Email marketing is hailed as the king of digital marketing, but, if you’ve never put together an email campaign, it can be a little overwhelming.
Generating revenue through email marketing takes more than just sending a few emails every month; you need a complete strategy that starts with email components and ends with marketing automation.
Read on to discover real email examples that actually work, as well as an understanding of how to use emails to drive sales and growth. You may even find inspiration for your next email campaign.
How to increase email revenue: an overview
Email marketing is still one of the most effective marketing tools, and for good reason: Virtually everyone has an email account. It’s not just a tool for sending out email coupons and newsletters. Email marketing can increase your revenue. This is what you need to know:
- B2B companies: 59% of B2B marketers say that email is their top revenue-generating marketing channel.
- Email personalization: emails with personalization result in revenue and transaction rates that are six times higher than non-personalized emails.
- Automation: an automated email drives 320% more revenue than emails that are part of a non-automated campaign.
- Welcome emails: a series of welcome emails, on average, will drive more revenue than sending one welcome email or no welcome email at all.
Not only is email marketing one of the most cost-effective tools to increase revenue, but it’s practical in every industry. Increasing email revenue can significantly improve ROI:
- Consumers spend 138% more as a result of email marketing, when compared to consumers who don’t receive email offers.
- ROI for email is 28.5%, which is almost four times more than for direct mail marketing.
With the ability to increase revenue and improve your ROI, learning how to increase email revenue makes practical sense for any marketing beginner.
How to increase email revenue: the beginner’s guide
Email marketing is only effective when it drives sales. With a few email marketing best practices, even beginners can learn how to increase email revenue, not just improve open and click rates.
1. Start with a compelling subject line.
You’ve probably read this before, but your subject line is the most important part of your email campaign. When it comes to increasing revenue, you need to start with the first thing people read. A compelling subject line does more than just tell your subscribers what’s in the email—it tells them why they should open your email. What’s in it for them? Consider this example of email subject line:
Source: Really Good Emails
The subject line reads, “Do you know what an anamorphic lens is?” A question is a compelling way to draw people into your email, which is the only way you’ll drive email revenue. Ask questions that speak to your reader on a personal level. Personalization in the subject line is one way to increase opens. In the travel industry, it can produce a 65% open rate.
2. Write copy that engages your reader.
Once you get people to open your email, you need to engage them with concise copy. While there’s no standard limit for how many words to write in an email, the most effective emails aim for 50 to 125 words. This will vary based on the kind of content you’re offering, but a general rule of thumb is to aim for shorter messages. Take a look at this email example:
Source: Really Good Emails
Though the email contains several pieces of data, it keeps the information limited to a few sentences and short paragraphs.
This makes it easier for readers to scan the email for relevant content. If you have long-form content, consider putting it on your site and linking to it in your emails rather than writing it all in the body of your message.
3. Include a colorful CTA.
Regardless of what action you want people to take in your email, your CTA needs to be prominent and purpose-driven. That means you want to spend time crafting the right message.
You also want to consider how you’re going to display your CTA—will a link in the text be sufficient or do you need to create a CTA button to drive conversions? Consider this email example with a colorful CTA:
Source: Really Good Emails
The CTA has a clear purpose—direct people to the company’s Instagram profile—and it’s brightly colored to complement the dominant image in the email.
This email uses a CTA button, which can increase your click-through rates by 28% versus using a plain-text link. Test a few different CTA buttons to find the right one.
4. Apply email marketing automation.
Email marketing automation is a best practice for increasing revenue. Not only does it make your organization more efficient, but it can improve email performance and ROI.
With an automated email campaign, you can optimize when you send your emails and remarket to either site visitors or people who’ve previously purchased from you. Look at this example of an automated email:
Source: Really Good Emails
Abandoned cart emails are one of the best uses of marketing automation. In fact, if you send abandoned cart emails within an hour of someone leaving your site, you can convert 6.33% of your shoppers.
You can increase that yield by 69% if you send three abandoned cart emails instead of just one. Consider putting together an abandoned cart email series for the biggest impact.
5. Use email personalization and segmentation.
Email personalization and list segmentation go hand in hand. You can use both to target your customers and send them relevant emails, like product recommendations.
You can also use personalization to send emails at the right time, and list segmentation can send the right discounts to the right people. With just a little bit of information about your customers, you can see results. Take a look at this email example:
Source: Really Good Emails
Using email personalization that’s based on a user’s search habits, this email targets subscribers who’ve been searching for vacation rentals.
By properly targeting its customers, emails like this can drive three times the amount of revenue that non-targeted emails generate. If you have the right tools, you can set this up as part of your automation efforts.
How to increase email revenue: tips and tricks to drive sales
In addition to these email marketing best practices, there are ways you can boost email performance that don’t require an enormous investment. For email marketing to remain cost effective, you need to see higher conversions without increasing your marketing spend.
If you want to maximize ROI by learning how to increase email revenue, use these tips and tricks to drive sales with your email campaigns:
- Apply rigorous A/B testing standards: While 82% of companies rely on email marketing technology, less than half of email marketers use split testing in their email campaigns. A/B testing is critical if you want to properly optimize your marketing efforts.
- Offer discount codes and email coupons: Since people love saving cost, discounts and coupons are one way you can increase email revenue. Around 42% of Americans say that they subscribe to email lists just so they can save money on their favorite products.
- Use email to distribute inbound sales content: You can keep your emails short and simple by using them to distribute content. Over 75% of B2B marketers use email newsletters as part of their content strategy, and 79% say email’s the best way to share their content.
Learning how to increase email revenue doesn’t take much time, but it does take a little bit of focus. You need to use multiple tips and best practices to create a comprehensive email strategy if you want to increase email revenue.
Wrap up
Whether you’re completely new to email marketing or just need a refresher before you start your next big campaign, increasing email revenue is a worthy goal. Fortunately, there are ways you can do it that don’t require an MBA. Review these takeaways to get an idea of where to start:
- Carefully analyze every component of your email. You want everything to count: subject line, preheader text, content, images, and your CTA.
- Figure out the purpose of your email campaign. You can have a general sales goal or create a niche goal around specific products or regions.
- Use marketing automation to improve the performance of your email. You’ll generate more powerful campaigns if you use the right email tools.
Email marketing isn’t hard, but it does require a solid plan. To increase email revenue, employ email marketing best practices and use these tips to create an effective sales strategy.
Want to find a marketing automation tool that can increase email revenue? Campaign Monitor has powerful features that can improve email performance and boost sales.