Email marketing is a cost-effective way to communicate and get your message in front of your target audience. It’s also an efficient marketing tactic to increase your customers and sales. Whether you’re building a relationship with a subscriber or they’ve been on your list for years, email marketing continues to be one of the largely preferred ways of getting information.

Since the proliferation of mobile devices, billions of people are now walking around with email in their pocket. Mobile opens accounted for 46 percent of all email opens, according to recent email market share trends. With 99 percent of consumers checking their email every day, as per DMA Insights, email marketing is most certainly a tactic that you’ll want to consider including in your marketing plan.

My email marketing definition is the use of email messages, with the specific intent of influencing individuals to think, feel or act in a specific way. Most commonly, email is used to inform, educate and communicate a message, which drives a specific action such as clicking on a link. Whether you’re promoting an event, distributing a newsletter, advertising a deal or announcing a change to a policy, email is the most formal form of digital marketing. It’s also the easiest to measure.

Whatever you’re marketing, an email marketing strategy is imperative. Hope has never been a good marketing strategy. As such, sending haphazard emails is a quick way to ruin a relationship with current customers and especially detrimental to prospects. Stephen Covey put it best when he said, “Begin with the end in mind.”

Here are some email marketing tips, to increase your customers and sales:

1. Implement Email Marketing Campaigns

Email marketing is a non-invasive way to influence a prospect, if the proper strategy and timing is applied to the email marketing campaign. This is due to the fact that people are getting information when and how they want it.

When a simple process is in place, it’s easier to convert them from a prospect to a customer, especially if there’s a clear call to action, to improve click through rates. The more clicks could equal more website traffic, and ultimately increase customers.

This also is true when it comes to repeat buyers. Many people will tell you that your customers are your top source of new sales, and they’re right. Since they already bought from you, they’re likely to buy from you again. Email marketing campaigns are a great way to get in touch and stay in touch with your customers by informing them of upcoming events, other services or new product offerings.

The effectiveness of email marketing campaigns comes down to the relationship a business or association has with the individual that’s getting the email. Since email has become “opt in,” people are only getting your message if they want it. When people want what you have, they become loyal and will open more messages. The more engaged a person is with your brand, the more likely he/she is to buy from you, which brings me to my next tip.

2. Utilize Email Newsletters

Email newsletters should be part of your digital marketing, social media, and content marketing strategy. They can drive traffic to your website, in addition to increasing social engagement, by reminding subscribers about your brand. Eighty-three percent of B2B companies use e-newsletters as part of their content marketing program, according to Hubspot. Also, 40 percent of B2B marketers say email newsletters are most crucial to their content marketing success.

Additionally, email newsletters are one of the leading ways to engage a customer or prospect. You can maintain engagement through ongoing email newsletter communications, either weekly or monthly, and offer valuable information to convert or increase your customer base. Newsletters should inform your target audience about the latest news, updates and tips. Depending on your goals, there are many different email marketing templates, for newsletter design ideas, to capture and engage your audience.

CMA distributes a monthly newsletter, which consists of its latest blogs, vlogs and company news. The objective is to stay in communication with its target audiences: customers and prospects. It also serves to showcase the firm’s expertise and service offerings, in addition to positioning CMA as a thought leader in marketing and association management. To increase shares and drive additional traffic, there’s an opportunity in each section for recipients to share the content through social media or email.

CMA Monthly E-newsletter

3. Create Catchy Subject Lines

When sending emails, they need to have a catchy subject line, to increase open rates.

The subject lines that catch the most attention include ones that:

• Create urgency
• Use emojis
• Evoke curiosity
• Provide a direct benefit to a specific problem
• Comprise an offer
• Entertain and/or contain humor
• Include the latest and compelling industry news and/or statistics

4. Send Personal Email Messages

Before sending an email, think through who you’re sending it to, why they’re getting the email and the action you want taken. Gone are the days of blanket emails. To increase response rate, you need to segment your lists so that the emails are personalized for each target audience and their unique needs.

Companies like Amazon and other retailers are personalizing their communications to the individual. The more pertinent the information is to the individual, the more likely someone is to open, read and act on it.

Automated email can assist you in simplifying your email marketing, by ensuring that your target audience gets the right messages at the right time. You can have pre-set marketing automations or can customize your messages.

5. Develop High-Converting Email Landing Pages

Landing pages are web pages that are intended to inspire the visitor to take an action. That can include anything from registering for an event, to signing up to receive an email newsletter or blog. This is one of the most effective ways to collect email addresses, which is critical to the success of an email marketing campaign.

High-converting email landing pages tend to be visually attractive, coordinate with email marketing campaigns, establish a brand’s unique selling proposition, have social proof, include contact information, and contain a strong and single call to action. There are tools to help you build high converting land pages including Unbounce and Instapage.

A necessary aspect of email marketing and all marketing tactics is to measure return on investment (ROI). According to Hubspot, 59 percent of marketers say email is their biggest source of ROI. However, navigating the exhausting list of email marketing software and services can be daunting.

The right email marketing software comes down to the strategy and plan for how you’ll use email marketing in your overall marketing plan. Knowing who you’re marketing to, how you’ll segment and personalize, your level of experience, and what your budget is, will dictate what service you should use.

The most basic email marketing services hold your email list and allow you to distribute emails to the list. As you become more sophisticated, you can investigate sequential email platforms and beyond to marketing automation, as I mentioned. Depending on your needs, you might need to tie your email platform to your customer relationship management (CRM) and/or ecommerce platform.

It’s preferable to start with simple email platforms, like Constant Contact and Mailchimp. Moving up to sequential and small marketing automations, look into AWeber and ActiveCampaign. These allow better control of the email sequences and broadcast capability. For full automated emails, there’s Infusionsoft and Ontraport. Next, there’s enterprise-level email marketing platforms such as Salesforce, Bronto, and Campaigner.

There’s a wide range of features and prices associated with all of these services. Therefore, having a strategy, as well as knowing your list size and need is key to getting the right service.

In today’s business environment, email marketing needs to be a fundamental piece of a marketing plan. It can be used in conjunction with the sales process—by sequentially following up with interested prospects over a period of time—to remove objections, educate and ultimately ask for the sale. From building a list of prospects, to staying in touch with current customers, email marketing has a permanent place in marketing communications for the foreseeable future.

Is email marketing part of your marketing plan? Contact us today, to get the conversation started.

Dan Beldowicz is the Director of Marketing Services at CMA, a full-service communications, marketing and association management firm, which has provided its clients with award-winning and proven results for more than 30 years.