate will give you an indication of how well your emails are doing.

Check out these industry averages from Campaign Monitor for reference. 

There are a large number of other factors which will affect the outcome of your efforts.

These include:

Your messaging and tone of voice (See this guide to nail your brand’s tone of voice). 

Your email design and whether or not it’s optimised correctly.

Even the little details like time of send and your email headline will make a considerable difference in the success rate of your emails.

If you can pinpoint issues and fix them promptly you will lose less prospects. 

By fine tuning campaigns and keeping track of your customers behavior, you will be able to garner better results over time.

Why is email marketing so difficult?

Maybe you are already sending out emails to your customers but you are not getting the results you’d previously hoped for. 

Unfortunately due to lack of consistent standards, each device and browser used to view an email will render differently. Perhaps your customers are unable to see your emails properly, and so they become uninterested in viewing your content.

Consider mobile optimisation. 

According to litmus.com, 46% of open rates are done on a mobile device. 

Think about how many differences there are between devices. There are inconsistencies with screen sizes, operating systems and even the app used to open the email. All of these factors can produce different rendering results. 

Check out these examples of some successful emails which have been optimised for mobile.

The dreaded spam email 

Speaking of difficulties in email marketing, there are thousands that go straight to the spam folder.

Email providers like Gmail will actually assess the quality of your emails, if they don’t make the cut, they get sent straight to spam. As an email sender your reputation is everything. 

We all hate being bombarded with spam emails. The last thing we want to do is annoy your customers by sending them fluff.

Emails should be content driven, providing value to your audience, with relevant promotion in between. There’s nothing that puts me off more as a consumer than seeing the hard sell written down on a page.

If you send carefully curated emails which have personalised and informative content, you will build trust with your customers. They will feel safe enough to take the time out of their day to open your emails without questioning if they will result in disappointment. 

Here’s an example of an email that went to my spam folder. It’s not surprising as to why.

On a side note, from a design perspective, that button color combo really clashes making it difficult to read even for someone with 20/20 vision!

This leads me to the subject of things brands do in their emails which negatively affects their revenue driving opportunities.

Please note that this is just a sample of factors. 

What should you not do in email marketing?

• Email subject lines that underdeliver.

Are you overhyping your subject lines?

There’s nothing worse than getting excited for something, and then experiencing that sinking feeling when you realise a brand has over promised. 

You want your customers’ entire experience of your brand to be positive.

You want to make people feel good.

You can stand out without clickbaiting your audience by crafting well written and well thought out subject lines. 

• Your content is dull.

As a human race our attention spans are continuing to decrease. 

You have around 7 seconds to make a good first impression.

You need to hook your audience in with unique and valuable content within your emails. If you don’t, your customers will be less inclined to open your message next time.

• Overloading on the CTA’s.

It can be so tempting to have more than one call to action within your email. 

It’s a trap! 

Focus on the key CTA you want your customers to convert on. Then repeat it throughout the email. 

Too many options will overwhelm your customers, leading them to have decision paralysis. 

Check out this great example by Gymshark for reference: 

The goal is clearly to incentivise shoppers to head to the gymshark site and purchase a product. 

• Your emails aren’t skimmable

Our time as humans is extremely limited. Think about your daily routine and how little downtime you have in your day. 

If you make your content skimmable, your audience is much more likely to understand your message and act upon it. 

• Lack of segmentations 

Here’s a great example of how companies miss out on sales attributed to email marketing.

Let’s pretend you’re a department store having a 50% off flash sale. 

If you had segmented your customers by gender, you could have sent each segmentation, a personalised email, informing them of the sale, and including products they would actually be interested in.

For example, women are much more likely to convert on makeup than power tools! 

If you only have the one email to be sent out to your entire unsegmented list, it makes it more difficult to feature products that will be of interest. 

Final word

Email marketing is a great way to drive revenue and build your business.
You will of course need a clear plan that is tailored to your goals. Provided that the right strategies and practices are put in place, you will be able to unleash the full potential of email marketing.