Gone are the days when a firm handshake followed all deals and agreements. In today’s digital world, such a form of face-to-face sales and contracts is becoming increasingly rare. Now, we can close deals and sell products remotely, thanks to online meetings tools, online stores, messengers, etc. Sellers and buyers can be located thousands of miles apart. This doesn’t matter anymore.
There are different reasons why you don’t sell in person. Maybe you want to sell a digital product, or perhaps the COVID-19 pandemic has forced you to pivot your business model. Whatever the reason, you do need to make the remote selling efficient.
Email marketing is currently one of the most trusted and popular marketing methods. Unfortunately, a large portion of all emails end up in spam. To avoid this, it’s in your best interest to turn your emails into SMS messages. With 98% open rates, text messages enable you to communicate with clients regardless of where they’re located or what they’re doing. This way, you can ensure that your message will be read no matter what.
This post goes through the best email marketing strategies that will help you communicate with your customers efficiently and win more sales.
Tip #1: Create high-quality email lists
When you have an online business, you need to build an email list. The quality of this list will have a significant effect on the profitability of your email marketing effort. That is why I suggest you avoid buying any databases. Those are just useless.
If you have zero or few subscribers in your list, start building it from scratch. You can get new subscribers from a landing page, homepage sign-up box, a smart bar that sits at the top of a browser, an exit intent pop-up. And not only that.
You can do the following things:
- request an email address to register for a profile on your website;
- ask for a buyer’s email address during the checkout process;
- put a gated entrance to exclusive content;
- ask your blog readers to sign up for your email list;
- conduct a survey;
- include a call to action in your social media bios and posts;
- host a webinar;
- create an email course;
- ask your existing subscribers for referrals;
- update your email signature with a call to action that prompts to join the list.
The possibilities are endless. Just please don’t buy any lists.
Extra tip: Even if you are 100% sure that you have the most loyal customers in the world, you still need to regularly update your email database. With time, some of your subscribers may have changed their email addresses, and some are not interested in your products/services anymore.
Tip #2 Send education newsletters
Sending newsletters to your customers is an excellent way to stay in touch with them and increase the chances of a return visit/purchase. With the content you put in your newsletter, you can keep people up-to-date on your products or services, your brand, industry trends, and any other newsworthy topics.
For example, if you sell pet food, consider educating your customers about the things they can do to keep their animals healthy and happy, necessary veterinary check-ups, seasonal illnesses, no stress bathing tips, and so on.
#3 Use email signature banners
If you don’t have a nice professional email signature yet, go and create one. This is a must if you want to engage people without being too pushy or salesy. In fact, you don’t need to promote something in every email to get your money.
You can simply create an email signature and use a promotional banner with it. Then you install it in your email client to make it appear at the bottom of every email you send. With such banners, you can promote anything: new app releases, eBooks, webinars, events, sales, giveaways, social media accounts, blog posts, awards, certificates, and more.
See what it looks like.
#4 Add social media links to emails
You need to grow your social media too. The more people will see your content, the better. Perhaps they missed your newsletter; then, they can see your post on social media. By the way, email signatures are the perfect place to include social media links as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc. However, be sure to include only the links to accounts you use regularly and not overload the signature with too many.
Extra tip: Create email signatures for all your employees and add links to your company’s social media accounts. Now, not only you promote your social networks, but another ten, twenty, or maybe even a hundred people in your organization. That makes a huge difference in the effectiveness of your email marketing effort.
#5 Create bonus programs and mention discounts
Every marketer is seeking ways to improve the performance of their marketing emails. Emails with valuable offers are an excellent method that can help you increase the opens and improve conversion rates.
Some of the most common types of valuable offers that many brands use in their email marketing campaigns include discount codes, gifts with orders, “buy one, get three,” free shipping, referral codes, a month of subscription at no cost. All these incentives may result in acquiring new customers, retaining past customers, and increasing the number of impulse purchases.
Extra tip: Refer to your benefit right in the subject line (“You still have 20% off,”) include a compelling call to action that highlights the offer (“Take your $10 off on your next purchase,”) add links to featured or popular items in your store. Again, you can make good use of your email signature to promote these things in a more natural way.
Conclusion
No matter if you sell online, in‑person, and everywhere in‑between, it is always important that your effort pays off. Since email remains one of the most efficient channels to get in touch with your customers (both existing and prospective), I decided to cover the topic of email marketing.
In this post, I explain why it is important to build your email list by yourself and how you can do that quickly and efficiently. You will also learn about the benefits of email signatures with promotional banners and the ways to sell without actually selling (that’s what email signatures can do).
We also talk about the role of bonus programs, gifts, discounts, educational emails, and social media. Once you read it and implemented it properly, there is no reason why you can’t successfully sell remotely using the power of email marketing.
Description: Read about email marketing best practices to boost every campaign to support your remote sales.