6 tips for online shops on how to use an email marketing tool correctly

Some online shops are of the opinion that email marketing tools mean too much effort and too little profit. Both can easily be refuted. Newsletter marketing is one of the most effective marketing methods currently in use. It has an undisputed ROI (Return on Investment) of up to 3800%. That is up to 38€ profit per invested Euro!

In addition, the number of e-mails sent last year rose to 771 billion. This is an increase of almost 150 billion compared with the previous year.

With the right email marketing tool, the effort involved in creating a campaign is minimal. Many applications offer a series of ready-made templates, with which the creation of individual newsletters is done in a few clicks.

In the following we look at 6 tips for the correct use of such an email marketing tool.

1. Create form

Before you get the idea to send newsletters, you have to build up a proper contact list. What is the best way to do this?

In fact, there are several ways and the most creative solutions are often the most effective! Sweepstakes, discounts, freebies (e.g. whitepapers, ebooks etc.) were in the past a solid method to quickly build up a reasonable contact list.

Since the adoption of the GDPR (general data protection regulation) in May this year, some rules have changed in this regard. Please inform yourself in detail before you consider using one of the methods mentioned above to generate contacts.

If you have won the interest of a potential subscriber, get him to fill out a form with his contact details. There are different types of forms that you can use.

• own page / landing page
• popup
• Embed HTML block on the page

Choose the method that makes sense for you - or several! With the right email marketing tool, this creation is done in a few simple steps. You can drag and drop various fields into your form and personalize it in a few simple steps.

2. Import contact list into the email marketing tool

If you have used an all-in-one marketing solution to create your form, it automatically transfers the won contacts to one of your previously selected contact lists.

If you use your own form or an external form, you must insert the collected contacts into your application. This is usually done without much effort by uploading an Excel, csv or txt file. The various columns are automatically recognized and you are asked whether the "tagging" or the assignment of the columns was carried out correctly as a precaution.

Make sure that you only use data that you yourself have received with the consent of the subscriber! At this point again the explicit reference to the observance of the DSGVO. On the other hand, hefty penalties can be imposed.

Maintain your blacklist, a list of users who have unsubscribed from your newsletter. 

With a good email marketing tool, this is done automatically via an inserted opt-out link. But more about that later.

Segment what you can do! Good order is also the be-all and end-all in e-mail marketing. With the right segmentation, you can later address selected interest groups and significantly increase the success of your e-mail campaigns.

3. Create campaign

The contact lists have been successfully imported and created. Now it is time to create the first campaign. There are usually two options.

Either you create a normal campaign that you send manually to your contacts after completion. Or you create an automated campaign.

An automated campaign is triggered by various actions. We all know the automated welcome email you receive when you register on any website. 

These and follow-up emails can be planned with an automated campaign. From the day of registration you can continue to attract attention with small actions at increasing intervals. This concatenation of e-mails at certain intervals is called workflow.

Further triggers can be special data, for example the birthday of a customer or the day of registration.

You can set the update of the profile as another reason for sending an e-mail. They can give free rein to their creativity.

4. Create newsletter - E-Mail Builder

Create your first newsletter. Professional email marketing tools have usually implemented so-called e-mail builders. In these, you can choose from a range of ready-made responsive templates, the one that suits you best and customize it individually. 

Depending on the email marketing tool there can be big differences!

• Make sure to use only images that are license-free. Good providers can score with a license-free image database.
• One of the main objectives must be to constantly improve the opening rate of newsletters. A good start is the personalization of your newsletter. Create an exciting subject and set the recipient's name as a variable. The email marketing tool automatically inserts the name of the contact in the subject when it is sent and demonstrably increases the opening rate!
• A rule of thumb when creating a newsletter is setting the CTA's - two pieces.  One button at the beginning and one at the end.
• Keep an eye on the text-frame ratio. We recommend 60:40 or 70:30 in favour of the text. Too many pictures in e-mails can lead to longer loading times for the recipient. In addition, e-mail providers recognize too many images as junk mail or display these images incorrectly or not at all.
• Choose your content consciously. Benefit from special events such as the World Cup or the Olympics. With a little skill and the right action you can use the popularity of the events for your purposes and increase your awareness or your sales significantly. Also seasonal campaigns always have a good response!
• A unsubscribe link is mandatory! Always offer your recipients the option of deleting themselves from the recipient list by clicking on an "opt-out link". It often makes sense to blacklist the person at the same time. Such recipients also provide you with data. After which campaign did the recipient unsubscribe? How long has he/she been on the list?

5. Send newsletter

The contact list is collected, the newsletter is created and personalized, now it will be sent!

Many email providers want to protect their clients from annoying spam mails. Therefore many mass mails are automatically packed into the junk mail folder. As soon as an e-mail ends up in spam and is not necessarily expected, the probability that this e-mail will ever be opened is close to zero.

Some newsletter applications therefore allow an antispam test before sending the newsletter. Send your newsletter by test to colleagues, friends, family and your own e-mail account. This way you can check display errors again and determine whether your newsletter really ends up in the inbox.

In such tests it makes sense to try out several different providers.

When sending your newsletter, please also consider the accessibility of your target group. If you have students as your main target, but only send out newsletters on Saturdays and Sundays, you may have bad cards. For employees, the regular working time is recommended as the sending time, as most e-mails are retrieved during this period.

If you only want your customers to buy quickly, you should send your newsletter better at the beginning than at the end of the month.

6. Evaluate statistics within the email marketing tool

Try to optimize your newsletter at any time. A good email marketing tool provides you with a series of statistics that allow a detailed analysis of openings, clicks, unsubscriptions, and so on.

By analyzing the statistics, you can get geodata, which you can use, for example, to test a regional newsletter.

Recipients with a high opening rate can be more targeted, for subscribers with a lower opening rate you may have to try different tactics.

Conclusion

Sending newsletters is easy and with the right email marketing tool, the creation is also done in a few steps. Try it out for yourself and you will quickly have the first feeling of success. If used correctly, newsletter marketing can significantly boost your sales and create a close customer relationship in the long term. Be creative and try to create unique campaigns. Good luck!

Further details, video tutorials and many additional ideas on how to turn potential customers into newsletter recipients and create added value for yourself can be found at Mailify.