What is Email Marketing?

By Danni White - Last Updated on July 21, 2020
Email Marketing

Email marketing is the single most cost-effective way to reach customers, clients, consumers and prospects in a digital marketing strategy. An email marketing plan can be put into place for as little as zero dollars and serves as a mechanism to convert prospects into customers and lookers into buyers.

Why Email Marketing is Important?

For marketers looking to generate nurtured leads and turn them into real customers, email marketing is a very viable option and critical for business growth.

Email is the most interactive communication channel between the consumer and the provider. In fact, 99% of consumers check their email every day.

Another reason why email marketing is important and better than all the social media platforms is that your social accounts can be deleted or hacked anytime without prior notice. You own the email list that you have created, and no one has the ability to take away the list from you which generates nurtured leads for you.

There is no doubt about it, but people who receive email messages buy 138% more than people who do not receive emails. Hence, it increases the return on investment. The average value of the order is three times higher of an email as compared to social media.

In short, an email marketing campaign is one of the best ways to increase sales online.

Email Marketing Statistics

  • According to a report by Emarsys, 81% of the businesses rely on email and free email marketing campaigns as their most important client acquisition channel. (1)
  • Another reason to use email marketing as the primary acquisition channel is that return on investment is huge for businesses. (2)
  • Some research shows that there were more than 3.7 billion email users. (3)
  • In the year 2017, 269 billion emails were received and sent each day. (4)
  • Email marketing helps you to create personalized subjects for your consumers. Data shows that emails with personalized subjects have 50% more open rates. (5)
  • About 49% of the consumers like the businesses to send them emails including information, and promotional offers among other things. (6)

Types of Email Marketing

There are 9 types of email marketing campaigns and we will have a quick glance at what are they and their basic definition.

  • The Welcome Email Series

    Welcome email series marketing strategy welcomes your new customer in his email. It is not that common but it’s one of the most effective marketing strategies out there. By the welcome email series, you can educate your customers or provide basic brand or product information.

  • The Standard Promotional Email Campaign

    This is one of the most familiar marketing strategies. These are used for promoting your brand through emails. They are very repetitive and can even flood a person’s inbox.

  • Seasonal Marketing Campaigns

    The seasonal marketing campaigns are those that are launched on any special event such as on Valentine’s day. It is like a branched off a standard promotional marketing campaign.

  • Triggered Email Series

    75% of email revenue is generated through this series. In this series, a user’s action triggers targeted or relevant emails. In some ways, their actions triggered the drip marketing campaign that they are in.

  • Post-Purchase Drip Campaigns

    These emails are not sent commonly but they are just used as a follow-up after a purchase. Customer retention is a high priority for many businesses and this method serves as a helpful strategy.

  • Connect Via Social Campaigns

    This email campaign directs the consumer to the brand’s social media accounts.

  • Newsletters

    This campaign starts a regular conversation between you and your consumer or provides a piece of news about your product or business to the consumer.

  • Abandoned Cart Series

    These emails also act as a reminder. For instance, if you did not check out for a product, this email will remind you or might also offer you a discount.

  • Re-Engagement Campaigns

    Re-engagement emails are sent to the most inactive subscribers of a business. The main purpose is to interact with them again.

  • Transactional Email Campaigns

    Transactional emails are messages that involve order confirmations when a customer completes a purchase and order cancellations when a customer changes his or her mind. Additionally, these emails inform customers about an action they have taken or plan to take as in a subscription.

  • Direct Email Campaigns

    Direct email campaigns are when single advertisements are sent to a specifically targeted list of recipients. This can be web-based ads, text ads, or other forms of rich media that are far from spam.

Also Read: The Best Email Marketing Software for Small Businesses to Use in 2020

How Does Email Marketing Work?  

Email marketing can be used to increase brand awareness, track user engagement, and to create highly personalized content.

Here is how email marketing works:

  • Crafting a Good Subject Line:

    Creating a strong subject line is essential to attract your customers. It does not only help you to gain higher open rates but also increases your email deliverability. A good subject line will ensure that your message is delivered to the recipient safely.

  • Create Multipart Messages:

    It is important to send out the emails in HTML and the other test version when creating multipart email messages. Some people prefer HTML text so it will be easier for them to read the emails.

  • Size:

    Adding too much content in your email can take a lot of time to load for the launch of your email marketing campaign. This will negatively affect your deliverability. Providers should always prefer the size 300KBS for more deliverability.

  • Understand Deliverability Issues:

    Deliverability issues can be real such as spam filters, engagement issues and unwanted messages complain. The best way to solve them is to understand that betterment won’t occur overnight. You will have to be patient while resolving the deliverability issues.

Components of Effective Email Marketing Campaign

Here are the 9 must-have components of an effective email marketing campaign

  • Have a plan
  • Choose attractive, compelling and best-performing subject lines
  • Personalization through email list segmentation
  • Database list segmentation
  • Email Optimization or Mobile optimization
  • Considering the message preview text
  • Data-driven decisions
  • Test your emails
  • Call to Action

How to Build an Email List?

You have likely seen them a million times. Click on a link. Read a little bit of information. Scroll far enough and be intrigued enough and BOOM! Companies want your email address and perhaps, some other contact information.

There is a method behind this madness, and it is called lead magnets. Typically, these are incentives that marketers put into play for users or potential customers to exchange their contact information for valuable content.

This is one strategic way that companies grow their email list. But there are others. Here are some proven tips to grow your email list.

  • Use lead magnets to get more subscribers. For instance, you can do this through your email cheat sheet
  • Invest in compelling and ever-green content
  • Use CTAs on every relevant blog or guest blog post
  • Create HUB pages for most-blogged topics
  • Use CTAs in your guest posts
  • Make sure that your CTAs are attractive
  • Add opt-in forms

Understanding Email Segmentation

Email list segmentation is like distributing your subscribers into small groups based on particular criteria. The main reason is to send them more relevant and personalized data.

Rather than sending out a single email to all the people in your mailing list, you can send out certain emails to only those subscribers who are interested in that content.

Why Segment Your List?

Segmenting list is a proven method to increase your open rates, decrease the rate of unsubscribes and boost your click through the mail rate. Overall, it positively impacts the effectiveness of your email marketing campaign.

Email list segmentation ensures that your subject line and the content will entice the readers to open your mail and engage with your campaign more.

Best Email Marketing Examples

If you are reading this, there are greater chances that you have been receiving emails on a daily basis from any of the following popular services or applications.

  • Uber – Emails from Uber are simple and yet get their point across in a straightforward way. The text is brief and calls to action are crisp and clear.
  • Litmus – Emails from Litmus are intriguing and eye-catching. They use a good deal of animation to grab readers’ attention.
  • Buzzfeed – Emails from Buzzfeed are already popular because of their entertaining topics and subject matter. Their subject lines are headline-worthy.
  • Headspace – This meditation app company wants you to get into a restful state and their emails speak volumes in reflecting that concept.
  • Starbucks – Don’t sleep on Starbucks. The company gives people a reason to want to stop for the next cool or warm drink.

Is Email Optimization Important?

A non-responsive or corrupt email will appear shabby on devices other than PC.  It is surprising to see that even in this digital world, some of the emails are not optimized. This decreases the readability of your mails.

With more people using mobile phones, email optimization should be a part of the email marketing campaign. It is necessary to pursue email optimization naturally and early in the whole process.

Tips for Email Optimization

  1. Keep the subject line short.
  2. Create attractive pre-header text.
  3. Use optimization email marketing tools.
  4. Optimize the ‘from’ name.
  5. Use a responsive and unique template.
  6. Ensure that your CTA stands out.
  7. Use data context.
  8. Apply the ‘3-second reader’ concept to every email.
  9. Preview before sending it.

Frequently Asked Questions about Email Marketing 

If you’re still concerned about anything related to email marketing, here are some of its FAQs:

Q. How do I build an effective email marketing strategy?

A.  Here are 8 Steps one should follow while building an email marketing strategy

  • Set a goal.
  • Decide the campaign you are going to go with.
  • Choose the audience or client segments.
  • Create compelling content.
  • Create follow-ups and plans.
  • Craft a perfect subject line.
  • Design your email.
  • Track your marketing campaign.

Q. How often should I send mails?

A. It depends on how much your customers want to hear from you. You can also run some tests to see the frequency and rate at which you should send out emails.

Q. What is the best time to send marketing mail?

A. Time can vary according to your mailing list. You can take the help of Google Analytics to see when your subscribers are most active.

Q. What are the key email marketing metrics I should track?

A. Here is the list of 3 important metrics to track

  • Open rate – The total number or percentage of subscribers who opened an email.
  • Deliverability – The number of emails delivered to inboxes without being marked as spam.
  • Click-Through rate – The total number of subscribers who click the call to action to your next step.

Q. Should I be sending newsletters?

A. Yes, if you are a business then you should definitely send out a newsletter as almost 80% of the businesses send out a newsletter to be interactive with customers as well as other businesses.

Q. Is email marketing dead?

A. Email marketing is not dead. It is the most effective communication channels for marketers to initiate a conversation with their customers. It also helps them out to reach out to new prospects or consumers.

More than 80% of the companies use email marketing as their primary communication channel just because it increases the open rates, boosts up the conversion rate and the return on investment. In the year 2022, email users will rise to 4.7 billion. This is almost the world’s half population.

Final Thoughts

To conclude, this is everything you need to know about email marketing, how email marketing works, and different factors involved in effective email marketing campaigns. The points covered could be helpful in ensuring you receive maximum results from your campaigns.

Danni White | Danni White is the CEO of DW Creative Consulting Agency, a digital marketing firm specializing in elevating the visibility of small-to-midsize businesses and nonprofits. She is the author of 17 books and hosts the #Hashtags and Habits Podcast, which merges digital marketing, entrepreneurship, and personal growth.

Danni White | Danni White is the CEO of DW Creative Consulting Agency, a digital marketing firm specializing in elevating the visibility of small-to-midsize busi...

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