Email Marketing is one of the most effective and strategic methods of connecting with your customers by far. Today my goal is to present some of the basic entry-level information regarding email marketing that can serve as a guide to kick start your email marketing tactics right away. If you prefer to watch or listen to this content please see the links below to access the YouTube Video as well as the Podcast versions. You can also find a study note takeaway you can use to follow along with the content.
Let us start with defining What Is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is the highly effective digital marketing strategy of sending emails to prospects and customers. Effective marketing emails convert prospects into customers, and turn one-time buyers into loyal, raving fans.
An email marketing campaign is a series of pre-planned and organized emails that you can use to communicate with current and potential customers. This planned content is distributed via email with the goal of accomplishing a specific goal for the organization such as nurturing leads or encouraging engagement.
What are some goals of Email Marketing?
There are many reasons to share emails with your growing subscriber list. The important thing is that you in fact have a goal and purpose for communicating and not just sending emails because you were told you had to. So let’s go over some of the different purposes your email campaign may set out to accomplish:
Traffic generation – Email can be an effective promotion channel for the high-value content you create on your website.
Awareness – Not everyone who opts into your email list is ready for a purchasing decision. You can use email marketing to stay top of mind while providing the educational content that is most relevant to them.
Lead nurturing – As you stay top of mind, you may also consider ways to identify the leads you have with the highest purchase intent and provide conversion-focused content that “nurtures” them toward a sale (or at least toward becoming sales-ready).
Revenue generation – You can create email marketing campaigns for your existing customers to promote upsell and cross-sell opportunities. You can also create campaigns to capture a sales conversion from leads who are close to a purchasing decision. (One example might be creating “abandon cart” campaigns for recovering lost sales conversions.)
Source: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/email-marketing-examples-list
Eight Types of emails you can send out
Now that we have established the four purposes behind sending out email marketing campaigns, let’s now get into some of the different types of emails that you can send to your list. Here I will introduce eight types of emails you should be sending out regularly.
Welcome Emails. Initial contact with prospects typically finds them unready to do business. The most effective way to engage with a new subscriber is by sending them a welcome email. When someone visits your site and signs up for your newsletter, they’ve given you permission to communicate with them.
Email Newsletters. Newsletters are an important part of email marketing. They play a huge role in branding and failure to utilize it can limit the growth of a business. Regularly sending newsletters also helps you to build a relationship with your subscribers. You can decide to send out newsletters weekly, monthly, or quarterly.
Dedicated Emails. This kind of email is best for urging the subscriber to take a particular action. Let’s say you have a product you want to promote but you do not have the resources to run a major marketing campaign. This is where a standalone or dedicated email comes into play.
Lead Nurturing Emails. A lead nurturing campaign educates potential customers on the brand’s products and services. It raises brand awareness and convinces the customer to choose a brand over its competitors. Lead nurturing establishes a relationship between the lead and the brand. To effectively nurture leads, email is a great place to start.
Holiday-related emails. Holidays provide businesses with an excellent opportunity to reach out to their customers. Not only would you send your holiday greetings, but you can also use it as an opportunity to generate more leads and drive sales.
Transactional Emails. A transactional email is a type of automated email that is triggered by the actions of the subscriber. Examples of these actions are completing a purchase, upcoming events, or users’ interactions with an application.
Re-Engagement Emails. What do you do when subscribers stop engaging with your content? You can send them re-engagement emails to win them back. That’s because it’s 5 to 25 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to retain an old one.
Brand Story Emails. Storytelling can be a powerful tool to get your point across to customers and prospects by taking advantage of emotional responses. So ask yourself this: Is there a personal story behind your brand? Do you have a company profile video you’d like to share?
Latest stats on the effectiveness
Here are some stats that encourage the use of email marketing in your 2021-2022 marketing campaigns. These stats can stand as evidence of the importance of including email marketing within your marketing campaigns on a regular basis.
There are 4 billion daily email users.
More than 40% of marketers saw budget cuts to email since the pandemic.
64% of small businesses use email marketing to reach customers.
Nearly 1 in 5 email campaigns is not optimized for mobile devices.
Marketers who used segmented campaigns noted as much as a 760% increase in revenue.
35% of marketers send their customers 3-5 emails per week.
78% of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement over the last 12 months.
4 out of 5 marketers said they’d rather give up social media than email marketing.
20% of retail, e-commerce, and consumer goods and services companies are personalizing emails based on gender, race, ethnicity.
74% of Baby Boomers think email is the most personal channel to communicate with brands.
Source: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/email-marketing-stats
Platforms to use
And lastly, I wanted to share a great resource that was assembled that lists out the best 20 email marketing software platforms and what makes each a good pick. Picking an email platform to use will be based primarily on the type of emails you are seeking to share, the frequency, your list size, and also any special features you consider valuable in your campaign. All have different value points so it is worth looking at several before making a commitment. Source: https://influencermarketinghub.com/email-marketing-software-platforms/
Conclusion
Email marketing is a wonderful way to nurture your leads, generate life-long customers. If you are a solopreneur or have a very small team it may be overwhelming at first to get all of this done. I suggest start small, maybe a monthly newsletter. As you get comfortable with those you can start to incorporate more sophisticated email marketing into your marketing campaigns. If you are using social media or email to communicate to your prospects and customers and have never developed a marketing plan or marketing campaign check out some of our recent posts on marketing plan development. You can also schedule a free consultation with me to receive some personalized guidance on streamlining and improving your marketing efforts.
