Although it is not as new as some other channels, email is still an effective way to reach an audience that you have control over.

Your customers trust you with their information, so use email marketing to build relationships and increase profits.

Let’s go over when email marketing can be beneficial, as well as some statistics to back up why email marketing is so effective.

When to Use Email Marketing

There are many ways to use email marketing — some of the most common including using the tactic to:

• Build relationships: Build connections through personalized engagement.
• Boost brand awareness: Keep your company and your services top-of-mind for the moment when your prospects are ready to engage.
• Promote your content: Use email to share relevant blog content or useful assets with your prospects.
• Generate leads: Entice subscribers to provide their personal information in exchange for an asset that they’d find valuable.
• Market your products: Promote your products and services.
• Nurture leads: Delight your customers with content that can help them succeed in their goals.

Email Marketing Benefits

• There are over 4 billion email users worldwide, so if you’re looking for a way to reach your customers, email is the perfect place to find them.
• As of 2020, email generates $36 for every dollar spent.
• 79% of marketers list email marketing in their top 3 most effective marketing channels.
• Email visitors are the most likely to convert on forms.
• Perhaps the best reason to use email marketing is that you own the channel. Outside of compliance regulations, there is no external entity that can impact how, when, or why you reach out to your subscribers.

Email Marketing Stats by Industry

The rules for email marketing vary depending on your industry and who you are marketing to. The following are email marketing trends for B2B, B2C, ecommerce, and real estate companies that can help you develop your email marketing strategy.

Email Marketing Stats for B2B

• 31% of B2B marketers say email newsletters are the best way to nurture leads.
• Email is the third-highest owned-media platform B2B marketers used to
  distribute content in the last 12 months.
• B2B marketers say email engagement is the fourth most insightful metric when evaluating performance over the past year, more than social media, search rankings, and lead quality.

Email Marketing Stats for B2C

• Roughly 60% of e-commerce, consumer goods and services, and retail companies are personalizing emails based on past purchases.
• 37% of B2C marketers send daily marketing emails to their subscribers.

Email Marketing Stats for Ecommerce

• 57.2% of marketers say the ecommerce brands they manage have 1,000 to 10,000 contacts on their email lists.
• 85.7% of ecommerce marketers say the primary business objective of their email strategy is increasing brand awareness.
• Roughly 72% of ecommerce marketers say the biggest challenge they face with email is low open rates.

There are several factors that play a role in whether or not your emails get opened and read.

Let’s explore some of them.

3. Build your email list.

An email list is a group of people who have given you permission to send them relevant content.

In order to create a list of potential customers, you need to have multiple methods for people to sign up to receive your emails.

It’s okay to start small, with only a few people on your list. Be patient and keep treating your subscribers and leads with respect, and your list will grow over time.

4. Choose an email campaign type.

There are a variety of email campaigns that you can send, and it can be tough to decide which ones to use. Should you send a weekly newsletter? Should you send out new product announcements? Which blog posts are worth sharing?

These questions plague every marketer. The answer is subjective.

There are different types of email campaigns that you can choose from depending on what would work best for your target audience.

5. Write a killer subject line.

The subject of your email is the most important part of getting your email opened. Make sure it stands out and is interesting to the reader.

Here are some tips for crafting killer subject lines:

• Make your subscribers curious. Write subject lines that make them curious enough to click and open the email.
• Include a number or a statistic that adds credibility and entices subscribers too.
• Avoid using sales words like “free” or “deal” or anything else that may trigger the spam filter and send your email in the promotional tab.
• Talk like a friend. Speak in the language and style that your subscribers use and keep it conversational.
• Split test different subject lines and use the one that had maximum open rates.
• Optimize the preview text, a snippet of text that appears right after the subject line. Treat it as a second subject line; one that adds context to the actual subject line.
• Make use of emoticons and special characters to grab a subscriber’s attention.

6. Personalize your emails.

You’re more likely to get your subscribers to open your emails if they’re relevant to their interests. This is why you need to personalize your content, which can help you increase your open rate.

Here are a few ways you can personalize your emails:

• Add the subscriber’s first name field in the subject line or initial greetings.
• Segment your email list so that you can send relevant content to relevant subscribers only. No need to send each and every email to every one of your subscribers. You can segment your list according to the geographic location, the industry they’re in, the demographics or the stage they’re on in their customer journey.
• Include specific information regarding the region your subscribers reside in.
• Write content like you’re writing to a friend. Put aside your corporate language because writing like a friend may appeal to your subscribers and get them to open them.
• Send emails that’ll add value to subscribers’ lives. Obviously!
• Write amazing content every time! If the subscribers are happy with your content, they are likely to open your future emails.
• One more thing you can do to personalize your email marketing is to map your customer’s journey. It means determining the stages that a customer will go through in their journey and figure out touchpoints to personalize the emails according to their stage. A simple way to do that is to BE the customer and go through the journey yourself.

It is difficult to get people to open emails, because most people are not looking for a reason to read emails. If you can make a personal appeal to your subscribers, they are more likely to open the email.

7. Choose the right time.

It’s important to send your emails when your subscribers are likely to be awake and when their inboxes aren’t already full.

You can have a greater impact on whether subscribers open your emails and convert by carefully timing your emails. Consider the best time and day to send your emails for the greatest effect.

When planning your email frequency, in addition to timing, you should also take into account how often to send emails. This will help you avoid excessively long intervals between emails, or, worse, sending too much content at once, which the recipient may not be able to read through.

To help you out, here are a few tips for scheduling your emails:

• Perform A/B testing and identify which timeframe works best with your audience.
• Do NOT send emails first thing in the morning because that’s when the inboxes are crowded the most.
• Imagine what your audience’s day looks like and ask yourself questions like, “What are they doing in the morning, afternoon, evening?”, “Are they night owls or early risers?”, etc… Answering such questions will help you figure out the best time to reach them.
• Simply ask your subscribers the best time to reach them and how often would they like to hear from you.
• Create a poll for your subscribers to pick a time & choose the frequency of emails.

In other words, there is no perfect time that works for everyone.

A B2B company’s target audience is different from a B2C company’s target audience, so the time of day they send emails will vary accordingly. Even if the two companies’ business models are the same, their target audiences will dictate different emailing schedules.

8. Explore email marketing tools.

There are many software programs and tools available to help with online marketing tasks, including email marketing.

The best tool for you depends on your email marketing goals and budget.

The factors you should consider when choosing an email marketing service include the type of services you provide, the features you want, the size of your agency, and your email marketing goals.

In order to find the best email marketing tool for your needs, you will need to explore and research various options.

Here’s what you should consider while choosing an email marketing tool:

• Price: Duh! No one would choose a tool without looking at its pricing page. And, even if you have a big budget, you should consider the price of the tool and whether it is worth spending that amount. Start with a basic plan that fits your requirements and upgrade as you grow.
• Features: Good email marketing tools will have plenty of features but DO NOT rush and sign up for the tool providing many features for a small price. First and foremost, you need to identify what features you need right now and choose a tool and plan accordingly. That said, there are a few common features that you will definitely need such as; automation, analytics, list segmentation, drag and drop editor, etc.
• Analytics: There’s no point in doing a marketing activity if you cannot analyse it and optimise to get the most out of your efforts. Similarly, if you want to get the desired ROI from your email marketing, you will need a tool that provides you with detailed analytics of your campaigns. The email marketing tool should make it easier for you to calculate important metrics like click-through rate, conversion rate, bounce rate and, of course, ROI. So, make sure you choose a tool that provides analytics that is easy to understand.
• Ease Of Use: Last but not the least, the email marketing tool you choose should not create complications that waste your time trying to figure out how they work. Especially, if you’ve just started out with email marketing, you should steer clear of tools that have too many unnecessary features or a crowded dashboard. So, pick an email marketing tool depending on your understanding and what you’re comfortable using.

9. Make a schedule.

Let your audience know how often you’ll be contacting them from the start. That way, they can decide if they want to stay on your list or not.

Also, establishing a set schedule will help you gain the trust of your audience and keep you at the forefront of their minds.

10. Measure your results.

This comes as no surprise as marketers are known to measure everything to yield the best results.

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