Email marketing has steadily become a powerful arm of the modern digital marketing arsenal, having generated a reported 32x ROI in 2017 – and in 2020, this highly effective channel is still going from strength to strength.
With a sizeable mailing list under your belt (which you can build with little to no effort by introducing a simple signup form to your website) and one of the many easy-to-use email marketing software solutions at your disposal, you can harness this mighty marketing tool for the first time in 2020.

Whether you have a growing ecommerce website or B2B enterprise, there are applications and rewards galore when it comes to email marketing. At Six Circles, we believe in community building and this, like so many other lucrative marketing channels, is an important part of that process.
In this post, we’re exploring how to do email marketing right, and the benefits of email marketing activity for those businesses who succeed in their quest to engage and empower their customers.
Newsletters
The humble newsletter is a staple of any email marketing strategy, serving as a regular (be it weekly, monthly or quarterly) update from you to your mailing list on the inner workings of your company – including any notable recent and upcoming developments (think award wins, product releases or exciting brand partnerships). To start making the newsletter format work for your business, simply begin compiling a roundup of what’s new in your world – keeping the focus on the information and insights you believe your customers deserve to know as valued members of your community.
Content sharing
Whether you’ve just published a shiny new informational blog post or pushed a detailed new white paper live, you’d be doing your content marketing efforts a disservice by failing to broadcast your latest and greatest uploads via email.
Engage your subscribers by offering irresistible blog teasers in your monthly newsletter, and empower them by arming them with the informational content they need to read in order to shop with confidence and extract as much value as possible from your product or service.
Offers and discounts
Needless to say, financial savings are and will always be a safe bet when it comes to incentivising customers. From giving loyal customers a heads-up on limited time sales to offering tempting discounts to qualifying subscribers, email marketing is a prime channel for sending exclusive perks direct to customer inboxes.
Maximise your open rate by being up-front and explicit in your subject line before getting into the details and any relevant small print once users have opened your email and therefore demonstrated their interest.
Cart abandonment emails
From time to time, there’s no doubt some of your customers will add an item to their cart only to have second thoughts before making it to the checkout. This is natural for any ecommerce business, but it shouldn’t stop you from doing what you can to convert hesitant shoppers into paying customers.
Cart abandonment emails can be triggered when a user adds a product to their cart on your website and doesn’t go on to buy – with your triggered email providing a friendly prompt to complete their purchase. You’ll need email addresses for the users in question, but, done right, these delayed nudges have the power to drive transactions where they could have been lost.
Product and service launch announcements
The launch of a brand-new product or an expansion of your core services is an exciting time for any business – but to kick things off with a bang, you’ll need to make sure anyone and everyone knows exactly where they can get their hands on this new offering from your brand. Email marketing is the key to spreading the word among your community, with launches like these presenting an ideal time for a shiny new email announcement.
Send word of new products or services direct to your customers’ inboxes, along with high-resolution imagery showing them being used and succinct, persuasive copy highlighting features and benefits to give recipients all the incentive they need to convert.
Sequential campaigns
The big daddy of email marketing activity, a sequential campaign (otherwise known as an email workflow) consists of a series of automated emails which are sent based on set time intervals or, alternatively, custom triggers defined by you. The applications of email workflows are practically limitless, but these email series are generally used to strategically and efficiently nurture subscribers from cold leads into paying customers or clients.
Start by pinning down the primary actions you’d like customers to take, and consider the various paths taken towards these actions. With these journeys laid out, map out the numerous touch points along the way and build your sequential email marketing campaigns around these conversion funnel milestones. This way, you can be there every step of the way, demonstrating your value to prospective customers and remaining present in the forefront of their minds.
Now you know how to do email marketing like the pros, it’s time to find a digital software suite worthy of your upcoming email campaign. There are options galore available to aspiring email marketers, including the exceptionally easy-to-use Mailchimp – and when you become a Six Circles member, you can integrate with Mailchimp for simple, stress-free access to campaign performance monitoring.
Get started with your very first campaign and reap the benefits of email marketing from the word go.