Email Marketing to Increase Sales: 8 Tried and Tested Steps

A company’s growth is dependent on increasing sales as quickly as possible. And email marketing is one of the most effective ways to achieve this. Ask Gary Thuerk who worked for Digital Equipment Corp. Forty-five years ago, he sent out an email blast to 400 people to promote his company’s computers and it generated $13 million in sales.

With over five billion people using emails and about 347 billion emails sent and received per day by the end of 2023, your business stands a higher chance of boosting sales through a click-through in an email than on a Facebook or Instagram ad.

Essentially, emails are necessary for individuals and businesses to function effectively and will therefore continue to exist.

Email Marketing: What is it and why is it important?

Email marketing is an element of digital marketing that involves creating and sending or distributing emails to a specific group of email users with the intention of promoting your products or services or forming a relationship with them.

Through email marketing, you can get your business offerings directly across to your intended  (potential and existing) customers without appearing too “salesy” or pushy. And this is, most often than not, because they themselves signed up to receive your emails bearing in mind that they have the option of unsubscribing the second they wish to do so.

To Increase Sales, Implement these Email Marketing Techniques 

1. Have a well-segmented email list

You receive a notification that a new subscriber just signed up to receive your emails. You quickly write an email telling them that you have a 20% discount on your products or services and they’d better be smart enough to do the needful — call you to place an order — before the discount expires. You get a new notification: they’ve unsubscribed. 

Losing a potential customer is ten times more likely to happen through email marketing, especially if you do not do a proper email list segmentation. To avoid selling painkillers to those who need a massage, create segmented lists targeting your subscribers based on their interests, preferences and where they are in the buyer’s journey.

In order to send emails that are more likely to be read and acted upon, it is helpful to divide your email list into subsets based on demographic information such as age, gender, location, and buyer persona. This will ultimately lead to more sales being made.

2. Consistently send out emails based on a set frequency

No one will remember to buy from a business that is inconsistent with sending emails. You are not privileged enough to talk directly to your target consumers in their inboxes just to blow the chance of making good sales by being inconsistent. Let them get used to receiving emails from you all the time. It could be weekly, biweekly or monthly. 

It has been discovered that people check their emails daily. As long as you are not sending unsolicited emails to users who are not subscribed to your list, you should not worry about your emails going to their spam folders.

3. Craft subject lines that make users want to open your emails

You can’t make sales through email marketing if you can’t get your target audience to open your emails. And the only way to make this happen is if your subject line is compelling enough. Dedicate time to learning how to craft compelling subject lines that make it impossible for your target audience to ignore opening your emails.

4. Ensure your email is useful to your audience

For every email you send, there has to be value packed in it. This is how you whet the appetite of your subscribers well enough that they actually want to buy your product the minute you make them an offer they can’t resist.

If you are going to just say a ‘hello’ and a ‘thank you’ to them, ensure that it is meaningful enough to sustain their interest in your brand.

5. Personalize your emails

Personalizing promotional mailings increases open rates by 29% and click-through rates by 41%, as reported by Invesp. 

In fact, the advantages extend even further. According to Epson, if a company can make its shopping experience unique and special, 80% of customers are more likely to buy from that company in the future.

6. Keep it short and simple

No one has all day to read your email and you certainly don’t want to bore your customers to the point that they no longer want to open your emails as that would be counterproductive for sales. This is why you should always keep the length of your email as short as possible. You can use more verbs and fewer adjectives to appear straightforward and direct.

7. Use A/B testing 

When it comes to improving your email marketing to boost sales, there is no substitute for using an A/B testing strategy. 

The goal of A/B testing is simple: to determine which version of an email produces the highest rate of conversions by dividing your audience into two or more groups and sending each group a different version of the email.

You can improve the overall success of your email marketing campaign by first fine-tuning it with A/B testing. To get good results, it is best that you always test what day of the week and what time of day you send emails, as well as the subject line.

8. White space is your friend

Your goal is to increase sales. Therefore, you can’t be enemies with white space in the body of your email. Your subscribers need to be able to clearly read what you are offering before clicking on the link to make a purchase. 

Use brief paragraphs, headings, and bullet points to highlight the most important information, and include any relevant details in separate lists.

If you can capture your prospects’ full attention, you’ll have a much better chance of making a sale.