How to use email marketing to sell

Having an email marketing strategy is key to selling products. Why? Because sending emails helps you attract more customers, build brand recognition and encourage people to buy your products or services.

59% of consumers say their purchasing decisions are influenced by email marketing. Statista.

In the world of selling food online, WhatsApp and social media are widely used to catch consumers' attention, answer questions and close sales. But be careful: it's not a good idea to rely entirely on those channels. If your sales strategy is more organized, you'll find it easier to attract buyers and sell.

If you sell food products online, keep in mind that you need: social media, WhatsApp, a website or online store, and an email marketing strategy.

With a website or online store you can list your products and make sales without needing a physical shop. You can promote or share that store on social media so more people discover your products. Then, if you want to use your own WhatsApp or a business number, you can do so to manage deliveries or in case you need specific details from the customer. Don't overuse the phone. Your customers will love buying on your website and simply getting a message letting them know their order has arrived at their door.

Finally, with an email marketing strategy, that is, sending weekly or monthly emails, you can bring your customers exclusive promotions and discounts, exclusive products, giveaways, news from your online store, and more.

As you can see, it's a combination of things you need to keep in mind if you want to sell online. And the best part: it all comes at a very low cost. You'll see!

What is email marketing

Email marketing is a technique that lets you reach your customers or potential customers and provide them with quality information via email. It's a channel where you can achieve high conversion rates while spending very little money, or perhaps none at all.

Email marketing consists of sending information from time to time, through an emailing platform, to potential buyers in order to build a relationship and encourage them to buy your products or services.

To create email marketing campaigns, you don't need to know how to code: anyone can do it using platforms such as MailChimp, Sendinblue, Doppler and other well-known ones. Why should you use a platform to send them? Because you can't send large volumes of email from Google or your personal account. You could put your account at risk, whether it's personal or a business account.

Advantages of email marketing

An email marketing campaign has several advantages for your business. The main ones are:

• It increases traffic to your online store or website.
• It boosts sales or conversions.
• It helps build customer loyalty and keep customers trusting your brand.
• For a very low price or even for free (you can use the free plan offered by email marketing platforms), you can achieve great results.
• Email marketing platforms give you unique statistics so you can keep improving your sends. You can even test sending 2 different subject lines or two different texts to your contact list to see which one works best.

Today, many entrepreneurs prefer to make sales through WhatsApp and/or social media. This works as long as it goes hand in hand with a website or online store and a marketing campaign that includes email marketing.

Email marketing is up to 40 times more effective than social media (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) at acquiring new customers. McKinsey consulting firm

Whether you have a small online business or a large store, email marketing is always a great ally. It's used by 80% of companies to acquire and retain customers.

How to create an email marketing campaign

Building user/customer lists

To send marketing emails that sell, you need the email addresses of your customers or potential customers. How do you get them? You can get customers' email addresses if they've placed an order in your online store, subscribed to your newsletter at some point, downloaded a digital resource (such as an ebook or template), or simply signed up for a webinar or livestream you organized.

Segment those lists

Once you have their email addresses, you should segment them and organize them into lists within the email marketing platform itself.

Segmenting means classifying your email list. This will let you optimize your campaigns so they're effective and reach the right audience.

Prepare your content and send the campaign

For the content, think about the goal of your campaign, what you want to achieve: for people to use a discount, see your new products, take part in an event, etc.

Then write the body of the message, and based on that you'll be able to define the right subject line. Don't forget to add a call to action (CTA) at the end of the message: that's where the user clicks to get what the text promised.

It's always a good idea to personalize your emails, whether in the subject line or in the body of the message.

Measure results to improve your strategy

Once the campaign has been sent, review the results and apply what you learn to the next one.

The most important email marketing metrics are: Open rate (the percentage of recipients who opened your email) and Conversion rate (how many saw the content and clicked your call to action). Finally, also check how many recipients marked your email as spam and remove them from your list.

In subject lines or in the body of the message (text and design), you can use A/B testing. That is, try two versions and see which one gets better results.

Tips to keep in mind

• Choose the email marketing tool that feels most comfortable for you. There are many, and you can try them out until you find the right one.
• Once you gain experience with sending, you'll be able to automate many of your emails. This means you don't have to create a new email every so often; instead, you create one, choose the lists it will go to and set up a rule. For example: every time someone buys from my online store, they should receive a specific message.
• Make sure to create messages and sends for every type of user: those who visited your site and left, those who bought, those who read your blog, loyal customers, etc.
• In marketing we always talk about “nurturing leads,” that is, maintaining a lasting relationship with customers: offering better shopping experiences, asking for their opinion from time to time, sending them anniversary greetings, etc.
• Always test your emails. They should look good on laptops as well as on mobile phones and other devices. Every email marketing platform lets you send test emails.

Conclusion

Can you see how important it is to run an email marketing campaign to sell? And not only that, but also the advantages it offers for driving more conversions on your website or online store.