Email marketing isn’t new. In recent years it has become a significant marketing tool that generates $42 for every $1 spent (Luisa Zhou), creating a ‘wow factor’ among marketers and business owners. 99% of email users open their inbox once each day. With the rise of mobile devices, it has become one of the most accessible and direct marketing tools to grow a business.

Email marketing is inexpensive, & targeted marketing strategy that can boost your revenue and sales exponentially. If implemented accurately, it ensures seamless business growth whether you want to engage existing customers or secure new ones. 

In this article, we have compiled a list of 18 ways to grow your business with email marketing in 2023. Let's get started!

1. Conduct Your Research

In-depth research is crucial for knowing your audience's needs, preferences, and wants. Thoroughly study your target audience and segment them before launching your email campaign. Segmentation is the second most crucial aspect of your email marketing campaign. When you segment the audience, your marketing campaign is more effective. Use several parameters and segment your audience based on them.

You can take the following steps:

• Identify your target audience and their interests in purchasing your products or services.
• Analyze their purchase history.

• Study the email marketing strategies of your direct competitors to understand what works and what doesn't in your industry.

• Familiarize yourself with laws and regulations related to email marketing, such as the CAN-SPAM Act and GDPR, to ensure that your campaigns comply.

2. Create your email list

Build an email list based on the initial research. There are several ways to create your email list. For example, you can create lead capture pages and forms to build email lists. Create informational lead capture and provide valuable information to collect email addresses. A lead capture helps you collect potential customers' email addresses in exchange for valuable information.

Below are some of the significant ways to build your email list;

• Place a lead capture pop-up form on your website. Offer valuable content, such as an e-book or webinar, in exchange for an email address.
• Create landing pages, and add opt-in forms at the footer. 
• Collect email addresses when you have an in-person meeting at business or in-person events. 
• Create newsletters and add a signup option. 
• Use a sign-up form on your website to collect email addresses from visitors. 

• Use your social media platforms to encourage followers to sign up for your email list. 

The pop-up lead capture by WP Beginner is a great tool for building an email list. In exchange for their emails, it promises to provide informational content, including videos, plugins, and other useful resources. It’s user friendly, has a great call, and requires only necessary information. 

3. Welcome Prospects and Customers

Once you create your email list, send your prospects a friendly welcome email. Address your email recipient with his name instead of generalizing it. Creating a welcome email effectively engages your prospects and customers. Improve the effectiveness of your welcome email by optimizing the subject line. Studies show that using phrases like sale, free, trial, and limited-time offer can increase the email open rates.

Here’s how you can create a nice welcome message.

• Express gratitude for the recipient's interest in your business and thank them for signing up for your email list.

• Include a special offer or a valuable piece of content, such as an e-book or a tutorial, to show them the value of being on your email list.

• Let recipients know what kind of emails they can expect to receive from you and how often they can expect to receive them.

• Encourage the recipient to take a specific action, such as visiting your website or making a purchase.

Here’s an example of a welcome email by Virgin America, as they want you to fly with them: 

‍

4. Educate your leads

Provide value to create a genuine connection with your leads. It helps you to nurture your leads through the sales funnel seamlessly. Providing value also encourages your audience to trust your brand and improves brand loyalty. Businesses that carefully nurture their leads with educational content successfully generate 50% more sales.

You can educate your leads by,

• Creating and sharing valuable content, such as blog posts, e-books, whitepapers, webinars, and infographics, that educate your leads on a specific topic related to your products or services.

• Using storytelling to create an emotional connection with your leads and educate them on the benefits of your products or services.

• Sharing real-life examples of how your products or services have helped existing customers, such as case studies, testimonials, attending networking events, and practicing corporate social responsibility.

Example: Framebridge has created a guide on how to hang your art. It is an eCommerce business that offers art frames and other decor accessories. The step-by-step guide is valuable for anyone who wants to display his art frame.

5. Promote your new products and services

Promotional emails are great because they are effective. Promotional emails use the art of persuasion to entice the audience to take action, and that’s why 68% of millennials claim that they make buying decisions after seeing promotional emails. Keep your promotional emails sweet & short by adding phrases like new arrivals, season off, product launches, giveaways, freebies, contests, coupons, etc. Be specific about what you want to promote and who you want to target.

Implement the following best practices to promote your products and services to your email subscribers:

• Ensure the email subject line grabs the audience's attention and entices them to open the email, thus improving the email open rates.

• Use images that showcase your new products or services in the best way possible.

• Give your subscribers the information they need about your new products or services, including basic features, benefits, pricing, and special promotions or discounts.

• Make it easy for subscribers to take action by including a clear call-to-action, such as "Shop now" or "Learn more."

This email from J.Crew Factory uses the psychology of persuasion to sell its products via email. 

6. Build customer loyalty

Building customer loyalty in email marketing efforts requires a combination of effective strategies, including

• Sending regular and consistent emails to your subscribers so they stay interested in your brand.

• Offering exclusive promotions, discounts, customer loyalty programs, and special offers to your loyal customers to reward them for their continued support.

• Provide excellent customer service, and respond promptly and professionally to any customer inquiries or complaints.

• Encourage feedback from potential customers and act on their suggestions to improve any poor experience.

• Show appreciation for your customers by sending them birthday or anniversary emails or recognizing their loyalty with a special offer or reward.

For example: Take a look at this example from Monki, which shows how they get their audience interested by offering them a discount.

‍

7. Automate your follow ups

Sales people need to follow up at least five times before they can sell the product/service. Following up with the leads manually takes time, and it’s not easy to write an email every time you want to follow up. Therefore, it’s important to automate your email follow-ups. 

There are several ways to automate your follow-up emails:

• Use an email marketing platform that has automation features. Platforms like these allow you to set up automated email sequences triggered by specific actions, such as a subscriber joining your mailing list or abandoning a shopping cart.

• Use an email automation tool, such as Drip or ActiveCampaign. These tools are specifically designed to automate email campaigns and offer more advanced features than basic email marketing platforms.

• Use a CRM (customer relationship management) system to track and manage customer interactions across multiple channels, including email.

For example, below is a great abandon cart follow-up email by Casperl.

‍

8. Use impactful subject lines

An impactful subject line is a brief, attention-grabbing phrase that entices the recipient to open an email. It should convey the pain points or benefits of the email's content.

For example, a subject line for season sales on winter coats might be "Stay Warm and Save: Winter Coat Sale - 50% off!" This subject line immediately communicates the benefit (saving more money on winter coats) and urgency (limited-time sale) to the recipient, encouraging them to open the email and learn more. 

The subject line for a winter sale email by America’s famous fashion brand J.Crew is, “This is a snow joke!” That’s very friendly, impactful & cool! 

9. Personalize your email copy

Use personalization to make the reader feel the email is specifically designed for him/her. Customize your email, its copy, and the product/service you offer so that the reader won’t resist purchasing. You can personalize your email copy by 

• Using the recipient's name in the subject line and opening the greeting.
• Tailoring the content to the recipient's interests or past interactions with your brand.
• Using segmentation to send targeted messages to different groups of recipients.
• Using dynamic content that changes based on the recipient's actions or behaviors.
• Testing and optimizing your email copy for the best open and click-through rates.

An example by Bunch, is how they personalize their email copies: 

10. Prepare & send case studies

Case studies give people relevancy, and thus give them the confidence to buy from you. A case study reveals how your product has helped your customers/clients overcome specific issues or achieved results. Instead of just talking about the results, with case studies, you show the results in numbers. Since numbers never lie, people are likelier to trust what you showcase with your case studies.

Below is a great cold-calling email that explains a case study. 

11. Ask for reviews

Asking for reviews in email marketing can effectively gather customer feedback and increase social proof for your business growth. Here are a few steps on how to do this:

• Ask new customers to review your product or service rather than just leaving a general review.

• Include a link to your review page or the specific page where the potential client can leave a review.

• Consider offering a small incentive, such as a discount on their next purchase, to encourage past customers to leave a review.

• If you don't receive a response to your initial request, consider sending a follow-up email to remind customers to leave a review

Here’s a good example of how to ask for reviews. Chewy asks customers to leave a review by asking what they think ahead of their purchase.

‍

12. Generate website traffic

Email marketing is a great way to generate website traffic. You can implement the following strategies to get it started. 

• Leverage your existing email list, or collect email addresses through various tools, and platforms from people who are genuinely interested in your product/service. 
• Write compelling and relevant content encouraging recipients to click through to your website.
• Make it clear what you want recipients to do, such as visiting your website or making a purchase.
• Use A/B testing to optimize your email campaigns and track the results to see what works best.
• Send your emails at the best time for your audience to increase open and click-through rates.

You can also build backlinks in top rankong listicles onn high traffic sites to generates traffic to yhour website.

The example by Automizy shows you how to take your customer to your website.

‍

13. Collaborate with other brands

Collaboration strengthens your business relations and gives you brand visibility. Collaborate with other brands relevant to your industry to promote any event, product, or cause. For example, if you are in the food industry, you can collaborate with chefs, restaurants, hotels, or TV hosts from food shows to give your brand exposure. 

This is how you can do it: 

• Look for brands that offer sustainable products or services that complement your own rather than competing with them.
• Contact the other businesses and introduce yourself and your company. 

• Explain your idea for strategic partnership and the benefits it would bring to both brands.

• Work together to develop a business plan template and execute the email campaign, promoting collaboration across both brands' social media channels and websites.

We love this brand collaboration of Blue Apron with Chrissy Teigen.

14.Organize contests

Your giveaways or contests email campaigns can be simple. Once to trick the audience into winning a giveaway, it will help you improve your brand visibility. Create contest email campaigns that your reader can easily share via social media. 

You can organize a contest by;

• Defining the objective of the contest

• Choosing a prize that’s relevant to your target market 

• Creating a landing page for the contest details to participate

• Using email marketing and social media appearances to promote the contest 

• Sending out reminders to encourage them to take part in the contest

• After announcing the winner, send an email to all participants, thanking them for taking part

• Stay in touch with contest participants to keep them engaged with your brand.

The contest by Sweep South is a good example of a successful contest.

15. Retarget dormant customers

Your dormant customers are the gold mines. Re-engage your dormant customers by using the following strategies.  

• Send an email to dormant customers with a special offer or incentive to encourage them to purchase.

• Send a survey to dormant customers to gather feedback on their experience and identify any issues that may have caused them to stop engaging with your emails.

• Use retargeting social ads on search engines to remind dormant customers of your brand and encourage them to visit your website.

Look at this Birchbox example, which shows how you can retarget dormant customers.

16. Upsell and cross-sell

Upselling and cross-selling have been the most effective strategies in email marketing. 

Upselling means encouraging a customer base to purchase a higher-priced or upgraded version of a product or service they are already interested in. And in cross-selling, you encourage a current customer to purchase a related product or service that complements the item they are already interested in.

This is one of the best examples of upselling and cross-sell by Adidas.

17. Include branding

Your email marketing strategies should depict your brand. Use the same brand colors, brand images, logo, and font. Your brand should be recognizable whether you promote your products or services via email, website, or social media. 

Following are the ways you can opt for in your email marketing for business branding. 

• Using a consistent brand color scheme and logo in all emails
• Including a brand tagline or mission statement in emails
• Incorporating brand images and videos in the email body
• Mentioning your brand name in the subject line and throughout the email copy
• Keeping your branding consistent across all digital marketing channels
• Including a link to your website in the email signature

Take a look at this example from Blue Apron and learn how to reflect your brand personality in your emails.

18. Improve Credibility

Showcase your brand personality via email marketing by creating legit emails. Creating engaging emails speaks volumes. Here are some tips for improving your credibility in email marketing that will lead to rapid growth and a successful business model: 

• Use a professional email address and signature
• Use a clear and recognizable subject line
• Avoid using spam trigger words or phrases in your subject line and content
• Use a reliable email marketing additional services
• Avoid sending too many emails or sending emails too frequently

Grow Your Business With Mailmunch!

Worried about your email campaigns not getting the attention it rightfully deserves? Then, consider using Mailmunch. It can help make your email marketing easier and more effective so that you can focus on what matters most: growing your business quickly!