Email marketing is versatile. It’s perfect for prospecting, nurturing, and overall communications. The issue is most businesses don’t know how to unlock their full potential.
Many marketers only focus on one aspect of email marketing, such as cold emailing. In reality, it can be implemented in all sales process stages.
Making the most of email marketing means understanding what tactics to use and when. We’re here to help with just that! By the end of this guide, you’ll learn:
- Fundamental email marketing tactics
- The most effective email marketing tactics
- Which parts of the sales process should we use email marketing
- Email marketing must-dos you can’t skip
- Best practices to ensure successful campaigns
The Fundamental Email Marketing Tactics
You can use dozens of email marketing strategies in every stage of the sales process. But, all these strategies are based on the following fundamentals:
Relevant and Engaging Subject Lines
Your subject lines are the first thing your recipients will see. So, make them engaging, relevant, and free of spam trigger words.
Include keywords that spark interest. Try integrating pain points, solutions to issues, or use subject lines that promise immediate value.
For example, if you’re trying to sell inventory software to eCommerce stores, you can write a subject line like: “{{first name}}, we solved our overstocking issues using this easy strategy.”
Segmentation and Personalization
Personalized emails result in higher open rates. But manual personalization takes hours. You need to use outreach automation tools to scale.
With an automation tool, we can easily segment our leads based on our criteria and where they are in the lead funnel. To enhance our personalization and segmentation, we use intent data.
Integrating Intent Data in Campaigns
Email lists can have tens of thousands of prospects. Using the same amount of time and resources for each can easily burn out your marketers.
We use intent data to avoid this issue and have our marketers focus on leads most likely to convert. Analyzing intent data helps us qualify leads faster and personalize nurturing efforts.
Let’s say you have two leads—A and B. Lead A has already read a handful of your articles on using your product, downloaded a case study in exchange for a business email, and checked out your product page several times.
Lead B also checked out your product pages but has not read any resource material. Both show intent. However, your sales representatives should focus more on Lead A since he’s already consumed more content.
Understand Why You’re Sending an Email
We don’t want to start an email campaign without a clear business goal. We recommend checking out our email marketing terms article if you don't know where to start.
Understanding your goals creates a roadmap. Will you run an email marketing campaign to get more clients for your marketing agency? Qualify leads? Or promoting a new product?
Each goal requires a specific email strategy. Whatever strategy you use, you must focus on email quantity and quality.
Run Email Campaigns that Emphasize Quantity and Quality
At the end of the day, email marketing is a numbers game. More volume means a better chance of getting a reply.
Luckily, with the help of email automation, you don’t have to choose between quality and quantity. Tools like Instantly can personalize, segment, and help analyze intent data at scale.
7 Effective and Unique Email Marketing Tactics for 2024
Marketers are getting creative with email marketing—and we noticed. We spent the year studying great email marketers and curated a list of strategies you can apply to your business.
Find what resonates with you, personalize it to fit your business needs, and make these email marketing tactics your own.
Utilizing Email Spintax
Spintax is an absolute game changer in the email marketing scene. Marketers can use spintax to generate variations of great email examples.
You wouldn’t want email providers to see you’ve sent the same email to over a thousand people. With the help of ChatGPT email, anybody can use spintax with a few clicks.
Instantly users don’t even have to use prompts for ChatGPT; Spintax is already integrated within the tool. Now, you can use Spintax in tandem with personalization for the highest deliverability.
Using Long Email Scripts
Since time immemorial, the consensus for email marketing has been to " write short and concise emails.” But, for specific niches or markets, the opposite might work better.
Take note: this won’t work for every business, so try it out and see if this strategy fits your target audience better. Instead of short and concise, we’ll use long scripts, three to four paragraphs.
Each paragraph is a couple of sentences long and packed with detailed information about the product or service you’re trying to sell. Most competitors would be using short emails.
Here’s how it works. Most won’t read the entire script. But those who do already show high buying intent. It’s like a prequalification step you do in the initial email.
So, instead of a full-on cold lead, you’ve already warmed them up with your long email since they know about your process and product. This allows you to sell the service—not a meeting.
Selling the Service, Not the Meeting
Nurturing and qualification play a big role in email marketing, often leading to higher conversions. But, with the long email script strategy, you’re already pre-qualifying and nurturing.
All that’s left is selling the service, not just a meeting. Competitors will likely ask prospects to hop on a call to discuss XYZ further. Or asking if they could send a PDF, case study, or video.
Instead, we skip this part and jump directly to the service. You can even include your USP here and position yourself as the ultimate solution with no contest.
“We can handle XYZ from start to end and make ABC more efficient, saving you $$$ on overhead. That’s because we focus on {{strategy}} while competitors are doing {{weaker strategy}}.”
0 Follow-up Strategy
Sales follow-ups are integral to every email marketing tactic. However, there are cases where no follow-ups could actually benefit your business more.
The concept for this is simple: follow-ups take up a huge percentage of your monthly or weekly email capacity. But what if you could book more calls in the first email?
To make the 0 follow-up strategy work, you’ll need leads—and lots of them. That’s where Instantly B2B Lead Finder comes into play. You don’t have to spend time and resources verifying and qualifying leads. They’re all pre-qualified, and you don’t pay for unverified ones.
Instead of following up on your leads after three days or a week, we send another “cold email” to the same leads 4-12 weeks later—resetting the clock.
Naturally, this strategy works best when paired with long email scripts and selling the service, not the meeting. However, this strategy is aggressive and works in specific scenarios.
Slight Nudge Follow-up Strategy
Sometimes, prospects respond to your initial emails but fail to follow up. There could be a number of reasons why they haven’t followed up with you yet.
When this happens, the best thing we can do is to create a follow-up sequence. It serves as a slight nudge, reminding them they’ve engaged with us but haven’t committed to a call.
You can try using subject lines like “{{First name}}, thoughts on {{what you talked about}}.” Then, emphasize it further in your email body.
“Thanks for taking the time to respond to our first email. Just wanted to send a quick follow-up regarding {{what you talked about}}. Let’s make that call when you have the time! {{insert link to booking calendar}}.
Email Using Different Sender Personas
Businesses have several stakeholders. Each has its own criteria for what makes a solution or product effective. They would also respond better when approached by certain people.
We’re not saying you need to fake a person, just sender identities. The core message of the email stays the same. Stakeholders respond better when approached by certain people.
For example, an audience within the financial industry would respond better if the email was sent by a CFO rather than a junior marketing assistant.
Aligned Influencer Marketing
Influencers, thought leaders, or podcast sponsorships are great for promoting your email list or newsletters. To develop a successful influencer marketing campaign, you must ensure these influencers align with your brand.
You don’t have to ask these influencers to sell your products necessarily. Even with a newsletter shoutout, you can get an influx of new leads you can advertise to in the future. This strategy works well, especially in smaller niches.
Email is one of the best ways to reach out to these influencers. Find the right ones that reflect your brand’s values. Remember, even smaller influencers can have a more engaged community.
How to Use Email Marketing in Each Stage of the Sales Process
Email marketing can be used in every stage of the sales process. The question now is, what tactics should you implement to create a smoother and more engaging buyer’s journey? Here are the email marketing tactics we recommend for each stage of the lead funnel:
Awareness Stage: Top-of-Funnel Email Marketing Tactics
The awareness stage is critical, especially for cold email marketing. You need to capture the interest of your audience unfamiliar with your products, services, or brand.
Top-of-funnel email marketing tactics such as compelling subject lines, engaging content, valuable resources, or exclusive promotions work great here.
Think of things that are no-brainer and click-worthy. A discount, free resources like case studies that provide immediate value, or unique industry insights.
Interest Stage: Integrating Intent Data Into Email Marketing
After hooking in prospects during the awareness stage, they should be moved into the interest stage. Here, prospects show signs of buying intent. But, being interested in a product and buying are completely different.
To ensure the highest chance of conversions, you need to personalize the content you send. We do this by analyzing intent data and key email marketing metrics. Most email marketing tools have built-in analytics dashboards that help you do just that.
Desire Stage: Deeper, More Personalized Nurturing
In the desire stage, prospects heavily consider purchasing your products or services. But, objections can arise at any moment. We want to address these objections proactively before they come up through deeper, more personalized nurturing.
Prospects at this stage have likely talked with your SDR a handful of times, whether through email exchanges, online meetings, or calls. During these interactions, SDRs should note each qualified prospect’s needs and preferences.
Then, use the data as a form of sales enablement that allows your SDRs to curate content that resonates best with each prospect, craft deals they’re more likely to take, and be able to handle objections that may be presented during the later stages of the sales funnel.
Action Stage: Transforming Leads into Sales
At the bottom of every sales funnel is the action stage. This is where prospects are ready to make a purchasing decision.
You’d want to use marketing tactics that convey urgency but aren’t too intrusive. Prospects at the bottom of the funnel should be segmented so SDRs can hyper-personalize each email.
For nurturing, try sending out customer stories or testimonials. Social proofs like these instill a sense of authority and expertise in your offering.
Try offering free trials, personalized demos, or take a deep dive into your prospect’s unique pain points. This gives you a great opportunity to address their unconsidered needs.
Key Takeaways
There’s an email marketing tactic you can use for all your business needs. To make the most out of each tactic, consider the following best practices:
- Use spintax to create variations of great email copies to ensure high deliverability.
- Try testing out long and short-form emails to see which works best.
- Always re-engage with prospects that show intent.
- Try utilizing different sending personas when targeting ICPs.
- Utilize an email marketing tool to help you send quality emails at scale.
With Instantly, you don’t have to compromise quality over quantity! Start sending emails at scale today! Try Instantly for free and make the most of your email marketing campaigns!