Emailing now counts 3.9 billion users worldwide. It has become an essential digital marketing channel to boost traffic to your website. With a return on investment (ROI) estimated at 28.5%, its effectiveness is due to strong reader loyalty and ease of use.
Email marketing can be used across various industries to increase online sales. In this article, we share 5 key tips to help you generate traffic through email.
Build a solid contact list
To build a contact list, you need to comply with opt-in rules. The recipient must give explicit consent to receive emails from your brand. If they haven’t clearly said “yes,” you must assume it’s a “no.”
There are two types of opt-in:
- Passive opt-in: The prospect gives indirect consent, usually via a pre-checked box at the end of a form (e.g. contest entry, white paper download).
This is not allowed in B2C by the CNIL, and strongly discouraged in B2B. - Active opt-in: The prospect explicitly agrees to receive commercial emails by checking a box.
To collect more email addresses, multiply your points of contact:
- Contests
- Signup forms
- Newsletters
- White paper downloads
- Email-only discount offers
- Shopping cart save options, etc.
Want a larger, high-quality list? You can work with a digital agency. Dataventure offers access to over 400 partner opt-in databases to power your email marketing campaigns.
Segment your customer database
Before launching an email marketing campaign, define who will receive what message.
Examples of segmentation criteria include:
- Socio-demographic data
- Behavioral data
- Contextual data
- Active vs inactive customers
- Stage in the sales funnel
- Preferred types of content
- Purchase history
Without proper segmentation and targeting, you risk high unsubscribe rates.
Personalize your email content
Thanks to segmentation, you can send relevant, personalized content to your prospects and customers. Focus on topics that interest them.
Good to know: Why customer knowledge matters
Getting to know your audience helps personalize emails more effectively—but that’s not all. It also allows you to:
- Identify growth opportunities
- Improve customer relationships by adjusting marketing efforts to customer value
- Collect and process the right data into actionable insights or dashboards
- Stand out from competitors and boost performance
- Measure your business’s customer capital
A well-designed email with compelling visuals grabs attention. If your message resonates, recipients are more likely to visit your website, boosting traffic.
Make sure your subject line is strong enough to entice them to open and read the email.
5 tips for writing optimized email subject lines
- Keep it short: Most inboxes will cut off long subject lines. Stay under 50 characters.
- Lead with the important info: Promotions, events, deadlines—put the hook first.
- Avoid spam trigger words: Words like “promotion,” “free,” “hot,” “urgent,” “casino,” etc. can land you in the spam folder.
- Use emojis (sparingly): When used well, emojis make your subject line more engaging—especially for brands with a lighthearted tone. They also help your emails stand out in the inbox.
- Keep it simple: Avoid overusing caps, punctuation, and special characters—they can flag your email as spam.
Follow the calendar
Throughout the year, there are plenty of key moments to send marketing emails—holiday seasons, sales periods, back-to-school, and more. These are times when consumers are more willing to spend.
Your emails should create a sense of urgency and a “don’t miss this” effect.
To boost results, use FOMO (fear of missing out)—play on your audience’s fear of missing a deal or important info.
If you’re planning a commercial event, start building momentum a few days in advance. On the launch day, send urgency emails to accelerate decision-making.
Include strong CTAs
A perfectly crafted email is worthless if there’s no direct link to your site. A clear call-to-action (CTA) can dramatically increase clicks.
Make sure the reader understands what they’ll get by clicking, and highlight the CTA so it doesn’t go unnoticed.
Here are some best practices for effective CTAs:
- Write a short, direct CTA
- Personalize the CTA button
- Place it below the fold (after some content)
- Use bold colors and larger fonts to make it stand out
- Run A/B tests to find the most effective button style
Looking to launch an email marketing campaign on exclusive opt-in databases?
Contact Dataventure, a digital agency specializing in traffic generation and performance-based customer acquisition.
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