Are your emails lacking impact? Generating more email marketing revenue all comes down to landing in the inbox and connecting with your audience.
Email marketing can be highly effective when you do it right. It allows you to build awareness and trust, nurture your customers and prospects, and boost revenue for your business. What’s more, you can easily track performance and measure results.
For many businesses, though, the results are disappointing. It’s not because email marketing doesn’t work – but seeing traction entails more than hitting send.
What prevents you from making more email sales
Many obstacles can prevent you from seeing email success:
- You aren’t segmenting your database, so prospects don’t resonate with your content.
- Your email list is obsolete and many of your emails bounce, while others land in spam.
- You send emails inconsistently, so you’re not building rapport with your audience.
- Alternatively, you could be sending too many emails.
- You’re not following email-sending best practices and rules – like Google and Yahoo’s new requirements for email marketers.
Do you recognize your business in any of the cases above? If you do, keep reading to learn how to overcome these issues, create more engagement for your emails, and make more sales.
Prune your email list regularly
Did you know that about a quarter of the average email list decays every year? As you’re adding new contacts to it, old contacts become obsolete. Email users – especially in the B2B space – don’t keep the same address forever. Data decay causes two issues:
- Invalid addresses will bounce, so your message won’t reach your prospect.
- Bounces also affect your sender reputation and can cause inbox providers to treat you like a spammer. Because of that, your future emails start going to the junk folder.
A good bounce rate benchmark to keep in mind is 2%. If more than two out of 100 emails you send bounce back, it’s time to run your database through an email validation service. It will identify poor-quality data and allow you to weed it out before it does more damage.
Create audience segments and personalize each email
Email personalization is no longer a trend – it’s a must. Your prospects and customers have different needs, and your emails must address those specific aspects. To craft relevant messages for everyone in your audience, you have to split that audience into separate groups.
Use filters such as:
- Gender, location, and occupation
- Purchase history
- Frequency of engagement
- Behavioral patterns and preferences (such as content they’ve engaged with in the past).
Once you’ve created these different segments, think of the most relevant emails you could craft for them. Segmenting your email list and personalizing your campaigns will make your subscribers feel valued and more likely to click.
Authenticate your emails
Email providers have long been suggesting senders authenticate their emails. Since February 2024, two industry giants – Google and Yahoo – have enforced this practice. Playing by this rule is vital if you want to make more sales with your emails.
Email authentication protects your company from spoofing, thus preventing impersonators from faking your domain and sending malicious messages on your behalf. By authenticating your emails, you verify your identity as a sender so your email can get past spam filters and into the inbox.
Is your domain still unprotected? Consider implementing email authentication standards to keep spoofing attacks at bay and avoid the spam folder. Your email deliverability will improve – and when you land in the inbox, your conversion rates see a boost, too.
Simplify your email marketing
So many business owners get overwhelmed thinking about all the pieces of the email marketing puzzle. It’s true, many elements call for your attention, like email list segmentation, personalization, and cleaning – on top of the creative aspects.
To avoid the pressure of doing it all, simplify your approach. For instance:
- Create a template library in your email marketing platform. Editable templates save you much time, so reuse them without hesitation.
- Your emails don’t have to be long. A beautiful image followed by just a few lines of text and a catchy call-to-action button can be all you need.
- Pick one message for each email. Including several calls-to-action can be distracting and even cause your recipients to not click on anything at all.
Also, learn how to automate tasks to save time. For instance, do all your new subscribers get a welcome email? If you haven’t set one up, do it soon.
Reach out to your email list regularly
Being present in your customers’ inboxes is the first step to boosting email revenue. If your audience hardly ever hears from you, what would prompt them to make a purchase?
Establishing a sending schedule can be tricky. You don’t want to overcommit only to realize you’ve taken on a task you can’t accomplish. A good way to find your sending rhythm is to:
- Pay attention to your metrics: how often do your subscribers want to get your emails?
- Assess your resources: how many monthly emails can your team write and send?
Find that sweet spot between what your subscribers want and what you can provide. Once you have a schedule, stick to it, as it helps you build trust and engagement. Moreover, it fosters healthy email deliverability, making your emails more likely to go to the inbox.
Final tip: not every email can be a sales pitch
Most businesses run email marketing campaigns to increase revenue. There’s nothing wrong with that goal. But before they make a purchase, people need to feel you value them and that you’re not just trying to get them to punch in their card numbers.
That means not every email you send can be a sales pitch. To attract your audience and engage it long-term, strive to make every email worthwhile. Sharing educational resources is an effective way to position yourself as an authoritative source in your industry. Also, using a warm, human tone infuses personality into your messages and invites your audience to connect.
People love a good marketing offer, but what they appreciate even more is feeling like a part of your community. Build that, and you’ll be on the right track to making email a more lucrative channel for your business.
About the Author
Corina Leslie is the PR Manager for ZeroBounce, an email validation, deliverability, and email finding company. Her work has appeared in Forbes, Money, MarketingProfs, and other popular platforms. Need email marketing or PR advice? Connect with Corina on LinkedIn.
