Email marketing uses email to promote a business’s products & services and encourage customer loyalty. You can use email marketing to inform your clients about new items, discounts, and other services by sending them emails. It can also be used to educate your audience about the value of your brand or to maintain their interest between purchases. In addition, it can be everything in between.
Email marketing is one of the most popular and successful strategies for marketing campaigns when you wish to expand your brand or sell your products. This article will examine how email marketing may help you develop your business. We’ll provide a few pointers for launching a successful email marketing campaign.
What is Email Marketing?
Email Marketing Definition: The goal of email marketing is to communicate with a target audience via electronic mail (email). The email messages typically have a commercial purpose, but they are also intended to educate and inform the receiver on relevant issues.
Email marketing is the practice of utilising email as a sales medium.
You must have a large email list of people who have freely signed up to receive your communications.
Email lists containing niche-related emails are immediately excluded, even if they contain email addresses of niche-related individuals.
How does Email Marketing work?
Email marketing is not a complicated process, but it involves extensive A/B testing to determine how to connect with your subscribers to benefit them and your business objectives.
Here is a summary of how email marketing functions:
1. Register for an email marketing platform
Email marketing is a procedure that may be entirely automated with an effective email marketing platform.
You cannot manually track the outcomes if you use your account to email hundreds of individuals, so your first step is determining which platform to employ.
A platform for email marketing will help you:
- Create an email list.
- You can add users to your list using a variety of methods.
- Send emails to your audience.
- Report the number of people who open your emails and interact with them (click a link in the email).
- Offer many alternatives for segmenting your audience depending on specified criteria.
- Create Facebook retargeting audiences based on your email list.
- Automate diverse email marketing tasks, such as sending a welcome email to your subscribers or different newsletters in response to their actions.
- Make direct sales from email messages.
- Create email funnels to drive users to the desired pages/products/actions.
2. Develop an email marketing plan
As with any digital marketing campaign, the first step is to develop a strategy.
Having a solid email marketing strategy in place before launching campaigns will enable you to:
- Determine how email marketing will be utilised with your other internet marketing activities.
- Choose an email marketing platform and calculate your monthly costs.
- Determine the techniques you will employ to expand your email list.
- Determine when to employ automation and when and what types of messages to send.
- Install the proper reporting methods to determine the efficacy of your email marketing.
3. Create and expand your email list
For email marketing to be effective, you must have a large list of active subscribers; therefore, the most crucial aspect of your strategy should be how to expand your email list. As stated previously, it is not just adding random people to your list but also manually registering individuals to receive your emails. Growing and managing an email list is difficult, but it can be a great corporate asset with the correct strategy and tools.
The most effective techniques to increase your email list are:
Publish excellent material on your website – If your content is not what customers desire, no approach will help you gain more subscribers. If your material delivers value to users, your email list will expand more rapidly.
Provide incentives – In exchange for a user’s email address, free eBooks, trial offers, and other “gifts” are excellent inducements to give.
Facilitate subscriptions – The number of people that sign up for your email list will be affected by the location of your sign-up buttons (on both desktop and mobile devices).
4. Setup automation tasks
One of the most significant advantages of email marketing is that it can be automated.
When we speak to email marketing automation, we mean delivering targeted emails to your users depending on their actions in response to your emails or on your website.
The most frequent email automation tasks consist of the following:
Welcome emails – Send a welcome email to users upon subscription to your mailing list.
Email campaigns – Email campaigns entail sending recipients a series of emails (replicating a sales funnel).
Abandon cart emails – Emails sent to website visitors who placed an item in their shopping cart but did not complete their purchase.
Cross-selling / Upselling – Recommend products to customers based on their previous purchases.
Review/Feedback forms – Asking for consumer feedback/reviews X days after purchase.
5. A/B testing allows you to track and enhance campaign results
In addition to having the correct type of subscribers on your list, you must conduct extensive A/B testing to operate successful email marketing campaigns. A/B testing will help you determine which email messages have the potential to increase user engagement and conversions.
Examples of things to test using A/B testing are:
- The length of the subject line of emails.
- The structure of the email (HTML, text, with or without images).
- The size of the email’s body.
- The frequency of email transmissions.
- The number of promotional messages contained within an email.
- Location of your registration forms.
- The wording of your sign-up forms.
- The ‘offers’ provided as incentives for email registration.
- The authentication method used to validate the authenticity of emails (no authentication, double-opt-in).
To conduct any A/B testing (not just email), you must monitor the appropriate metrics and exclude any factors that could impact the findings.
You must monitor the following email marketing metrics:
- Daily number of new email subscribers.
- If you have different locations, such as sidebars, exit popups, etc., you must know the precise technique they used to register for your mailing list.
- Open and Click-through Rates for Email (how many individuals opened a specific email campaign and how many clicked a link within the email).
- How many individuals accessed your website via an email link?
- How many conversions resulted from email campaigns? (and from which campaign).
6. Frequently purge your email lists
As a beginner in email marketing, you must comprehend the following:
A significant proportion of your email list subscribers will be inactive – It is usual for a list to contain several inactive subscribers. The typical email open rate for an email campaign is approximately 20%, meaning that most recipients on your list will not open your messages.
An extensive list is not necessarily the most excellent strategy – If just a tiny percentage of recipients open your emails, they will be marked as spam. This implies that your reach will steadily diminish. Conversely, emails that are opened by the majority of recipients contribute to the campaign’s overall success.
Extensive lists are expensive to maintain – As your email list expands, so does your monthly expenditure. An excellent email marketing platform may require you to pay more than $150 monthly for membership after reaching 10,000 subscribers.
Occasionally performing a list cleanup and removing inactive subscribers is one approach to reduce costs and improve the health of your mailing list. Users registered for your list but have not opened your campaigns are useless to your company goals and should be removed.
Remember that a smaller list of active subscribers is preferable to many inactive subscribers.
Advantages of Email Marketing
There are numerous advantages to email marketing. These are a few of the most important benefits to remember.
1. Email use requires permission
When a customer gives you their email address, it is equivalent to being given the keys to their home. Instead of showing up uninvited, gaining permission to enter enhances the likelihood of engagement and conversion.
2. Offers direct reach to your audience
You can contact subscribers directly on their timetables. In addition, because most individuals check their email numerous times daily, your message has a greater chance of being read.
3. Email provides more control
With the majority of other marketing platforms, you do not possess the platform. If the platform ceases to exist, your efforts will be lost. Google or Facebook will reduce your reach if they adjust their algorithms.
With email, you own the relationships you build with your subscribers.
4. More personalisation capabilities
Using demographic or psychographic data, you can construct hyper-targeted, customised marketing. According to research, tailored and targeted marketing can improve income by huge margin.
5. Simple to evaluate success
Measuring the efficacy of a marketing effort is essential, and automated email marketing makes it easy to do so.
7. Scalable
Email marketing initiatives may scale without straining resources or sacrificing quality as the audience grows.
Disadvantages of Email Marketing
Not all emails are roses and butterflies. There are several downsides to consider. The good news is that an effective plan can mitigate drawbacks such as:
1. Strenuous competition
To stand out in a crowded inbox can be difficult. You must be inventive if you want your emails to get opened.
2. You must have an email list
Email marketing requires a preexisting email list for campaigns to be effective. Creating an email list is difficult and time-consuming.
3. Numerous rules and regulations
Numerous regulations are limiting the business usage of email. Common examples are the General Data Protection Regulation, the Can-Spam Act, and the Consumer Data Protection Act. They prohibit organisations from sending unsolicited emails and set rules for data-keeping.
Unfortunately, even if they subscribe, some recipients may denounce your emails as spam. It damages your reputation as a sender.
4. Problems with delivery and deliverability
Not all orders will be delivered. Numerous email services (such as Gmail and Outlook) employ spam filtering. You must address delivery and deliverability challenges to conduct successful email marketing campaigns.
Why is Email Advertising crucial for businesses?
Email marketing is not difficult, but it involves extensive A/B testing to determine how to connect with your subscribers to benefit them and your business objectives.
Here is a summary of how email marketing functions:
1. Email is utilised by 50% of the world’s population
Email is the most widely used communication medium in the world, which is why email marketing is so crucial.
Statistics show that:
a. There are more than 4 billion active email accounts worldwide.
b. Most email users check their inboxes numerous times daily, constituting 99.9% of all users.
c. The open email rate is approximately 20%, and the click-through rate is 3.71 %. However, the social media engagement rate is about 0.6%. 60% of users subscribe to a newsletter to receive updates and discounts. However, just 20% of users follow the same brand on social media.
d. Email marketing has an ROI of 4,400%. This means that the return on investment for $1 might reach $44.
e. Email provides a higher return on investment and more vital interaction than any other channel, making it an ideal medium for digital marketing initiatives.
2. You ‘own’ your audience
Your company’s email list is an asset you own and do not need to share with anyone. Unlike your Facebook or Twitter followers, who belong to Facebook or Twitter, your followers belong to you.
Having a large list of people who manually and willingly signed up for your list can significantly increase the market value of your online business.
3. You can communicate with your subscribers directly
Email marketing provides a direct communication between your company and your target audience.
With a robust email list, you can engage directly with your audience in whatever way you choose without having to pay Facebook advertising expenses or rely on their algorithms.
Emails can be highly customised and utilised to establish a one-on-one dialogue with prospective customers.
4. Users enrol voluntarily to get email messages
When a user registers for your list, it indicates that they have confidence in your company and wish to receive emails from you. This is distinct from Facebook users who are shown irrelevant advertisements.
From a business standpoint, you can cultivate them such that they eventually do an activity that provides value for your organisation.
5. The ROI of email marketing is high
As stated previously, the ROI of email marketing can reach high. This is more than twice as effective as the following most excellent route, SEO. Email marketing can assist an internet firm in achieving the following:
a. Increase earnings
b. Improve sales conversions
c. Increase website traffic and brand recognition
While these are broad figures, the real return on investment will rely on several variables, such as the type of products you sell, your profit margins, the cost of customer acquisition, and how well-optimised your email marketing campaigns are.
6. Marketers rely on email to reach their customers
Ultimately, all businesses want to boost their sales, which is one of the important reasons to conduct email marketing campaigns. An email has been demonstrated to be an effective sales tool because, unlike other channels, it can be customised.
As you progress through the various stages of an email sales funnel, emails can be personalised based on user activities. Email is more successful and has a more significant ROI than ads since no other channel provides the same level of flexibility.
7. Marketing via email can be automated
An attractive feature of email marketing is that it may be automated. The entire process may be automated from when a user subscribes to your list until they complete a purchase.
Automated processes are more straightforward to optimise (because of the large number of constant variables) and require less time to manage.
8. Performance is simple and precisely measurable
Another characteristic of email marketing is the ability to measure everything precisely. This is crucial because it can only be improved if something is calculated. Knowing how much a campaign costs to execute and how much income it generates can help you maximise your profit.
The opposite is true for other digital networks. When you execute an email campaign, you know precisely how many recipients opened your emails, clicked on a link, and completed a purchase due to an email you sent. You may even go down to see a particular user’s actions, change your ads, or conduct a one-on-one chat with them accordingly.
9. It is an excellent survey tool
To establish a successful online business, you must continually enhance your products and online presence; you need customer input. Your community and subscriber list are excellent prospects for providing helpful information. These individuals signed up for your mailing list to receive updates about your business; their opinions matter the most.
Email marketing can also be used to survey your community for feedback that can be utilised to improve your content, goods, and services. You may even use your list to test a new product concept and save a substantial amount of time and money compared to if you had to outsource this task to a third party.
We have utilised this strategy on multiple occasions in the past, and it has aided us in refining our products and services and determining what material users desire.
10. Boosts the worth of your internet business
Suppose you want to raise the worth of your internet business for resale (or other reasons). In that case, a focused email list and effective email campaigns can significantly affect the amount you can obtain.
Typically, three metrics are used to determine the value of an online business: monthly organic traffic, monthly traffic, and monthly income. Email marketing is one of the other elements that potential purchasers consider besides price.
A company with a consistently expanding email list and high conversion rates is significantly more valuable than one that can demonstrate traffic performance.
Tips for building your Email Marketing List
But how can you establish a list of people you may email as part of your internet marketing efforts? There are several ways, and they all involve treating your clients with respect while adhering to marketing best practices.
1. Avoid buying email lists
Regarding email addresses, several email marketing companies (including Mailchimp) have a stringent, permission-based policy prohibiting delivering to purchased lists. Instead, utilise lead magnets to encourage individuals to opt-in to get your messages. You may discount your clients’ initial purchases if they sign up for your email list using a personalised sign-up form. Or you could offer new subscribers free delivery on their next order or a chance to win a gift when they sign up for your mailing list. Here are some other suggestions for building an email list.
2. Be knowledgeable about national (and international) email restrictions
Ensure that you comply with all legal requirements and local legislation when sending automated emails, such as the CAN-SPAM Act in the United States, the Canadian Anti-Spam Law (CASL), or the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union for the handling of personal data. It would be best to determine whether laws apply to you based on your location and your subscribers’ locations.
3. Utilise email to communicate with your consumers
Email is an excellent marketing tool, but it may also benefit your organisation in additional ways. Consider taking a break from your typical marketing content to send out surveys, thank customers for their purchases, follow up on abandoned shopping carts, or say hi. Not only does it allow your audience to supply you with valuable input, it also provides them with a deeper understanding of the individual behind the business.
4. Only send when necessary
Once someone has given you their email address, you should not abuse their trust. If you bombard your audience’s inbox with unnecessary emails, they will lose interest or unsubscribe. Concentrate on providing them with relevant, engaging communications about the things they enjoy, and they will remain loyal for a very long time.
Conclusion
Email marketing is essential for all business types. This should be your top priority if you have a website but do not yet have an email list. Marketing by email will not raise your visitors as effectively as SEO or pay-per-click advertising, but it can increase your sales and earnings.
The entire process may appear hard to a newbie, but it doesn’t have to be.
Register with an email marketing platform and generate a mailing list. Initially, there are no charges to consider, as some platforms provide free packages.
Add email sign-up forms to your website to begin collecting email addresses. If your website’s traffic is modest, you will receive fewer emails, but it’s a start. As your traffic increases, so will your email list.
Create a welcome message to thank your subscribers for entrusting you with their email addresses and to clarify what they may anticipate from your newsletters.
Once you have gained more knowledge and expertise with email marketing, develop a few campaigns and track their performance. Don’t be scared to test your ideas, but avoid sending too many messages to your users.
FAQs
1. How can I distinguish my emails from spam?
Ans: After spending so much time developing your emails, you do not want them to land in the spam or junk mail folder. The best way to prevent this is for the recipient to add the company’s website to their trusted contacts list.
2. Can email marketing be combined with other methods of marketing?
Ans: Email marketing can be used for unique promotions, special events, announcements, and other uses where email can distribute information.
3. How crucial is the subject line of an email?
Ans: The subject line is crucial! Your email may be in the spam folder if the subject line weakens. It may be erased before it is opened if it fails to capture the reader.
The subject line of an email should entice the reader to open and read the message.
