Email marketing is the oldest form of online marketing and it is still powerful. Actually, right now, it is more widely used today than ever. It is a highly effective and most profitable digital marketing strategy, which is about sending emails to promote products or services while developing relationships with potential customers. Email marketing is used to inform, drive sales, and build a community around your brand. Not having an email marketing strategy means missing out on sales opportunities and the chance to strengthen your relationship with customers.
Email marketing is not only to send emails to an audience. It is the process of sending optimized commercial messages through email to targeted consumers. It can be used to increase sales, improve your brand and deliver important information for your business.
Companies use email marketing as a way of communicating with their audiences, as it remains to be the quickest and most effective and direct way to reach customers with critical information. This is simply because people check their email quite often. Therefore, by contacting them on a channel where they are frequently available, you are reaching out to a wider audience. However, at the same time, you must ensure that your emails don’t land in the spam box.
Today, successful email campaigns must be incredibly engaging, relevant, informative, and entertaining to not get buried in your customer’s inbox. To succeed, your marketing emails should satisfy five core attributes. They must be trustworthy, relevant, conversational, coordinated across channels, and strategic.
Email marketing can be used to build trust with customers over time, in order to turn them into repeat customers. Repeat customers make your business to achieve sustainable growth over the years. Do not forget that repeat customers are happy customers and they recommend your business to others. Your customers want to stay informed about your brand in real-time, and email marketing is one of the best ways to stay engaged with them.
There are two different types of marketing emails, the promotional emails and the informational emails. Promotional emails have a clear call-to-action. The reader is called to visit a website or make a purchase. This type of email marketing is sent as and when required, according to the rhythm of your business. Informational emails, such as the newsletters, aims to inform customers about your business, new milestones achieved, new products and releases, etc. Informational emails allow you to maintain a consistent connection with your audience.
Email marketing is important since it is accessible to all ages. Even though we live in a digital world, not everyone is comfortable using the internet. Email marketing is accessible to a wide range of ages since the majority of people know how to check their emails. Moreover, email marketing is cost effective. There are many email tools which are free. So, beginners can try this method of marketing and see if it is suitable for them before they proceed to investment.
All you need to start an email marketing is an email marketing software and a list of contacts. Enterprises use Email Service Provider (ESP), a software that sends and manages email marketing campaigns. You can also send emails by your personal inbox provider but you may face problems with limited email bandwidth, design, and more importantly, email deliverability. Email Service Providers (ESPs) like Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, etc. are designed for personal use. When mass email is sent from an ESP, it is possible to land in the spam box. So, if you want to ensure a successful email marketing campaign, it is better to get a
dedicated email marketing service. An email list includes all these contacts that have given their permission and they are interested in receiving emails from you. Permission-based marketing is essential to conform with data protection laws and safeguard the integrity of your brand.
Graphic 9. Tips for building an email marketing strategy
Email marketing campaign for beginners in 10 steps:
- Choose the right email marketing software
As we mentioned before, for a successful mail marketing campaign, you will need an Email Service Provider (ESP). Some of the most popular email tools are Sendinblue, Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Convertkit, Mailjet, Mailerlite, and HubSpot. The first step is to find the right one for your enterprise. In order to choose the appropriate tool for your business, you could evaluate your current and future needs.
- Built your email list
Most ESPs let you create subscription forms to be embedded on your website. When creating a subscription form, you have to be clear about the content and the frequency of your emails. You can add opt-in forms to your website and other places, where people definitely see it.
- Set up a welcome email for new customers
A welcome email is an automated message sent to new customers. This email allows you to introduce your enterprise to the new user and inform him about everything you want him to know.
- Define your goals
Every email marketing campaign must have a clear aim. When you have a clear goal, it is easier to create the content of your email.
- Build a responsive-design email
You do not need an expert to do that. You can try the options that your ESP’s editor gives you or use customizable email templates. Remember to keep it simple until you improve your skills on it.
- Create your email copy
Your email copy needs to include topics that interest your audience. You do not have to worry if you are not an expert at writing emails, as it is something that you can practise and improve. Keep in mind that it is better your email signature be the name of a real person, as it is more personal than a logo.
- Optimize your email open rate, clicks, and conversions
There are a lot of ways to boost your email open and conversion rate. One of them is your email’s sender name. Use an easily recognizable sender name, which helps your customers to link it with you. Another way is to pay attention to your email’s subject. The subject of the email plays important role if the email will be read or not. Finally, the preheader email plays also an important role, since after the subject, it is the text that will attract users to read the email or not.
- Test before sending
A test email before sending to the final recipients is mandatory. You must be careful regarding the typos, the links, text formatting errors, as it is possible to harm your brand image. Ask for other members of your business to proofread the email from both desktop and mobile.
- Choose the right time
It is crucial to find out the right time for your campaign. As you already may have some data for your audience, you have to be strategic. Most people see their emails a few times a day. Find this time that makes you have increased possibilities for your email, to be on top of the list.
- Monitor the campaign results
You are a beginner and you know that you must improve. Analysing key email marketing metrics will show you how to improve your future campaigns. Most ESPs have an analytics dashboard which measure open rate, click-through rate, unsubscribe rate, bounce rate, etc.
Benefits of email marketing
- Huge reach
You may think that Facebook and Twitter are channels with a wide reach but the number of active email accounts is much bigger than the users of Facebook and Twitter together. Everyone who is active online has an email account. So, email is the most powerful tool available to online entrepreneurs, who want to gain more customers.
- Delivers your message
Email marketing ensures you that your audience gets your message. Sending your message by email is more likely that the message will be read. The reason is that you are sending the email to people that they told you that they want to hear from you when they signed up for your email list. So, you know that they did not just ignore it and you probably did not waste your precious ad.
- Drives conversions
Driving conversions is the main aim of the marketers per email, it is the most effective channel for that. Your customers provided you with their email address, so you know that they want to know more information about your brand, so this means you are more likely to get someone to click through to your website via email than a different channel.
- High ROI
As email marketing drives conversions, email is the most powerful and effective marketing channel to drive return on investment for your business. The reason is that through this channel you are able to send personalized and relevant messages, as some email marketing tools allow you to know more data about your customers. So, the more data you have about your customers, the more targeted you can be. If your content is relevant to every recipient’s needs, you drive them to click-though and increase the ROI of your marketing campaigns.
- Number one communication channel
Email is the preferred communication channel for professional reasons. People expected to receive promotional material or information about products and services through this channel.
- Open platform
Email is an open communication platform with a lot of services of sending and receiving. It is not controlled by entities and it is not possible to lose its effectiveness. Remember that email is a stable long-term investment, which will be alive for many years.
