Follow This Email Marketing Strategy for Serious Results

Back in my agency days, I saw email marketing drive 40-50% of total revenue for some brands. 

These weren’t tiny brands making a small amount of money — we’re talking about names you would recognise because they’re everywhere, online and in physical retail. 

Even with an omnichannel presence, these businesses relied on an email marketing strategy to see their best returns, so if you’re sleeping on yours, it’s time to wake up. 

You can’t afford to ignore the task anymore, and we’re here to help with seven steps to get you started. Follow our advice, but don’t come crying when you run out of stock. 

Step 1: Define Your Goals

The foundation of any growth strategy is clear, measurable goals, so get out your whiteboard and marker pens and stick the SMART acronym up nice and big. Your goals should be:

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Relevant

Time-Bound

Need a clear example? Here are three:

• Increase email list growth by 20% in the next 3 months

• Improve click-through rates by 10% over the next quarter

• Grow email revenue by 25% in the next six months

Believe it or not, you don’t set these goals to keep yourself in a perpetual state of fear until your next appraisal. No, they’re just there to keep you consistent, and as a nice little reminder to always be testing and optimising for maximum results. 

Step 2: Build Your Audience

A successful email marketing strategy is contingent on the right audience, so the next logical step is to build your mailing list and then start segmenting.

List Building: Start with email opt-ins from your website or social media channels. Incentivise sign-ups by offering discounts, lead magnets, or exclusive access. 

Segmentation: Sending the same message to your entire mailing list is a wasted opportunity. Personalised, targeted messages, sent to lists that cater to different demographics and buying behaviours, is the way to get a good return on your investment. 

You can segment based on:

• Purchase behaviour (new vs. returning customers)

• Interests or past product views

• Demographics (age, gender, location)

Step 3: Set Up Automated Flows

Automated flows are your 24/7 sales team. They nurture leads, recover lost sales, and make your community feel loved. Once they’re up and running they require little to no effort from your team, just some testing every now and then to make sure you’re fully optimised. 

There are a whole bunch of flows you can opt for as an e-commerce brand, but we’re of the opinion that you’ll get 80% of results from 20% of the machine. Your Abandoned Checkout, Abandoned Browse, and Welcome Flow are the must haves. We explain more on this here. 

Step 4: Plan and Execute Campaigns

This is how you engage with your audience in real-time. Although that might make it sound like these have to be totally off-the-cuff and topical, best practice is to plan ahead and stay consistent. 

We’re going to advise you build out a content calendar and have a month of campaigns signed off at least 30 days before they need to hit inboxes.

Product announcements, events, and sales do have their place here, but it’s also important to offer value to your brand fans, to show you care about them beyond what’s in their wallet (you do, don’t you?). 

Value will look different to every demographic but tips and tutorials are common. Simply being entertaining should never be overlooked, because who doesn’t appreciate an unexpected reason to smile. 

Step 5: Optimise Your Email Cadence

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer, but there are best practices for email marketing cadence.

Two campaigns a week is enough to keep you in the minds of your shoppers, three is fine so long as you have a good reason for each one.

Four or more campaigns in a week, and you’re coming across a little desperate. In this instance, ask yourself, which of these emails isn’t necessary? And then kill it, yep, send it straight to the trash can. 

Step 6: Create Nice Content

There’s no rule as to what your email should look and sound like but design and copy both matter, and they should work in harmony. Your design guides your readers' eyes and your copy does the all-important storytelling and selling. 

As general advice, we’d say keep copy short and to the point, but in your brand’s unique voice. Designs should be clean, simple, and always optimised for mobile.

If you want to see examples of emails done right, check out www.reallygoodemails.com. 

Step 7: Analyse and Adapt

Even with all our email marketing tips in action, you’ll need to track and optimise your results to keep up with ever evolving standards. Here are the key metrics to watch:

• Open rates: Tells you how effective your subject lines are

• Click-through rates: Reveals how engaging your content is

• Conversion rates: Shows how well your emails are driving sales

Always A/B test, experimenting with different subject lines, copy, design, and timing. Over time, what you uncover will help you refine your email marketing strategy, so you can feel confident that when you hit send the cash is soon to come. 

Get Serious About Your Email Marketing Strategy 

An effective email marketing strategy takes time. When you start off, avoid feeling overwhelmed by the task ahead and remember that there are billions of people on the planet, and you only need a teeny fraction of them to be interested in what you have to say. 

Keep pushing email marketing best practices and the people that connect with your brand will stick around and spend. 

Tongue-tied? 

Subscribe to That’s Nice Copy and submit your first brief today. You’ll have it back before you’ve even remembered to check, and you can pause or cancel your subscription once that email calendar is all signed off. 

Learn more about That’s Nice Copy here. 

Take a step back and learn the email marketing basics here.