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Using Email to Increase Sales

Experience is the #1 ingredient you need to make your email marketing campaigns increase your sales figures. Our Managing Editor Eileen Shulock has beaucoup experience sending weekly email messages that increase her firm's bottom line.

Eileen's day job is E-Commerce Director at Intermix, a cutting-edge fashion retailer with stores in 20 cities across the US, including an online store. Intermix has tens of thousands of devoted patrons who receive those weekly offers that Eileen creates.

Below, Eileen shares with you the top insights she has gathered from her years of experience of sending emails to adoring fans, week after week. -LC

1. Focus on Delivering More and More Value:

In this day of email deluge, you can not do the "same ol' same ol'" and expect to improve or even maintain your results. Customers and potential customers are going through a revolution of rising expectations. They demand extreme value from email communications, so add more value to yours with new ideas. First of all, follow your competition and make sure you are delivering more value than they do.

One tactic this editor uses is "just in time" education, whereby instead of just saying "buy this", I give detailed background about the item and why it is an absolute essential. I suggest other items that work with it, even if those items are not for sale on our site. This creates more of a content context for our subscribers and adds great value, which means they are more likely to open our emails and shop.

PS -- Statistics say that people can only handle about 15 email "relationships" (meaning emails that they pay attention to regularly) before they hit email overload. This includes emails regarding credit card statements, bank statements, their kids' school updates and so on.

It's a zero sum game. If you want to get on that list of 15, you've got to deliver more value than someone else who is already on that list and replace them to make room for you.

2. Engage Your New Subscribers Right Away:

Direct marketers know that the most active subscribers on a list are typically the ones that have subscribed within the last 30-60 days. DMers call these motivated newbies "hotliners".

Thank your new subscribers right away for subscribing. This is step one in building your relationships with them.

Reinforce what they can expect from you in terms of email communications. This will help subscribers look forward to and identify your email when it arrives, as opposed to lumping it with the deluge of email they receive every day.

Also consider sending a special offer with your thank you email. This editor sends an email with the subject line "Thank You and a Special Gift For You" to new subscribers. It offers a 10% discount on first purchase. That email regularly has an open rate of 60% or more and a healthy redemption rate.

3. Know Who Your Subscribers Are:

This editor reviews every single new subscriber's email address before uploading new names to a master list. Yes, that means going through hundreds of lines on a spreadsheet every week. Trust me, you get very good at skimming!

The benefits of this attention to detail are four-fold:

1. I know exactly which email service providers my subscribers are receiving their emails at and thus how my emails will appear to them;
2. If someone does use a business domain, I know exactly who they are and what company they work for;
3. I can correct any obvious errors in domain name spelling or format; and
4. I always take all of my competitors off of my list. :)

4. Optimize To Your Most Prevalent Email Provider:

Where are the majority of your subscribers receiving your email? It is to gmail.com, or yahoo.com or to businesses addresses? Knowing where they're getting your communications allows you to focus on prioritizing optimization for those particular domains.

If it's gmail.com, then you should not only seed your list with multiple addresses at gmail.com, but you should get to know everything about gmail.com that you can. If the majority of your subscribers are receiving your emails at their business addresses, that's valuable information as well, as it will inform the design and even the tone of your email, whether you are B2B or B2C.

5. Pay Attention to Bouncebacks:

You are required by law to have a special email address where you receive all bouncebacks from your email communications. It needs to be looked at by a human, because if an unsubscribe request is sent to that address, you have a specific number of days to comply with that request.

However, thar's gold in them thar hills. Every week this editor receives queries about products or press opportunities where the subscriber has simply hit "reply" to that email address and sent his or her message.

As a matter of fact, you may find that these people are some of your most valuable contacts, as they care enough to reply right away to your email with a question or a request.

6. The Future Is In Segmentation:

Savvy emailers are already practicing sophisticating segmentation techniques.

You can easily track people who have opened your email vs. those who have not. You can track people who have purchased vs. those who have not. Therefore you can track people who have opened your email but have not purchased. That's a good group to focus on.

You can also track people who have purchased high-ticket items, or who have purchased the featured item as well as other items. All of this, of course, requires analytic tools.

Another way to segment is to do so on the "front end", meaning that you ask a few pertinent questions when people sign up for your email. This editor has found that if questions require just a check of a box (as opposed to more laborious ways to select an answer, such as drop down menus), people will answer at least four elective questions, including sharing cell phone numbers and carriers.

Then you can segement by "intent" (why the person wants your email newsletter or what he or she intends to do with your info) or by special interests, or you can even delve into mobile marketing/text messaging.

PS -- Many email service providers allow you to integrate with Google Analytics with the addition of a few lines of code. Look into that.

Your big spenders are your most valuable subscribers. This editor has offered her big spenders major incentives such as 20% off their next purchase or $100 toward their next purchase. In our fasion retail line of business that's almost giving away the bank, as our average order size is $350.

Sure, one or two of your customers will purchase $101 of merchandise, but we have found that most big-spending customers don't abuse the offer. The average order for a big spender with a incentive is $1000. They walk away happy, and you walk away happy.

Once you know the revenue each email transmission should generate, you can then judge the success of each email going forward. After all, revenue is what you are after. This editor knows that she should generate $1 per subscriber for every email sent. If I generate fewer sales dollars, I need to figure out what I did wrong, and vice versa.

This figure will also help you determine out if your list is diluted with too many "non-engaged" subscribers, which you can then weed out to get back to your revenue expectations.

This editor has found that although presenting one item for sale gives lots of room to romance the sale, the downside is that either the subscriber likes the item or she doesn't. That's a big risk to take. My more effective option is to present a number of items that either represent the newest things we have to offer, to feature complementary items in the form of interesting content, such as a top ten list of what to wear to the beach or what have you.

Of course, you will try both options to see for yourself what works best. One other thing to remember is to have plenty of upsells and crosssells on the landing page where your subscriber will end up if he is interested in what you have to offer.

If you have not yet optimized your emails for BlackBerries or other mobile devices, now would be a good time to do so. The challenge in condensing your message to communicate via a mobile device is that you need to be very clear and concise about what you want to say. You most likely will have to rethink part or all of your email strategy.

But if don't tailor your messages to the needs of your subscribers, you are obviously missing sales opportunities.

PS -- You can check out how many people on your list are receiving emails on their BlackBerry by searching your records for email addresses ending with @blackberry.net.

11. Focus On Finding New Targeted Subscribers:

The more interested subscribers you have, the more sales you will have. Seems obvious, no? However, you may not realize that you don't have to spend mega bucks to find new subscribers.

Develop relationships with the bloggers in your industry. Offer to sponsor some type of special activity, such as a contest or a giveaway of a complimentary account (if you are a service provider) or merchandise. Even other people's merchandise will do, such as an Internet marketing library with books you've selected by a number of authors.

This editor has found that there is usually no related cost to sponsor such giveaways, meaning there is not a fee to get into the game and offer your promotion. For example, I recently sponsored a $500 giveaway of a gift certificate with a major online magazine and generated more than 3000 new subscribers in a week. That's an acquisition cost of seventeen cents per targeted subscriber.

After you establish good relationships with key influencers in your industry, you may find that when bloggers or magazines or whatever need to quickly find a partner for a promotional idea that they have, you will be the go-to person.

I was recently contacted to sponsor the introduction of a major new fashion channel on one of the top three social media sites. The blogger asked, and I answered "yes" within 10 minutes. That means I garnered quite a coup.

The bloggers love our company because we will turn around the answer quickly instead of asking for a proposal and going through the rigmarole of levels of approval, which is what most of our competitors require.

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