Jess Chan is a pioneer in the digital marketing space. Her company Longplay focuses on providing ecommerce brands in health, wellness, and lifestyle industries with strategies to optimize their email marketing to grow revenue.
According to Jess, email marketing is an excellent channel for marketing as it gives you a better platform to engage with your clients and build a strong relationship with them. When appropriately used, Jess says that email marketing can see companies generate up to 30% or higher in revenue, compared to other digital marketing channels. According to statistics, 98% of millennials open their emails every day; it is time to take advantage of the email list and drive positive change for your business. Here are the top five ways that Jess Chan recommends to leverage your email marketing to convert and retain customers.
1. Review Your Email Marketing Strategy
You have already worked hard to get your email list. Now it is time to start using the list to drive your revenue. Why? Because email is one of the most direct channels of communication, you can have with your customers. Email is one of the only channels you wholly own, unlike FB ads and Google, who can change the algorithm or shut down your account, you own your email list and have the power to manage your messages.
Secondly, email can increase the ROI of your paid ads. When you have a strong email marketing strategy, you’re converting more leads and retaining customers for longer, which means you can generate more revenue for every dollar paid to acquire a lead or customer on paid channels.
Last but not least, email marketing has a direct impact on your business growth as you use it to increase the total number of customers. Also, increasing the amount spent per order by customers and increasing the purchase frequency leads to the increased lifetime value of clients, thus impacting your business too.
Understanding the different elements in emails that can help you focus on what is most valuable while also tracking your progress. For instance, automated emails will help to make sure that customers go through all the major touch points as per your customer journey, and even ensure that you are sending the right message to the right customers at the right time. Tailoring your messages, for instance, enables you to speak to a new lead who’s just been introduced to your brand differently than someone who’s purchased multiple times. At the same time, regular campaigns with useful information will make your brand stay on top of your customers’ minds.
Lastly, launching or promoting new products/services will not be the only content that people get from you. Understanding what you want to achieve and aligning all the components of email marketing will help you grow your revenues while also increasing your brand credibility.
2. Convert Leads and Retain Customers
If you have been running an ecommerce business, for example, you may have noticed many leads who have expressed interest in your products or services but did not buy. Using emails, you can target specific segments of your pipeline and tailor your offers for them.
Email marketing thus helps you to bring more value to your clients. Whether it is offering discounts, recommending other products, or providing information on product benefits, customers will feel more cared for and connected to the brand through such messages. Emails can deliver these messages to clients more effectively. With emails, you are also able to include call-to-actions for your audience. These actions make your interactions with your audience more engaging and hence increases your chances to influence their buying decisions.
3. Consistently Delivering Valuable Content
Digital marketing is promotional, but not everybody wants to get promotional messages all the time. Email marketing allows you to shift your message and be able to connect with your audience more deeply. It also gives you a better platform to educate your customers on the product and tell your brand story. The ability to connect and motivate people to buy from you, in most cases, determines how successful your business will become.
Businesses need to evaluate every message they send to their audience to ensure that they continuously add value. With email, businesses can seek feedback from their audience to ensure that their content is well-aligned, building trust, and brand credibility. Through email, you can develop authentic relationships with your customers in a way you can’t build through other channels.
4. Targets For Your Email Marketing Activities
More than 30% of your total ecommerce revenue could be from email marketing. Email marketing is, therefore, an incredible tool, especially for e-commerce brands. You can use email to increase your brand awareness, influence their buying, and retain customers. Companies need to set out key performance indicators for all the different activities in email marketing to achieve revenue growth. For example, implementing email automation on various critical touchpoints of the client journey will ensure they manage their pipeline better.
5. Auditing
It is essential to continually review your email KPIs to ensure that you are achieving the set targets and continuously improve your content and processes. Email helps you to evaluate the results of your interventions. You can analyze, for example, if new customers have gone through the stipulated customer journey, or what are the results of specific campaigns held, and total revenue as a result of the email strategies implemented.
With email marketing, the goals for the business shift towards establishing trusts, providing value, and building relationships that help you to convert and retain more customers.