10 Effective Email Marketing Tips Every Small Online Business Should Follow In 2020 And Beyond

Email marketing can do wonders to promote your business and generate sales. According to HubSpot, email marketing generates $38 for every $1 spent, , a mind-boggling 3,800% ROI! The same study reveals that marketers who use segmented campaigns witness a 760% increase in revenue. And over 80% of business professionals deem that email marketing is a significant driver to increase customer retention.

These statistics indicate that email marketing is a highly effective marketing strategy for organizations of all shapes and sizes. But you probably know that. What you may be interested in learning is how to make the most of your email marketing strategy.

Towards this, we've compiled a list of easy-to-implement email marketing tips that will help your business drive sales and promote your products and services effectively.

1. Keep It Casual

Keep your emails casual and informal. Your emails' tone and voice should be more like a one-on-one, easy-going conversation and less like a formal or robotic tone. The more natural your email sounds, the higher are the chances of people buying from you and wanting to connect with you.

Your email should be one that people want to read. A formal, stern email or one that's too promotional will often go overlooked. Talk to your subscribers in a simple, almost carefree manner that lets them know that you are interested in helping them buy from you without being too pushy.

2. Include Quality Content That Builds Trust

While most of your emails or newsletters will focus on generating leads and promoting your product or service, it is imperative to educate your subscribers by sharing trustworthy content. An email with valuable information or links to a blog post or YouTube video will help your customers learn something new about your business or industry or address a particular pain point. Doing this will help you establish credibility.

It's also wise to include links that help subscribers gain confidence in the source of the information. For instance, a link to your eyewear business's YouTube video need not be a long clunky URL. Instead, it can be a custom branded short link like www.sunglasses.cyou/aviators will be perfect for a video on aviator sunglasses.

Several new domain extensions like .ICU, .BOND, and .CYOU make for great branded link shorteners that will help you drive traffic to your website's inner product pages.

3. Optimize Your Email For Mobile

It's 2020, and smartphones and tablets dominate the world. Your email needs to be optimized for mobiles if it wants to be effective in today's digital world. Mobiles account for more than 46 percent of all email opens, and over 35% of business professionals read emails on a mobile device.

These stats support the need for a responsive email design that enables your subscribers to read and respond to your email seamlessly using their preferred device type. The last thing you want is for your subscribers to face difficulties in accessing your emails. One lousy brand experience can significantly impact your brand's credibility in your clients' minds.

Using email marketing tools like MailChimp and Sendinblue, you can optimize your emails for all device types with ease.

4. Use Attractive Visuals and Smart Subject Lines

A great way to make your email all the more effective is to use intuitive and engaging visual media like images, GIFs, and videos. Multimedia content is a smart way to convey information in an easy to consume manner. Whether it's a welcome email, new product launch email, abandoned cart email, promotional email, retention email, or any other type of email, cleverly using visuals will increase click-through-rates (CTR).

A recent study reveals that 72 percent of consumers prefer learning about a product or service through a video rather than reading about it. For example, you can launch your new product or service with a short and engaging video or a carousel of attractive images. Doing this will get more people to engage with your brand and subsequently drive conversions.

It's also advisable to stick to standard brand colors and fonts. Design consistency will help your emails stand out from other brands' newsletters and add to your email marketing campaign's overall flair.

5. Include A Clever Subject Line and Avoid Landing In The Spam Folder

Don't forget to write a creative subject line that prompts subscribers to read the email and doesn't make your email land in their spam folder. Shorter subject lines that convey the message of your email are best. Avoid using spammy words and texts that will direct your email straight to your subscribers' spam folder. Misleading headlines, sending bulk emails with spammy email ids, no unsubscribe option, using blacklisted IP addresses may lead your email to the spam folder.

Ask subscribers to whitelist their emails, use reliable email marketing tools, and install spam checkers to ensure your emails don't land in recipients' spam folder.

6. Include Call To Action Buttons

The primary purpose of sending emails is to lure customers and prospects into taking action. This could either be to buy from you or visit your website or avail specific discounts or share feedback. In either case, it is important to include clear and convenient call-to-action links or buttons in the email body.

At the same time, it is essential to note that too many calls to action buttons will confuse your readers, resulting in lower-traffic from emails. For instance, if you are launching a new range of sunglasses, include one focused call to action button that directs subscribers to the product page rather than multiple buttons for each type of sunglass.

7. Test, Track, and Review Emails Before Sending Them

Test your email across multiple device types, platforms, and email services like Gmail, Outlook, and Apple Mail to check if works without any glitches. You can also do an A/B test for subject lines and check which version of your email will work better. It's also wise to review your email for spelling or grammatical errors before sending it out.

Don't forget to track your emails to see how many people have opened it and clicked on your call to action buttons. This data will serve as vital information when planning your next email marketing campaign. By keeping a tab on key performance indicators (KPIs) will help you assess whether your email campaigns are yielding the desired results or not. Click-through-rate, open rate, bounce rate, conversion rate, and unsubscribe rate are important KPIs of email marketing analytics.

8. Categorize Your Subscribers List

By splitting your subscribers into actionable and relevant categories, you can target the right people with the correct emails. Doing this segmentation will help you drive sales and generate leads.

Target your subscribers and customers based on demographics, interests, and preferences, and you will notice a much higher click-through and open rates.

For example, you can categorize your subscribers in the following three segments and target them accordingly:

• Existing customers (to retain them or strengthen loyalty)

• Discount customers (to offer special discounts and sales)

• High-value customers (to take feedback, offer exclusive discounts, introduce new products)

Similarly, you can further categorize and segment your subscribers based on shopping behavior and other parameters.

9. Send Emails Regularly

Frequently communicate with your subscribers, so they remember you when looking for products or services in your niche. Email marketing is a great strategy to stay in touch with your customers and prospects and reinforce your brand. It's wise to send newsletters once a month or once a fortnight. However, don't go overboard by sending the emails every few days as that will drive people to block you or unsubscribe.

10. Duplicate Successful Email Marketing Campaigns

Not all your email marketing campaigns will be successful. This is especially true if you are running multiple email marketing campaigns simultaneously. While one campaign will generate more leads, the other may drive more conversions. Either way, it's wise to identify and study your successful campaigns and duplicate those tactics for future campaigns with similar goals.

For example, if your email campaign where you ran giveaways or offered a discount to users upon following your product's Instagram page became a success, duplicate a similar approach for your new product launch.

Final Thoughts

Implementing the email marketing tips mentioned above will help your business generate quality leads and build strong brand loyalty - all while driving conversions! Start with your email marketing strategy today and optimize your email campaigns for 2020 and beyond with these handy tips.

Eshan is a Senior Marketing Specialist at ShortDot, the registry behind some of the most successful new domain extensions, including .icu, .bond, and .cyou. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.