3 Email Marketing Tips: Strategies for Creating and Sending the Perfect Message

The most effective way to promote your products and services is with email marketing. Tons of companies are turning to email marketing because it is so effective. It allows you to target specific people with your product or service, while building a solid base of customers for the future.

Email marketing is also one of the easiest ways to get started in ecommerce. You don’t ‘need’ any technical experience at all- anyone can do email marketing. All you need is a list of emails that want what you’re selling and know how to write an email campaign that will get them to say yes.

There are so many effective strategies for creating and sending the perfect message, but here are 3 of my favorites!

1. Use Social Proof

People often want what others have. Use your email list to create a sense of urgency and excitement about an offer, product or service by mentioning how many other people have purchased or already subscribed. People love feeling like they’re one-of-a-kind customers.

Social proof is effective for two reasons: 

1. It demonstrates that you’ve been successful in the past with this kind of offering
2. It shows current subscribers that their peers trust your business enough to buy as well. 

As long as you aren’t misleading your audience, social proof will be effective at building sales conversions and potential buyers see there’s demand for whatever it is you’re offering.

Personalizing your emails puts you face to face with your subscribers. You can communicate specific information about them or their interests. This could be as simple as mentioning the weather during a call-to-action (CTA) to use sunscreen, or using an event like Mother’s Day to gift related products.

People buy from people, not companies. Make the reader feel like they’re a part of your family or a long-term customer by using casual language that you’d use with a friend. I’m talking about things like “Yo”, “Ya know?” 

2. Test Every Subject Line Before Delivery

Take the time to test each of your subject lines with an A/B testing tool. This will ensure that you’re using effective tactics for getting more email opens and click through on whatever it is you’re offering. 

A good rule of thumb when creating effective subject line content, include words like “benefit, daily deal or flash sale” in order to make subscribers feel excited about what they’ll be receiving if they open up their inboxes.

Create a sense of urgency, people are busy. They don’t want to waste their time opening emails unless there’s something really important inside (like coupons or deals). Give them a reason why now is the best time to act by including information about sales events, limited offers or significant deadlines.

Now that you have your customers’ attention, if you want them to click anything in your email, make sure you’ve included a link with a descriptive CTA. I suggest avoiding words like “More” and “Learn More”

Don’t be afraid to use effective marketing tactics like humor, emojis and word play (like puns), if you think it’ll help make your email subject lines more effective at converting subscribers into customers/clients.

You can also get creative by adding more than one email campaign into another. For example:

You could send out a “Welcome” message to new signups and follow up with information about your company and why they should stay subscribed. You might even consider including an exclusive offer for subscribers.

3. Add an Email Signup Link to Your Website Footer

The best way to ensure that you’re building effective email lists is by making it easy for people who are interested in your products/services to sign up. Adding an effective email signup link right at the bottom of every webpage on your website will make things really convenient for potential buyers.

Make it simple to be able to subscribe without having to go searching through other pages or sections of your site. You can expect to see an effective increase in your email list size if you take the time to make it easy for people who are interested in what you’re offering.

John Lawson is one of the most trusted and experienced eCommerce professionals in the industry. John is the founder of The Ecommerce Group, which he started in 2011 to share his knowledge with other entrepreneurs in the industry. It’s the oldest eCommerce group on Facebook with over 8,500 members from around the world!

John speaks at conferences all around the world, including Retail Global, South by Southwest, Etail, Digital Summit, Hubspot Inbound, Ad-Tech and more. He also writes for several international publications such as Power Retail, Small Business Trends and Disrupt Magazine.