## Email Marketing: Your Secret Weapon

An email marketing strategy is an important part of any marketing strategy. Email is the most cost-effective way to promote your products, communicate with your customers, and reach your business goals. And on average, for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect a return of $42.

Creating personalized subject lines in emails can increase open rates by 26%, and marketers have experienced a remarkable 760% boost in email revenue by employing segmented campaigns. Not bad, right?

Here, we will share the best email marketing strategies you can use to achieve extraordinary results through email marketing.

## 1. Personalize Your Messages

When we say personalized email marketing, we don’t mean that you send an individual email to every single subscriber. Personalization means that you use customer data to create a personalized message.

A great example of a company that does personalization well is Amazon. All of Amazon’s emails are personalized. It’s not “Dear valued customer”, but “Dear Steven”. It’s not, “You might like these… (randomly generated)”, but “You might like these (based on my purchase history)”.

To Amazon, email marketing is not just another marketing channel. It’s key to the overall customer experience. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, is an email mastermind. Jeff Bezos understands the value of emails and has been known to read through customer complaints. It’s also why more than 35% of all product sales come from recommendations (both via email and on screen). In total, email marketing revenue is at $9.62 billion as of 2023.

A study by Experian found that personalized emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates! Let’s break this down into numbers we can all understand: Research found that email marketing generates $0.08 in revenue per email. That may not sound like much… But if you send out an email campaign to 500,000 subscribers, you can generate up to $40,000 in revenue. That’s a lot of additional revenue!

But, if you use personalization in your emails, you can expect a lot more! People are 82% more likely to open emails that are customized for them than those that aren’t. And, according to research: Personalization can generate $20 in ROI for every $1 invested. How’s that for a revenue opportunity?

The best part is this: 70% of brands do not use personalization within their email marketing strategy. This means that by personalizing your emails, you significantly stand out against the competition.

The simplest form of personalization is to address the reader by name. Most email service providers (ESP) offer this within their functionality and this tactic alone will improve your campaign performance. For example, email subject lines that are personalized with a recipient’s first name can increase open rates by 10-14% higher open rates. Considering that 47% of all emails are opened because of the subject line alone, that’s a surefire way to get more eyeballs on your email.

Outside of using the customer’s name, here are a few more tips to help you get started with personalization:

– Ask for the right information upfront: Great personalization starts way before you hit the ‘send’ button. It all starts with your sign-up form. Without data such as name, company, and location, you will be very limited with your personalized communication. Remember to only ask for the information you need, rather than the information you want. This is one of the ways that GDPR has impacted marketing teams.

– Use a real reply-to email address: When you use donotreply@example.com, it takes away the authenticity from the messaging. You want your readers to engage and respond to your campaigns. Using a real reply address will improve credibility and appear more personal.

– Use your real email signature: Just like using a real reply-to email address, you want to use real contact information within the email, and the best way to do that is to include your contact details in the email signature. Giving your readers the opportunity to contact you or connect with you online is a great way to be personal and build a relationship with them.

## 2. Segment Your Subscribers

According to email marketers, segmentation is second on the top initiatives list this year. Do you know why it is so high? It’s because when you segment your database, your email campaigns become much more targeted to your audience.

Let’s take a look at an example: You’re hosting a networking event for small business owners located within a 20-mile radius. How can you expect to get the best turnout for your event? The answer is segmentation. The best way to get small business owners to turn up to your event would be to create a segment of people who list themselves as a small business owner who lives within 20 miles of your event and then send them an invite by email.

The segmentation part is simple and can easily be done through CRM software. Compare this to sending one email to your entire database, with subscribers spread across the country (or continent). How annoying is it to receive an email that invites you to an event that is located on the other side of the world? It’s very annoying!

Before you start segmenting your database, let’s take a look at how valuable it can be. A recent study found that all email marketing KPIs perform better when you segment your email list. The segmentation results include increased performance in: If you segment your lists, you get better open rates, revenue, leads, transactions, and more customers. And according to research from Campaign Monitor, segmented email campaigns lead to a 760% increase in company revenue.

Another benefit is that segmentation goes hand in hand with GDPR and email marketing. But, does it really work? Yes! Here’s an example from our own email marketing campaigns: We recently sent out two email marketing campaigns. Both campaigns had the same subject line and the same content. The first campaign was sent to our non-segmented email list, while the second was sent to our segmented list (segmented by interest). The first non-segmented email earned an impressive 42 % open rate and a 4.5% click-through rate. However, the segmented email campaign earned a 94% open rate and a 38% click-through rate! I’d say