Below are some email marketing tips to help you get more revenue from your list.
No need for filler, let’s just get right into it…
Table of Contents
1) Grow your swipe file
Create a separate email address and subscribe to every newsletter and brand in your space.
This way you’re building a swipe file of things like:
- subject lines
- sequences, and
- copy
All of these will give you new inspiration.
2) Use subject lines to break the pattern, not to sell
When they see your subject in their inbox, you want them to think “Wait, what?”
3) Consistency is king
It’s better to regularly send decent emails rather than send an irregular stellar email.
4) If nobody unsubscribes from your list, you’re losing money
Unsubscribes mean you aren’t a fit for everyone. And that’s great. It can mean you’re even polarizing.
There are people who don’t like you. But there are ones that love you.
And these are your loyal – and big spender – customers.
5) Before sending an email, read it out loud
If it doesn’t sound human, rewrite it.
6) After someone buys from you, you have two tasks to accomplish
Make them feel their purchase was valid and sell them something else.
7) You need sleep, automations don’t
Create automated welcome flows, purchase flows, and abandonment flows.
Use AI tools to help you create some of your copy, if necessary. But make sure it sounds natural.
8) Segment anyone: Clicks, purchases, opens
Every action can be used to segment subscribers.
The more you know about them, the better you can sell to them.
9) Build a relationship with your subscribers
To accomplish this, offer them knowledge, guidance, and offers.
10) Get to the point: Why should I open your email?
Why should I read your email? Why should I click on it?
11) Improving your open rates
You probably know that starting with iOS 15, Apple introduced a Mail Privacy feature.
What happens here is that Apple basically loads all emails on their own servers and, whether you actually open an email in your app, it shows as opened for the sender.
So, clearly, not everyone is actually opening those emails.
How do you create a re-engagement segment?
Here are the steps we’d recommend:
1) Create a segment for people who opened all emails but did not click any in the last 10+ campaigns (adjust this number based on your frequency and average click-through rate).
2) Send an automated email to this segment explaining how the latest Apple Mail update makes you think they aren’t actually opening their emails. Ask for just one click if they truly read your emails.
3) If they don’t click, it’s likely they use Apple Mail Privacy and don’t actually open your emails.
4) Optional: Make this a multi-email sequence if your sending frequency doesn’t become too high. People might legit miss the one re-engagement email.
This way, you keep a clean and engaged list, even though Apple Mail Privacy inflates your open rate.
12) Use personal images
You can get a higher CTR on your marketing emails by simply changing the header image.
It works because, like with anything else, people aren’t going to read every word of your emails.
So the first impression is important.
Mathias von Appen Schroder tested this with a welcome email. In one, he included a professional image of a product. In another, he included a picture of him and his mom.
The results? The email with him and his mom received a roughly 27% CTR, about 3 percent higher than the email with the product image.
And it’s not just welcome emails and family images.
People like unique images everywhere that get their attention.
Faces attract attention as people naturally make eye contact with them.
Some of the best emails had crazy imagery.
One featured an image of a chicken nugget crashing through the earth’s atmosphere, on fire like an asteroid.
E-Commerce founders share how they grow their email list
And according to our January deep dive where we analyzed over 180 e-commerce founder interviews, here are our favorite ways to collect emails used by brands.
Spin-a-Sale
BruMate ($1.1M/mo), a brand selling alcohol drinkware accessories saw huge success with this.
According to them, Spin-a-Sale works well to collect emails because users feel like they really won a prize rather than just giving them a coupon code.
Giveaways
Cameron’s Seafood ($300k/mo), a brand selling fresh seafood runs giveaways through influencers and indirect competitors to collect emails.
And in a recent campaign, they collected 1,600 emails in a single week.
The Gentleman’s Lounge ($1k/mo), a store selling products for men’s beard care follows a different approach: “Every month we give one person on our list a year’s supply of beard oil.”
This is a huge incentive for people to sign up and stay on the list.
And according to The Gentleman’s Lounge, this system allows them to generate high-quality leads.
The lesson?
Use a valuable prize to get them on your list and give them another reason to stay on your list.
Lifestyle magazine newsletter
This approach is used by Huckberry, and it might be the most powerful in the long run.
They essentially provide a weekly lifestyle magazine as a newsletter.
These issues come with both product offers and content, so they can educate and sell at the same time.
The best part here is that you’re not attracting freebie seekers, low-quality customers, or hurting your AOV.
Conclusion
Don’t drag-and-drop for your marketing emails.
Be conscious about what will get the customers to interrupt their normal flow and take a minute to look deeper.
