Email marketing has long been shown to impact revenue for businesses positively. A recently updated study by SuperOffice found that email marketing had an ROI of 4,300% in 2017. This means that for every $1 spent on email marketing, businesses saw an average return of $43.
Another survey by Woorise found that over 43% of internet users report that email marketing is their preferred way to receive marketing messages.
These studies show that email marketing can be a powerful tool for businesses in terms of acquiring new customers and driving revenue.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at some of the tried-and-true best practices as well as some innovative strategies you can use to make the most of your B2B email marketing in 2023 and beyond.
Master the basics with three essential best practices for email marketing
Before moving on to more advanced strategies, it’s best first to look at the essential best practices and identify opportunities for improvement. Here are three of the most critical and often under-optimized best practices for generating revenue from email marketing.
Make the most of your welcome email
Welcome emails are much more than a basic auto-generated email appearing in your new subscriber’s inbox after they join your list. They are a great, often overlooked way to engage with new subscribers and get them excited about your brand.
The average open rate for a welcome email is 82%, which shows how effectively these types of emails can engage your audience.
With open rates like that, you want to take advantage of the opportunity to build loyalty by providing valuable content. If you can impress your new subscribers with the content of your welcome email, they will be more likely to open future emails from you, including emails that are directly tied to revenue.
Use email personalization and segmentation
Email personalization and segmentation are two of the most powerful tools in your email marketing toolkit. Many marketers have reported seeing a 20% increase in sales revenue after they started personalizing emails.
By personalizing emails, you can create a connection with each customer, making them feel important and valued. Segmenting allows you to send messages tailored to different groups of customers or prospects based on their individual needs.
These two strategies can help boost engagement with your campaigns. Suppose you segment customers by activity level or purchase history. You can tailor messages to those who haven’t opened or clicked on any emails and those who have bought from you multiple times. This can also be done by regional location.
A personalized flow in Encharge based on email activity:
The possibilities are endless, but it’s always best to keep it simple.
Here are a few ideas for how to personalize and segment your email messaging.
- Use personalization that’s based on users’ search habits to target your customers and send them relevant emails. For example, suppose someone recently searched for a particular product or solution on your website. You can send them a personalized email offering that item at a discounted price or with a bonus.
- Personalize emails based on recipients’ names or locations. For example, if you know someone in your database lives in a particular city, you can include images or descriptions of local attractions in your emails.
- Segment customers based on their purchase history. This will enable you to send targeted offers and promotions to those who have shown an interest in certain products or services.
- Use list segmentation to send the right content to the right people. For instance, you can create segments based on customers’ job title or role. It’s essential to understand the buyer’s decision-making process. That process can look very different for a CFO compared to a lower-level manager. By segmenting your prospects, you can be sure the right people are receiving the right content to move them further down the funnel.
- Segment your audience using company information. For example, all people that work in a SaaS company that has more than 50 employees. Thanks to company profiles and company segmentation, you can build such segments in Encharge.
Optimize for mobile
Too many brands tend to prioritize desktop-first design, meaning their websites and email templates are created with a full desktop computer screen in mind.
If that sounds familiar, you may take a closer look at the stats below.
- 81% of smartphone users check their email on their phones, and 80% of mobile email recipients delete messages if they are not optimized for mobile.
- Mobile clients account for 41.9% of email opens
- At the same time, nearly 1 in 5 B2B email campaigns isn’t optimized for mobile devices.
The fact is, in 2023, mobile-first design is essential, and that includes your email templates. If mobile design is still an afterthought when optimizing your web pages and emails, then you are surely leaving money on the table.
Here are 5 easy ways to make sure your emails are optimized for mobile delivery:
- Make sure your emails are responsive: A mobile-optimized email should automatically adapt to the screen size of any device, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktops.
- Streamline text and images: Consumers read emails on their phones differently than they do on a desktop or laptop. Therefore, use shorter sentences and paragraphs to make it easier for them to scan your content on smaller screens quickly. Also, be mindful of image size; larger images can slow down loading time and cause some users to give up before seeing what you have to offer.
- Write better email subject lines: Customers rely heavily on their phone’s preview pane to determine which emails they open. That means that when creating your next email campaign, you need to craft a compelling subject line that will draw them in.
- Include a call-to-action button: Make sure your emails have clickable buttons instead of text links so that users can easily click and take action on their phones. Remember, users aren’t using a mouse or trackpad on mobile, so you’ll need to ensure your buttons are large enough to click on with a thumb!
- Test, measure, and refine: Always test your email campaigns on different devices and measure performance across all platforms. Be proactive about making changes based on the results of your tests, as this will help ensure better engagement with your mobile audience.
By following these tips, you can optimize your emails for mobile and drive more revenue from them.
Take it to the next level: strategies to maximize conversions and boost email revenue
Now that you’ve mastered the basics, let’s look at some next-level strategies to boost your revenue through emails.
Use transactional emails to boost CLTV
Transactional emails are sent after a certain trigger event or transaction. These kinds of emails include welcome emails, order confirmation emails, return receipt emails, etc.
In short, they are emails triggered automatically following some kind of action on your site.
The key point here is that transactional emails are opened eight times more often than other types of marketing emails. That’s a lot of extra eyes on those emails, and more eyes mean that the information you include in those emails is extra important.
Recent stats from Omnisend show that conversion rates for transactional messages like order confirmations and shipping notifications increased by 38% and 6% year-over-year in 2022.
Transactional emails can be an extremely effective tool for boosting customer lifetime value (CLTV.) Even something as simple as including a call to action in these types of emails can drive additional engagement with your customers and increase interactions and sales.
For example, if you send a return receipt email, you can add links to new, complementary products or help customers use your products more effectively by providing instructions or videos. This helps build loyalty with customers since they know that you care about their experience using your product and want them to succeed with it long term. Additionally, this type of interaction also helps boost CLTV since it encourages repeat purchases from existing customers instead of relying solely on acquiring new ones through email campaigns.
However, note that if you have one or more promotional messages in your transactional email, by low you are required to include an unsubscribe link in it.
Use a “hot list” during your launches and evergreen sequences
A “hot list” or “hot segment” (as we don’t use lists in Encharge) can be an extremely valuable asset when it comes to boosting email revenue. This segment of customers has proven themselves to be highly engaged and likely to buy. You can increase revenue significantly by targeting these customers with specific offers and content during your launches and evergreen sequences.
To begin building your hot list, create segmented groups based on customer behavior data such as purchases or clicks. You can also look at the timing of their last purchase and how often they open emails from you. Once you have identified the most engaged customers, add them to your hot list to be easily accessible in future campaigns.
Make sure to pay special attention to your hot audience during the launch of a new product or introduction of an evergreen sequence. These customers are more likely to purchase, so focusing on them can be beneficial. You could offer special discounts or exclusive content only available to those on the list. It’s also important to ensure you send timely and relevant emails.
You can increase your email revenue by utilizing your hot list during launches and evergreen sequences. Make sure to keep track of customer behavior and continually update your hot list in order to maximize results from these campaigns. With careful targeting of your most engaged customers, you can expect a considerable boost in sales and revenue from email marketing!
Use A/b testing to find your audience’s sweet spot
A/B testing is an effective email marketing strategy that allows you to test out different versions of emails and understand which version works best with your target audience. It involves juxtaposing two segmented email audiences – or two variations of the same email delivered to a single audience – and observing the effects of tweaks or little changes made. This allows you to predict how efficient your campaign will be and adjust it accordingly to optimize results.
By running A/B tests, you can determine what approaches are effective or not for your target audience. You could experiment with timing and sending out emails on different days or hours in order to find out if this would be more appealing to them. Additionally, you can test out different subject lines, images, colors of text, etc., in order to see which one works best with your target audience’s needs.
Here are three less common things to split test in your email campaigns:
- Tone of voice: Changing the tone of your emails can affect how different audiences receive them. For example, if you’re targeting a younger audience, you may want to try out more informal or even humorous language to better appeal to them
- Fonts: The fonts you use in your email campaigns can significantly affect how recipients perceive them. Experimenting with different font styles and sizes can help draw attention and make your emails easier to read and understand for certain audiences.
- Number of Calls-to-Action (CTAs): Each email should have one primary CTA that encourages users to take action, but don’t be afraid to experiment with the number of CTAs in your emails. Test out adding multiple CTAs or removing them to see which approach works best for different audiences.
A/B testing allows you to experiment and fine-tune your email campaigns so that they are more effective and engaging for a specific audience. Utilizing this strategy will help you better understand what resonates with people so that you can continue to refine and optimize your campaigns over time.
Measuring success: use data from emails to make informed decisions about your marketing strategy
When it comes to measuring success in email marketing, the key is data. With data-driven insights, you can make informed decisions about your email marketing strategy and ensure that your messages reach the right audience at the right time. But beyond the usual metrics included in your standard email reporting – click-through rate, open rate, unsubscribed, spam reports, conversions and the like – you can learn valuable insights from the email itself.
3 things you can learn about your audience from your A/b test results
- Which type of emails resonates best with your audience
- When is the best time to send emails
- What kind of content will lead to the highest engagement rates
3 things you can learn from your subject lines
- What keywords work best to capture the attention
- How long should subject lines be for maximum open rates
- How to create curiosity that will encourage readers to click through the email
4 things you can learn from your email body copy
- Which message resonates with your audience more effectively
- The types of stories and visuals that will engage readers most
- How to craft effective CTA’s (calls to action) that drive conversions
- Whether or not readers are responding better when text is broken up into short paragraphs and/or bulleted lists.
By tracking key email metrics, analyzing a/b test results, studying subject lines, and monitoring email body copy, you’ll have the information you need to create a successful email marketing strategy. With data-driven insights, you’ll be able to tailor your messages for maximum impact better and ensure that your campaigns are meeting their goals and contributing to your bottom line.
