What Is Email Marketing?

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In today’s digital world, the words “Email” & “Marketing” are supplement to each other. Here, we would try to describe Email Marketing in very simple words which would help you grasp the entire topic in much lesser time.

Simply put, Email Marketing is the process of sending a commercial message out to a people’s group or an individual customer, utilizing email to promote their products or services. This involves companies using email to send new business request, new advertisements, request new sales or donations.

Majority of the Email marketing strategies commonly target to achieve three primary objectives – Building Loyalty, Trust and Brand Awareness.

Email Marketing usually refers to sending email messages with the motive of enhancing and strengthening merchant’s relationship with current or previous customers, reassuring customer loyalty and repeat business, acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately, and sharing third-party ads.

Importance of Email Marketing

Budget Friendly – Email marketing is obviously the most cost-effective option to target your selected audience.

Higher Conversion Rates – Email marketing encourages and supports much higher conversion rates prompting potential users to decide on an action on your web site for example finalize an offer on your website using eCommerce. It is very much simple and quick to use the email marketing tools.

Direct Customer Contact – A powerful marketing medium which enables you to connect with your audience directly without the need to depend on them to come across your web site or your ad. You can always have the strict control of the layout, format, design & rendering mode for the content of your messages which is very much difficult in social media etc.

Real Time Customer Reach Approach – Majority of the potential customers are accessing the digital world on their mobile devices; hence a careful and wisely designed email marketing strategy would drive more and more higher conversion rates.

Measurable – Almost all of the email marketing tools comes equipped with the multi enhanced capability of measuring metrices to compare & optimize campaigns.  We can track the delivery rates, email bounce rates, email unsubscribe rates, click through rates, and email open rates. This tools also assists us with a better understanding of how the email campaigns are performing and if any modifications or deletions would be required to achieve the set target.

Types of Email Marketing

To catch up with the increased competition a business/company normally sends out different kind of email communications to achieve the set target for their products & services. Few of them are listed below.

Welcome Email – is considered as the newborn section for a new customer who has registered on your web site.

New Launches – this is used to inform and update new & existing customers about the new product launches in the market by the company.

Newsletters – this is an attractive way to keep your customers updated about your products & services. These emails are generally sent out on a regular basis. This contains company updates for new and existing products and links to blog etc.

Seasonal Email – These type of email targets products, services and promotions relating to events such as Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day and much more.

Promotional & Special Offers – These email aims at informing your audience about discounts and price promotions. 

Abandoned cart – This kind of email comes in handy mainly for e-commerce sites. When a customer selects and adds product to their online shopping cart and in case does not complete the purchase, you have the option of sending them an email reminder.

Re-engagement Emails – These deals with sending a reminder to a customer who might have dropped a purchase in a while or has cancelled an active subscription. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software can be utilized to send these automatically. This may be bundled to include special discount to retain the customer back. 

Event invitations Emails – helps to power up and boost attendance at meetings and events.

Options for Email Marketing 

Many options are available for sending out promotional emails. However, it is not at all advisable to use your standard email provider like Outlook, Gmail or Yahoo, as these services are not designed to send bulk emails to customers. Majority of the companies use a specialist email marketing service. The benefits of Email marketing services are summarized below.

Design – this email marketing service gives you the control to create visually appealing, professional designs. They provide attractive templates and software with user-friendly design. 

Personalization and targeting – CRM can be integrated with email marketing service which allows you to generate targeted lists and personalized messages with customer’s name.

Deliverability – This system has high deliverability rate to customers inbox. They are designed to reduce the risk of your email being flagged as spam. Regularly sending out emails from Outlook or Gmail may lead to be flagged as spam and high chances of IP being blacklisted or blocked.

Evaluation – Tracking the bounced emails is another important feature of this service. Also, you can monitor open rates and click-through-rates in your email communications which allows you to use the analysis to strengthen and improve all the future campaigns

Email Marketing – Advantages & Disadvantages

A fast, reliable and cost-effective way of marketing products and services is by using an email marketing software.However, you should be extra careful while using the email marketing software, as sending irrelevant marketing emails in large volumes may irritate customers.

Advantages of Email Marketing

Personalization and segmentation – It has the power to personalize messages. Segmentation is also supported which enables customers to opt in and receive only the messages which they are really interested in.

Measurable – Evaluation of a campaign can be achieved by using analytics software. To optimize email marketing campaigns, you can easily test design and implement different formats of email marketing emails.

Less Intrusive – marketing emails can be read by a customer at a time that suits them. unlike the traditional way of telephone marketing which may annoy a customer. Also, the customer has the power to decide whether to remain opt in or to unsubscribe from the email marketing list.

Real-time marketing – another important advantage of email marketing is the real time marketing approach wherein we can trigger an automated email using the real time activity of a user on a website or his recent purchase or abandonment of his shopping cart or any other online activity. Hence, we can present the customer with the right offer at the right time and at the right price.

Environmentally Friendly – Since no hard copies of the marketing material is printed it directly helps to make the environment greener.

Scalable & Shareable – email marketing is a highly scalable platform under which we can either target our existing smaller email list or reach a much larger general audience. Also, the email can be forwarded very easily on different social media platforms.

Test before you send – All the content and entire layout can be verified before it is being sent out to customers. A/B testing of Email campaigns, subject lines, calls-to-action, personalization, email copy, images or messages ensures your email content is as powerful and effective as it can be before sending out to customers.

Cost- Effective – Since there is no advertisement fee, printing requirements or media space expenses associated with email marketing, hence the ultimate cost of sending an email is much lower than other forms of marketing.

Flexible design – Email marketing gives us the power and flexibility to design the email marketing campaign with the desired graphics, text, audio, video or any other powerful contents which we want to include in our email. The wide choice of design options gives the business the scope to project their branding in an effective manner.

Benchmark – We can set up benchmarks for our product and services by comparing with the results against others in the same industry which in turn helps to improve and evaluate opportunities for campaign improvement.

Conversions Leading to increased sales – email marketing proven to be very effective every stage of buying process of a customer. During the marketing promotion you can prompt people to click on the links and enable to follow your call to action immediately.

Permission-based – By enabling Email opt-in and double opt-in methods you can make sure that your marketing list consists of genuine customers who are really interested in your products and services and in turn is very much likely to engage with your business.

Disadvantages of Email Marketing

Size Problems – email size really matters while sending out a marketing email. Big files may take time to download which may in turn lead your customer to lose interest in reading the full email.

Undelivered Emails – there may be cases where in your emails may not get delivered to the intended customers, as the email software or the Internet service provider may filter or block your bulk emails due to the use of certain problematic keywords the list which is frequently updated.

Resources and Skills – to run and promote a successful email marketing campaign we must ensure that we have the right design, copy and the full updated list of customers to achieve higher conversion rates. In the absence of these we may have to outsource the campaign.

Spam – Often spam emails highly irritate customers. We have to target the messages at the correct audience or else the customer or the recipient may delete or straight away unsubscribe from the mailing list. All the email marketing should comply with privacy and data protection rules and should be properly targeted at people who really wants to receive it.

Design Issues – Different people have different choices of design and layout. Some people may select to receive text-only emails and others with full HTML version; hence we have to consider how the message will look under different choices and on different devices.  

Email Marketing – A Must Have For Businesses In 2021

Unfortunately, the year 2021 have been a year of Pandemic with the world forced to stay indoors. But irrespective of the Pandemic and its aftereffects email marketing is broadly and extensively used than ever.

As per the latest studies and surveys the concept of Email Marketing is getting bigger and broader, there are more than four billion users of email in this world and around eighty-six percentage of the running businesses voted that the use of email marketing has increased either their sales/service and has helped to retain the existing customers.

Email marketing is one of the most important source of both B2B and B2C marketing and falls in the important digital marketing category.

Summing up, Email marketing is an unavoidable integral part of marketing strategy to achieve the set targets of sales opportunities and drive the potential customer base into confirmed loyal base.

Email Marketing – How exactly it works?

The concept of Email Marketing is achieved through Email Service Provider (ESP) software. Unlike any other software’s in the market this ESP software helps businesses to take over the total control of their marketing campaigns with ease.

There are a wide range of ESP’s available currently in the market, few popular among them are Hubspot, Sendinblue, iPost, MailerLite, Getresponse, Sendx, Mailchimp, SendPulse, Aweber, Campaign Monitor, Web Engage, VerticalResponse, Mailbakery, Marketo, Constant Contact, icontact, Autopilot, Drip, Converkit, Sender, Omnisend, Moosend, Campaigner and Mailjet etc.

Important# Please avoid shooting out email campaigns from your Gmail, Yahoo or Outlook personal mailboxes, as often the automated algorithms at the ISP (Internet Service Providers) may detect the unusual bulk email blasts which may be flagged as spam and then your email account would be disable or blocked for suspicious activity.

Consider using an ESP instead to avoid any possible mess of email block or undeliverability. ESP’s have all the required facilities and technical setup to ensure the campaign deliverability (making sure that the email lands in the intended inbox of the customer).

Hence, it is very highly recommended to get yourself a suitable Email Marketing Service to make sure you are getting value from the time and effort you are spending on it.

Email Marketing – How to start?

Now that you are clear about the Email Marketing concept and the practical application part, let us move on to the two basic steps to start off…

Step 1 – Selecting & implementing an Email Marketing Software

Yes, you got it right, you definitely need to finalize upon which Email Service Provider (ESP) to use. Some of the well-known and popular email software tools include GetResponse, HubSpot, SendPulse, Mailchimp, Moosend, Constant Contact, Mailjet, Sendinblue, Omnisend, Convertkit, Sendex, Mailerlite etc. to name a few.

Step 2 – Email List

The second step is the list of your valuable email addresses which was built up using the opt-in feature of your ESP software. Normally these opt -in happens when an interested customer enters his/her email address into an email sign up field or form on your web site, blog or any other social media platforms.

As per the data protection laws applicable in the land or your concerned geographical territory and in order to achieve the security & integrity of your business brands it is very much desirable and recommended to stick to Permission based marketing.

Launching Your Email Marketing Campaign – How to begin?

1> Choose the right Email Marketing Software (ESP)

The very first thing is to shortlist and finalize upon a good ESP software which can efficiently manage the needs of the campaign and correctly maintain the database of email subscribers. 

Below list would help you shortlist and finalize upon the apt ESP for your business or individual needs.

Top 10 Best Email Marketing Services

• GetResponse – Best all-in-one automated lead generation tool. VISIT >>> Get Response
• Constant Contact – Most beginner-friendly email builder
• Sendinblue – Best for growing your list and transactional emails.
• MailerLite – Simplest email marketing service best for personal projects
• HubSpot – Best for automated email marketing for B2B service companies
• Moosend – Best for AI-powered ecommerce sales. VISIT >>> Moosend
• AWeber – Most value for smaller lists. VISIT >>> AWeber
• Omnisend – Best for medium-large ecommerce businesses
• ConvertKit – Best for influencers, bloggers, and creators
• Drip – Best for small-medium new ecommerce businesses

2> Build up contacts for your address book

Once you have the ESP in place, the next step is to unify and build up your address book. This can be achieved by enabling the opt-in forms on your web sites, blogs or other social media platforms. Also, the use of lead magnets & content upgrades should be utilized. However, buying an email list is never recommended.

3> Add your contacts into your email marketing account

Next is the integration of your live contacts into your marketing software, this is possible via upload of contact list from your Gmail, outlook or even spreadsheet. Segregating your email list based on different categories would be much easy to manage and in turn could produce better conversion rates.

4> Set up a welcome email for new subscribers

Welcome email serves as the face of the business, as this would be the very first email which lands in customer’s inbox post opt-in. This must be composed with extreme care and should include a polite warm greeting with a brief summary of the contents and future materials or promotions which the company expects to send to the customers.

5> Defining the email marketing campaign goal

Sounds critical? Yes, this is! The goal of each and every marketing campaign must be specific and clear without which the campaign would not take off to the fullest potential.

6> Build a Responsive-design email

Emails with a responsive design always have a high open rate. However, due to some budget constraints not everyone can hire a designer to do it. Nevertheless, most of the ESP provides beautiful yet simple templates to start with which are customizable using drag and drop features and could be edited using simple tools available in the software to match with your campaign requirements.

7> Craft your email copy

Now that you are all set with your specific goal and to which segment to target, the next step is to craft your email with care by providing the audience with what they exactly need. It could include the headline, body of message & the final call to action. Final an email signature with a real human name would add more originality to your email campaign.

8> Preview, Test and Then Send

Nobody is perfect in this world! Especially Humans do make mistakes. Got it? Yeah! its highly stressed to run a proof reading of your email campaign contents. Many of the software’s already have a built-in feature of proof reading and previews etc. which displays a final view of the campaign and hence you can be sure of the final output to your customers.

9> Finalize the best time to Send your email

One of the most important factor determining the success of an email marketing campaign is the time and frequency intended to send out the email.

In certain cases, a consistent schedule could be followed to maintain the happiness & comfort of the customers. Some of the marketing software even extends the flexibility of choosing the email schedule to customers itself.

Often as the owner of the email database you would be having a picture about the tastes & preferences of your customers, hence rather than choosing some random schedule you may kick in a customized schedule for the campaign.

10> Track the results

The final step is to analyze and track the end data in the form of your open rate, click-through rate, unsubscribe rates, etc. and plan to improve over targeted time frames. This is achieved by analyzing the analytics dashboard which is kind of a standard feature offered by most of the ESP’s. The below metrices should be considered.

• Open rate: This is the ratio of the number of people who opened the email divided by the total number of recipients.
• Click-through rate: This is the calculated as the ratio of the number of people who clicked on a link in your email divided by the total number of recipients.
• Unsubscribe rate: number of people who unsubscribed divided by the total number of recipients.
• Bounce rate: This data is arrived as the number of emails that failed to deliver divided by the total number of emails sent.

Best Practices for Email Marketing Success

1. Meaningful & Catchy Subject Line

In today’s digitally fast paced lifestyle people wants information in a crisp, informative & effective layout. Often people ignore emails which do not convey the purpose in the first view. The subject line has ideally to be short around maximum of fifty characters in length with gives them an offer and conveys a sense of urgency also like this one- “iPhone offer-25% Discount-Only for Today”

2. Never Think Of buying email lists

Better slow than fast sales achieved through buying an email list. Never ever buy an email list as it has in turn many setbacks which could have serious negative impact on your business. Generally, people mark unsolicited emails as spam, leading to an email blocklist. 

Also, as per the GDPR & CAN-SPAM act sending out unwanted marketing emails and storing email lists of customers without their consent is considered as illegal in many territories in this world.

3. Clear Call to Action

A very clear call-to-action button or links should be placed at a prominent location on your digital property (e.g., we site, blog posts or other social media platforms). This would help drive the volume up of the prospective customers to confirmed ones.

4. Consider Using Double Opt-in

Using double opt-in is highly recommended as it confirms the subscriber’s choice beyond any doubt and also ensures email deliverability. Double opt-in is the process of sending a confirmation email with a link to each new customer. The customer must click the link to complete the signup process. failing this verification, they will not receive emails from you. It acts as one of the proofs of customer agreement to receive the marketing email as mandated by the GDPR act.

5. Opting out

It is legally required to give customers the opportunity to stop receiving your marketing emails. To achieve this your marketing email must have an ‘unsubscribe’ option on every email you send out.

6. Personalization

Attention to personal details paves the way to potential signups, as everyone feels valued when a company gives much attention to their personal small details like using the first name of a customer in subject lines or email body.

7. Optimize for mobile

Again, digital world… shrinking to smaller powerful devices…so should our email as well. All the marketing emails sent out should be highly optimized for displaying correctly on all kind of mobile devices and tabs etc. All ESP do offer the mobile-responsiveness features with a preview feature as well.

8. Clean your email list regularly

You should keep your email list updated on a regular basis to achieve higher conversion and engagement rates. Those customers who had not been active with you for quite some time like six to eight months should be considered deleting from your list. Also, you should provide a unsubscribe button or link in the email in case they would like to leave the campaign, as these would mark your email as spam if they do not find a way going out from your email.

9. Pump up with autoresponders and email automation

Consider pumping up the automation & autoresponder options provided by the ESP’s. This option enables you to send out a series of automated simple emails to your customers at different milestones of the purchase journey without the need of you sending it manually.

10. A/B test your email subject line and content 

Another powerful and effective tool provided by the Email marketing software’s is the A/B test option wherein you can test different subject lines for email and formats and decide upon which subject and content would be aptly engaging your potential customers.