Email marketing is widely regarded as offering a better return on investment than any other marketing channel.
However, odds are that regardless of how effective your emails are right now, implementing a few relatively simple growth hacks could potentially double (or more) the revenue your emails are generating.
Sound good?
Then here are 6 email marketing growth hacks to try out now:
1. Use FOMO
FOMO stands for “fear of missing out.” It’s a common feeling that makes people anxious about missing something enjoyable. This feeling has likely grown with the rise of social media (have you seen posts about friends traveling and felt you should join to not miss the fun? That’s FOMO), but it has been used as a marketing strategy for many years.
The premise is simple.
When you send out a sales email, include a condition that whatever’s on offer is limited. This might mean stating that you only have x quantity of a product available, or that the offer is only available for x number of hours.
As a result, you will (ideally) drive recipients to take action then and there. This can have a big impact on revenue since once an email gets closed, the odds of it generating a sale decrease significantly.
2. Segment Your Email Lists to Create Targeted Email Sequences
We already know that email marketing offers the best ROI of all digital marketing channels, but not all campaigns are created equal. Even today, companies are still sending substandard (or downright crap) emails. How many people are going to go to the trouble of reading all this, for example?
It’s safe to say that bad email marketing campaigns won’t be generating the sort of ROI they could be – but even good campaigns could probably be performing better.
You can get more out of your email campaigns with segmentation.
Segmentation (in this context) means organizing email subscribers according to factors that influence the type of email they’re most likely to respond to. It’s a foolproof means of getting more out of your email marketing because it allows you to send emails that are more closely related to each contact’s current circumstances.
You can segment according to almost any attribute you can think of – from location, age, or gender, to past purchases, what content someone’s interacted with, or the pages they’ve visited on your website.
Once you’ve decided how you’re going to organize your email list and segmented contacts accordingly, you can create the sequences themselves.
This could mean creating a sequence of emails designed to help onboard new customers. It could entail promoting particular products to customers, depending on what they’ve bought previously. Or it could involve suggesting content to visitors based on what they’ve viewed already.
You can learn more about creating effective email sequences in The Ultimate Guide to Email Sequences. You can also get started with creating and sending email sequences using a tool like Mailshake (and if you’re missing any email addresses, use a tool like VoilaNorbert to quickly track them down).
3. Upsell
You probably already know that current customers are more profitable than new ones (on average, 40% of an e-commerce store’s revenue comes from 8% of its customers) – but can you honestly say you’re doing enough to maximize profit from your existing customers?
The fact is that many businesses focus far too much on customer acquisition, and not enough on customer retention or upselling.
This is where email comes in.
Email sequences have many uses, but they’re especially valuable when used to target and upsell to your existing customer base. You can segment your customers according to the products they currently use, or their average spend, and drip feed emails to them that demonstrate what they stand to gain if they move to a higher price plan or purchase xyz product.
4. Push for Referrals
Referrals are one of the fastest and most effective ways to generate new business (we know this because consumers consistently state that they trust each other more than brands).
Unfortunately, we can’t rely on customers to refer others without being prompted to do so.
In fact, research from Texas Tech University found that while 83% of happy customers are willing to refer others, only 29% bother to do it.
The lesson here is simple. Want more referrals? You’re going to have to ask for them.
But there’s a precedent.
While you could just send out an email to your current customers encouraging them to refer you to others, you’ll likely get better results if you leverage that email to make it as simple as possible for them to do this – allowing customers to send details to others with the click of a button, for example:
Or upping the ante and giving customers a personalized referral page:
Another thing to consider is incentives.
You might have noticed in the examples above that these brands aren’t just asking customers to refer somebody else out of the goodness of their hearts – they’re ensuring there’s something in it for the customer if they do.
There are loads of examples of businesses that have been built off the back of incentive-based referral schemes. Dropbox. PayPal. Airbnb. None of these companies (and many more) would be seeing the success they are today without the help of incentivized referrals.
If you leverage email marketing to ask for referrals and simultaneously give your contacts a reason to act on your request, you could very easily double the revenue your campaigns are generating (or more).
5. Design Emails for Mobile First
The vast majority of emails are now opened and read on mobile devices (especially among younger generations).
This means that if you want to maximize the impact your emails have, and, in turn, the ROI they deliver, you should be designing them for mobile first and desktop second.
6. Focus on One Thing Only
The downfall of many marketing emails is their focus. They simply don’t have one. They will try and tell customers about too many things at once, and consequently, their recipients don’t really listen to any of them.
Take this example:
They’ve included recommended books, an ad for an eReader, and an offer for a $10 eBook credit.
There’s just too much information.
Emails with a single focus are much more effective. They’re easier to absorb, and as a result, are better at getting recipients to take action.
If you’re currently packing multiple talking points into one email, try paring down to a single point and call to action, and see what impact this has on your revenue (I’m willing to bet you’ll be pleasantly surprised).
Do you have any other ideas for ways to double your revenue using email? It’d be great if you could take a minute to share them, using the comments below.