Remaining or becoming more profitable will always be a company’s number one goal, and steady sales are a must to hit this goal monthly, quarterly and annually. So how do you boost sales at your business? One easy way to do this is by implementing email marketing into your marketing campaigns.

Email is still the most effective marketing channel due to:

• Its ability to reach larger audiences
• The fact that people still prefer company updates through email rather than other channels, like social media
• Its ability to convert visitors to leads, and leads to customers

The benefits of email go on—this is why email is crucial to your business success, and will help you boost sales. But how do you properly implement an effective email strategy? The below steps will help you create emails that increase revenue.

1. Who? Define your audience.

The first step to email marketing isn’t writing the email, it’s defining who will receive it. You should always determine what content to write based on personas (different segments of your ideal audience), not the other way around. Knowing your audience helps you write to their specific needs, challenges and goals. Use the below criteria to create different personas for your emails:

• Persona name
• Roles
• Goals
• Challenges
• Demographic information (age, education, income, location)
• Their story (what kind of blogs they read, where they get their news, if you are B2B—what size their company is and how they measure their success)

Once you have this information, select one persona, or no more than two personas, to write your emails for.

2. What? Tailor your message.

Once you know which persona you will write to, make sure to tailor your message to them. Don’t write content that is general enough to apply to everyone—doing so will actually deter readers. Make your email message specific; the key to being specific is knowing how your product or service directly impacts each individual person. Then, highlight those benefits.

As an example, if you’re sending an email to the heads of different sales departments and you sell an automated phone message system, share tips on how to helps sales teams streamline their processes and sell more with technology.

3. When? Pick the right send time and date.

So far you’ve picked the ideal audience for your email and tailored your message to them, but you also need to make sure they get that message at the right time.

Do research on the best times and days to send emails to your audience. When doing this, consider data inside and outside of the your industry. Many sites over the last few years say that Tuesday is the best day to send an email. However, if everyone takes that advice, your prospect’s email inbox is going to be flooded on Tuesdays. Make sure to talk to current clients about their email preferences, test different days and times to send your emails, and apply your findings to future email campaigns.

4. Why? Answer what’s in it for your audience.

When you are reviewing your emails, you need to ask yourself one important question, “Why?” As you edit your email, ask why your audience would care about your subject line, your message and even your graphic design choices. If you don’t have a good answer to that question, you need to rewrite and rework until you have an email worth sending. It may be additional work, but the results will provide a larger payoff.

When executed correctly, email marketing provides powerful results for businesses, like higher conversion rates and increased revenue. So how do you use email at your business? Let us know in the comments below. If you need assistance implementing a solid email marketing strategy at your company, contact Milwaukee email marketing agency, Accelity Marketing.