Email marketing these days... I know what you think. Am I serious? Emails in 2021, who keeps on reading these? But well…

Although emails are not TikTok and belong to the slightly older form of communication, a rich and relevant email database is still one of the most valuable assets your business can have. Because, in comparison to other online marketing channels, email marketing constitutes an advantage you’d never find anywhere else. It gives you straightforward control over your audience. Besides, the figures speak for themselves. In 2020, there were more than 4 billion active email users worldwide, with the prediction to reach 4.6 billion users in 2025.

It’s also estimated that every single dollar can generate around $40 in revenue, meaning that the ROI of this marketing field is around 400%. But with the growth of the eCommerce sector, catalyzed by the current pandemic, the competition will be even stiffer than ever. That’s why you should keep up with the technology and trends to leverage your contacts to the max. The future of email marketing belongs to segmentation, personalization, and most importantly, automation. With that in mind, here are a few tips on how to master your email marketing campaigns in 2021.

1. Attract new subscribers with wholesome welcome campaigns

Whether you already have a huge list of email contacts, or you’ve just started collecting them, acquiring new relevant email addresses is always something you should strive for.

Because, there wouldn’t be much to do with email campaigns if you don’t have anyone to send your emails to, right?

That’s why the first and evergoing step should always be to focus on attracting new promising prospects.

• First impression

Like in any other aspect of life, it’s the first impression that could be a deal-breaker.

To make the experience with your online business as smooth and engaging as possible, you should focus on its UX, speed, relevance, and credibility.

Simply, you want your visitors to have fun on your page, with no blockers.

Besides, these will also help you rank higher in search engines, as Google now considers site speed and UX the Core Web Vitals, while credibility has always been a strong ranking factor.  

• Discounts, free shipping, gifts, and other incentives

Once your first-time visitors stumble upon your online business and find it easy and fun to use and browse, you should make them special and welcome.

At a proper moment, display a pop-up message offering your prospects discounts, or a gift, such as free shipping or an ebook, to make them subscribe to your email list and benefit from special offers in the future.

Pro tip: With Samba.ai, you can easily set up your pop-ups with the easy-to-use built-in Picasso editor and customize it exactly as you need.

• Double opt-in

In the wild waters of the World Wide Web, nothing gets as volatile as trust. For this reason, you should emphasize that you mean your business by setting a double opt-in email confirmation.

Although it’s not obligatory, it’s recommended, after the newcomer visitor fills in the email address, or after making the first purchase on your website, to send the first email with a link to a confirmation page.

This not only blocks users from filling in fake emails but also helps avoid getting into spam and builds on authority.

• Thank you page and emails

Double opt-in confirmation emails are also a great opportunity to showcase your business, its story, and the main pillars of your activities.

Set up a thank you page and thank you email for the new subscribers, express your gratitude for them joining the family of your buyers, and feature a few recommended products they could purchase right away.  

Welcome pages and emails are also great spots for social media buttons so that the relationship between you and your new subscriber can grow to more channels.

If you don’t have time to generate the welcome email on your own, Samba.ai provides several high-end curated thank-you email templates you can choose from.

2. Personalize your emails and turn first-time visitors into loyal buyers

Now when your email contact database is growing, it’s time for you to pay your subscribers and customers special attention.

Keep in mind that every customer is unique with personal interests, needs, and preferences, and therefore, they should receive what they expect and crave.

Sending the same message to everyone in your contact list simply won't do the trick. Embrace the opportunity to treat every single relevant contact in your database as a valuable individual with whom to establish a long-lasting relationship.

How to approach the customer differences:

• Email and web personalization

Identifying the needs of every single customer gives you the chance to showcase the right products that they really want. Save your and their time and personalize the messaging as well as the content on your website and make them satisfied with what they find.

• Segmentation

While every single customer is different, there are many variables they can share. Simply divide your buyers according to their demographics, on-site behavior, shopping history, or the amount of money they are willing to spend to create clusters of people you should cater to.

According to official stats, 76% of marketers say that segmentation increased their ROI by 760%.

Tip: Samba.ai offers an email personalization tool as well as web personalization functionalities that can be run on autopilot.

3. Orchestrate your email communication in long-term flow campaigns

Now when you have all segments and fitting personalized content prepared for launch, it’s time to think from a long-term perspective.

What are you going to send to your customers? Who is going to read it and when? Set up a communication plan offering the right segments of your customers the right offers at the right time.

With flow campaigns, you can pinpoint the right moments for your messaging. You can set it out weeks and months ahead and then spend your time and energy on other parts of your business.

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4. From Black Friday to Women’s Day, time and think through your seasonal campaigns

Creating your campaigns ahead gets much more important during the times your customers are used to buying and spending more than usual. Be it Black Friday, when everyone expects the biggest deals, or Christmass and Womens' Day, when your customers have to buy gifts for other people, you should allow them to purchase the right item in advance.

5. Use Trigger campaigns to alert your customers about possible purchases

Success in eCommerce is often about utilizing opportunities that could have slightly gone unnoticed. Monitor your user behavior to get the extra penny out of their often disregarded interests:

Abandoned cart

Oblivion is where the highest prize resides. According to official stats, in March 2020 alone, 88.05% of online shopping orders were abandoned, i.e. not converted into a purchase.

To make the most out of your business, remind your customers about the items they are interested in but haven't yet purchased. They want and need it, so why wait?

Use Samba.ai to automatically remind your customers about the items they had in their cart but didn't buy.

Repeated orders

Did your customer forget to purchase the same brand of cat food they usually do? Time to remind them!

Don't hesitate to point out that it's the right time to buy the product your customers usually want. Showcasing repeated orders is also a great opportunity for upselling - trying to make them buy a more valuable product from the same category - or cross-selling - showcasing related products.

Shopping intention

Be prepared to foresee a purchase before the transaction takes place. Monitor your customers' on-site behavior to predict your future sales. With advanced machine learning, Samba.ai can create segments based on transaction history and solvency (i.e. how much money customers are often willing to spend) and personalize the content on the web accordingly to increase your revenue.

For instance, you can identify a segment of customers that usually buys one of three products you offer.  If one customer shows interest in one of the three products, you can show the other two products as there is a high potential the customers will like them as well.

6. Clear out your contact database

Numbers of your clients do matter but so do the metrics such as open and click-through rate, and most importantly, the deliverability of your emails.

Every three to six months, you should run through your email database and look for contacts that are no longer relevant for you.

Don't waste time with contacts that rarely interact with your offers. Besides, the emails you send to these addresses can end in spam eventually.

Focus on building the most relevant database and see who your customers really are.

Bonus step: run all your online marketing activities on autopilot

While all the steps listed above are crucial and essential to succeed in online business in 2021, you don’t actually have to do it on your own. As mentioned in the introduction in this article, apart from segmentation and personalization, the key ability is to automate these processes. One is not simply able to cater to the individual needs of billions of users. For this reason, you should leave the hard job on Augmented Intelligence.

Only with machine learning, a system can effectively learn how to approach every single customer, reflecting their needs and preferences according to their on-site behavior. Leave the job to an ultimate ai-powered marketing automation tool and save money and resources.

Try Samba.ai’s autopilot now!

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