Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message, to a group of people using email, mostly to promote a business. Sending emails to existing customers and prospects has become an integral part of the digital marketing strategy of most businesses today. In a broad way, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. It involves using email to send advertisements, request business, or solicit sales or donations.
Email marketing strategies commonly seek to achieve one or more of three primary objectives, to build loyalty, trust, or brand awareness since an Email can accommodate a variety of messages and is a highly flexible tool. Marketers can send targeted messages, which is one of the most significant advantages of email marketing.
Why is email marketing relevant for your business?
- Broader reach – When it comes to connecting with your customers or prospects, email is undoubtedly the best medium with a broader reach as everyone online has an active email address when compared to social media platforms like Facebook & Twitter.
- Preferred Communication Channel – Email is a much more professional medium for communication when compared to social networks such as Facebook or Instagram because they are mostly used by people as personal channels to connect with their family and friends.
- Drives Conversion – There can’t be a more powerful tool than email when it comes to conversions, to turn potential customers into real buyers. The average click-through rate (CTR) from a tweet is around 0.5%, whereas the average CTR of an email campaign is about 3%. This means someone reading your mail is six times more likely to click through to your website compared to looking at a post on Twitter.
- Higher ROI – Email allows marketers to be highly targeted by delivering personalized and relevant messages.
Email marketing yields a higher ROI in comparison to social networks where you send status updates to every follower regardless of their demographics such as interest or location. - Delivers your message – On Facebook if you post an update, only about 100 out of thousands of followers will have a chance of seeing it in their newsfeed. This is because Facebook limits the number of times your posts appear in the newsfeed, to drive brands towards their paid ad campaign option. 90% of email gets delivered to the intended recipients in comparison to 2% of Facebook followers viewing posts in the newsfeed for the same reason.
- Vast majority seek promotional emails – If anyone provides you their email address, it is because they want to listen more from you on your brand. Interested consumers like emails to come more frequently and enjoy receiving weekly promotional emails.
This aspect of email marketing makes it an immensely relevant and successful marketing technique.
Steps for an Email Marketing Campaign:
- Build a solid email list – The first step in starting an email marketing campaign is to gather a solid list of email addresses which can be done by including an email registration form within your website. You can also let the subscriber know certain facts before they provides their email address, such as will you spam them, will you send some discount vouchers, or will you sell their email address or make it public? It is essential that you make it clear in some way to your potential subscribers that you will not spam them and instead they will benefit from subscribing to your email list. Many countries have strict laws, including CAM-SPAM Act, against sending spam emails. Anyone sending unsolicited emails can face significant fines. Hence, it is crucial to send emails to only those who are willing to receive them.
- Plan your email marketing content – After building a solid email list, the next step is planning your email content. A great way is to first analyze the emails of competing businesses. With endless options to customize and format your email, you can include a vast range of quality content in your emails. You can send an email with information about your sales or promotions, loyalty rewards, newsletters, links to new articles on your website, announcements about new product or service, and customer testimonials. Ensure your emails should include relevant and valuable information such as FAQs and surveys which your subscriber may be interested in reading.
- Create a mobile-friendly layout – Crafting your emails to be attractive with a catchy subject line is very important for any email campaign. The content, including the images, should consider the demographic that is being targeted. If the email is boring or irrelevant, readers are likely to delete it before reading it too far. With a deep penetration of smartphones, half of all emails are opened on mobile devices. So making your emails mobile-friendly is very important. Make sure all your emails should match the style of your overall brand, including your website, social media accounts, and ads.
- Track & evaluate the campaign – It is essential to track the success of your email campaign. There are various matrices in place to determine how well your campaign is doing. Marketers can make changes, if required, in the ad design, the deals being offered, and the products or services being included in the campaign. Email is a highly flexible tool that allows making changes easily and quickly. Subscribers are most likely to open their emails at a free time, so it’s better to send out emails at the optimal time. Most email marketing tools will help you figure out the ideal time to send out emails.
What not to do in Email Marketing?
- Send Spam
- Purchase email lists
- Deceive subscribers
- Email inconsistently
- Utilize poor design
Top Email Marketing Tools:
Below are some of the top email marketing tools that offer a range of features to create impressive content, engage subsribers and increase sales.
Mail Chimp
Litmus
Reach Mail
Target Hero
Mad Mimi
Active Campaign
SendinBlue
Hubspot
GetResponse
Mail Jet
Conclusion:
As most marketers focus on prospecting leads and driving conversions, email marketing has become one of the preferred digital marketing techniques for them to leverage. It has changed the way businesses reach out to potential customers. Though sometimes it can be time-consuming but time has proved it as the best marketing technique for a wider audience reach.