The marketing landscape for businesses has changed drastically since the advent of the internet. Reaching out to potential consumers is no longer reliant on broad and impersonal TV spots, radio ads, and print. The internet has spawned copious digital marketing techniques that have allowed entrepreneurs and marketers to choreograph targeted campaigns for specific audiences – resulting in higher conversions.

Perhaps the oldest of the digital marketing toolbox, email marketing, has remained a tried and true method for reaching out to your target audience. In fact, according to an eMarketer study, the median ROI on an email marketing campaign is 122% — four times the ROI of any other digital marketing strategy.

However, a digital marketing campaign cannot be successful without proper planning, preparation, and know-how. Below, find 5 strategies to rollout a successful email campaign.

1. Cultivate relationships with would-be customers

The primary reason email marketing outperforms its digital marketing counterparts is that it helps develop a relationship with the customer. It builds trust and guides the customer through the purchasing process. By collecting visitor emails, you can nurture relationships through contact in into future sales. Do this by:

• Keeping in touch with relevant offers and promotions
• Staying on top of the customers’ mind with relevant advertising
• Automating marketing with calls to action for holidays, personalized content, reminders, and more
• Remaining consistent and helpful without crossing the line into invasive or annoying

2. Create a list-building strategy relevant to your business

You may be tempted to buy a list of verified emails. If you are, stop right there. This is not only ineffective, but often illegal. Cultivating your own list of relevant and high value emails will invariably pay off much more. Utilize the visitors to your site, your followers on social media, or past users of your product. Below are a few strategies:

• Utilize pop-ups – We know, pop ups can be annoying. We’ve found, though, that pop-ups that offer something of value are appreciated by customers. Most will gladly offer their email for a discount on a purchase, access to useful content, free shipping, or many other incentives.

• Omnisend data showed that an exit-intent popup has the best success rate at 35% and offers the best experience for the user

• Try out various interactive signup forms – using gamification, you can increase signups by up to three times. These are not only fun, but reward visitors instantly encouraging them to signup for a newsletter or spend right away.

3. Utilize email automation

Automated email workflows save you time and trouble as soon as you’re ready to utilize the results of the list building. Automated emails guarantee that your customers receive the message at the right time with little effort from you. The process can be easily set up and changed according to you or your customers’ needs. Consider the following types of email:

• Welcome emails – Welcome emails are sent immediately to new subscribers. We’ve discovered that sending three welcome emails rather than a single email results in a 300% increase in open and click rates, and 500% increase in revenue.

• Abandoned cart email – Anyone familiar with online shopping has been there. You’ve chosen your items but for some reason you don’t follow through with the purchase. Perhaps it is a lack of time, or maybe you’ve got second thoughts. The abandonment rate of ecommerce shopping carts is a staggering 67.91%. Abandoned cart emails can help recoup those customers. These emails are sent as soon as a shopper exits your website without following through with the entire purchase.Once again, we recommend sending series of emails rather than a single one. With three automated emails, we see an impressive 1.8% conversion rate – 20 times more effective than a single newsletter. Include images, utilize a call to action such as a discount, and employ a conversational tone like “Still Shopping?” or “Did you forget something?”

• Consider sending emails for customer’s birthdays, special events, order confirmation, and shipping statuses. These allow you to remain relevant and on top of the users’ mind.

4. Make your emails effective!

So, you’ve built a list of high value emails and set up an automated outreach plan. Now it’s time to craft the campaign. Let’s examine a few pointers to perfect a campaign:

• Use mobile friendly designs – More and more online shopping is being done by smartphone. Always test campaigns on multiple devices before going live.
• Less is more – Feature only relevant and targeted products to keep the email clean and direct. Too many choices can result in what Psychologists call “paralysis of analysis.”
• Consider the layout – Cleary design the layout of the email. Make it clear where sections begin and end, and make buttons and links obvious to the reader.
• Picture quality – This should be obvious, but all too often emails contain low-quality images of products that a) don’t do the product justice and b) de-legitimates the brand
• Call to action – A call to action is critical. Define why the customer should move forward with the purchase now rather than later. Focus on one or two quality CTAs that stand out rather than a flood of ineffective ones.

5. Utilize omnichannel marketing

Now that you’ve got a well-crafted campaign being automatically sent to your high-value leads, what else can be done? The answer here is, plenty. Perhaps try to combine many channels of contact to increase conversions.

For Example, if your pop-ups have collected information such as birthdates and phone numbers, try sending a birthday SMS to congratulate them and offer a discount code. Customers appreciate the customization and will often jump at the special offer. Multichannel customers are seen to spend three to four times as their single channel counterparts.

With more social media platforms popping up by the month, the options to contact customers through multiple avenues is endless. Be creative and test which combinations work best for your company.

There are plenty of companies out there offering services to ease the burden of setting up campaigns, automating the email process, and offering great tools to assist along the way. Mailchimp is by far the largest player in the market for basic email marketing. If you’re growing and are looking for some great MailChimp alternatives for more advanced ecommerce marketing automation, Omnisend can be an option.

All businesses are different, so spend some time researching and find a platform that works best for you. Once you do, follow the advice above and you’ll quickly be maximizing your profits in no time!