No doubt, the advancement of technology has changed a lot starting from user experience to the business model. In between all, one thing that still hasn’t changed is email. No matter whether it’s a student, job professional or businessman, no one forgets to check their email on a regular basis.
A lot of marketing platforms and strategies came and were outdated, but one such marketing platform is still on trend and irreplaceable. That is no other than email marketing.
Email marketing is not all about sending emails to someone’s inbox. Rather it is a way to get the word out about your company, product or service. It is one of the best ways to grow your brand, engage with your customers and drive new leads.
Moreover, It is a cost-effective and powerful way for businesses to reach their audience. It is a great tool to encourage people to take action, buy something or find out more information about your business.
As we all know the world has become more internet-centric than ever before and people are interacting with email differently than they ever have before. With all these changes, it is crucial to understand the importance of an effective email marketing strategy for your business. Often business owners and entrepreneurs wonder, “What is email marketing?” The reasons vary and include the following: How Do I get more clients? How do I gather leads? How do I build up my community? These are just some of the few questions that come to mind when they plan to get started with this marketing segment.
No matter how big or small your business is, email marketing is a powerful tool you can add to your marketing arsenal. Oftentimes, people think that email marketing is only for large companies with lots of money to spend on things like advertising. But, the truth is that small business owners can use certain tools to achieve success with email marketing if they choose to take their time and do what is right for their company.
No worries, Your every confusion will get cleared. In this blog, we will discuss in-depth email marketing, why businesses need it and strategies to follow.
Before moving in-depth, first, let’s know about it.
What is Email Marketing?
It is a digital marketing way that enables businesses to promote their product and services effectively through emails. It is one of the popular marketing strategies to engage with audiences and drive sales.
Email marketing is often thought of as something that’s done by big companies that send out mass emails to their subscribers or customers. However, anyone can use email marketing to reach a targeted audience, create brand awareness and drive conversions or sales via
email by designing targeted messages that they can send out over the internet.
It’s no surprise that the Internet is now king when it comes to communication and information distribution. Email marketing is one of the best ways to reach potential customers.
As per a report, around 80% of businesses are using email marketing to acquire and retain customers. Whereas about 81% of small businesses are using this as a primary acquisition tool.
From the above statistic, you can imagine how popular is it and if still, your business has not implemented this marketing strategy, it’s high, to begin with, or else take help from any marketing agency.
Types of Marketing emails:
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Informative Mails:
As the name suggests, share something interesting and informative related to your business. It may be an email newsletter, survey or any milestone achieved by your brand.
Sending emails at regular intervals i.e. weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly helps to maintain a consistent touch between your brand and subscribers.
More often, people are unable to know more about a product or service provided by a company even if they are potential customers. Mails are such a medium that keeps them updated and encourages them to engage with your brand.
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Promotional emails:
These are the most popular types of emails that are sent to promote special offers, discounts, and product releases to customers. Additionally, it’s a powerful way to spread the word about your product or services.
This type of email is mostly embedded with a clear call-to-action bottom, that enables subscribers to visit the page and place an order.
Promotional emails are crucial during the periods of seasonal offers as they drive the maximum sales and revenue for a business.
As per a report, 60% of consumers say they have purchased as a result of marketing mail.
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Retargeting emails:
A lot of time customers used to forget to place an order after adding it to their cart or even they miss taking further action after gathering information about the product. This is where retargeting emails come into effect. This helps businesses to reconnect with customers or subscribers who haven’t been active lately.
It becomes quite important while running a marketing campaign with emails, to write a short and catchy subject line. Because as the report suggests, emails with personalized subject lines have open rates 50% higher.
Why Your Business Needs Email Marketing:
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Brand awareness:
The great thing about email marketing is that it lets you reach your brand to your customers directly. As compared to other mediums of marketing, it’s an effective way to increase a brand’s visibility and awareness.
Usually, people ignore the display ads on a page or skip ads on YouTube. but pay attention to their every mail before pushing it into the trash. Showcasing your brand in someone’s email inbox is one best things to portray your brand in the minds of subscribers.
One of the significant benefits of this marketing is that it is cost-effective and produces a better result.
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Drive Sales:
The sole purpose of every marketing campaign is to drive sales. When it comes to marketing campaigns through email, it gives the best result among others. Promoting your brand through emails increases the chance of the audience making a purchase instantly.
Let’s say you are sending personalized coupons or special offers for subscribers on their birthdays or anniversaries. Most probably they can’t ignore your mail and your offers will let them engage with your brand. Additionally, it will build a strong relationship with your customers.
They will start looking at your brand for the information and value that you have been providing them, thinking of you as the priority when they need your services.
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Increase Website Traffic:
Emails are a great way to bring customers to visit your website. You can include relevant links or call-to-action within your email content. You can even use your email campaign to make subscribers engage with a piece of great content available on your website.
Let’s understand this with an example. In the above image, you can see the strategy used by Neil Patel.
Look at the subject line “11 Tools That Will Get You More Backlinks“
It is simple, clear, and informative. No doubt backlinks are the lifeline of SEO and for sure a digital marketer can ignore the mail without opening it.
But in the description, he does not mention anywhere those 11 tools, instead, he puts a link that redirects to that particular blog.
Any subscribers who remain interested in backlinks can’t miss the blog without reading. As a result, the email drives traffic to the website.
Strategies to be followed for Email Marketing Success:
How much you may invest in a marketing campaign, it fails without a proper plan and strategy. Check out those strategies to build a successful marketing campaign.
#1: Never opt for Database.
If are new to a business, then for sure it will take some time to build an email list of prospective audiences. Although business owners know it, still they take a shortcut and purchase data that fails in their campaigns.
Sometimes this leads to putting your business at risk because as per GDPR and CAN-SPAM sending marketing & promotional emails without someone’s authorization is illegal. Moreover, it will spoil your reputation as a maximum number of people usually mark unauthorized mail as spam.
No matter how long it takes, try to build your email list organically.
#2: Segment Your Mail List:
It’s quite important to divide the list of your subscribers into smaller sub-lists with common interests. Because it engages subscribers with more relevant information.
Usually, mail lists are segmented based on demography, gender, purchase history, and more. This enables businesses to send mail to the subscribers they want to hear from you.
#3: Personalization:
Is there anyone who doesn’t want to get noticed?
People usually love it, when brands pay attention to them, like by calling them by their name. It makes them feel special.
The same is applicable in email marketing as well. Personalized emails help in building a relationship with customers as well as increase your open, click-through and conversion rates.
#4: A/B test for your marketing content:
Sometimes you may not be sure about how subscribers will react to your content. In such cases, A/B testing practices are the best way to deal with your subscribers.
In the A/B test, you will create two marketing campaigns with different subject lines, content and call-to-action bottom. You can able to find out which campaign performs better and accordingly, you can adjust your marketing strategy.
#5: Add Opt-out Option:
It’s a good practice to add a link to unsubscribe from your every mail.
You can’t be so sure that a person who agreed to get your promotional emails while signing up is your prospective customer.
In many cases marketers forget to add email opt-out options for subscribers, As a result, when a not-interested user gets your mail they push it to spam which hampers your brand reputation.
#6: Keep track of your metrics:
Analysing your email marketing metrics will let you know how your campaign is performing and help you improve your future campaigns.
There are certain matrices that you should look at
Open rate: The number of people who open your mail.
Click-through rate: The number of people who clicked on a link in your email.
Bounce rate: Total number of mail that failed to be delivered.
Unsubscribe rate: The number of recipients who have unsubscribed from your email.
Email authentication remains the top priority when we opt for an email marketing campaign.
Emails sent to invalid addresses often trigger a bounce message. This notification, originating from the sender’s or recipient’s email system, can indicate a non-existent domain (e.g., the recipient’s company went out of business) or an undeliverable address (e.g., a typo in the recipient’s email address).
Let me introduce Discovemail, your one-stop solution for email verification!
Here’s what makes Discovemail stand out:
- Real-time verification: Get instant results on the validity of your email addresses.
- Domain Verifier: Discovemail’s powerful domain search tool verifies domain existence and helps identify potential deliverability issues.
- Advanced detection: Discovemail goes beyond simple syntax checks, identifying tricky issues like disposable or catch-all email addresses.
Email Marketing Tools to Select:
There are several free and paid tools available that you can go for. It can help you to manage and improve your campaign. But keep in mind that free marketing tools would have limited features as compared to paid ones.
Some of the popular tools are:
- Mailchimp
- MailerLite
- Benchmark Email
- SendPulse
- HubSpot Email Marketing
Wrapping Up:
Email marketing is a marvellous resource for startups and businesses of all sizes. It allows businesses to target specific audiences and take their campaigns to new heights. This blog may have helped you clear your basic doubts regarding email marketing and how it can help your business grow.
How email marketing is a vast topic to discuss. We will come up with another blog, where we will discuss more this.
If you are a small business looking for a way to promote your company and increase sales, then email marketing may be just the solution. It can take time but it is often an effective way to get your name out there. There are many reasons why more businesses should consider building and maintaining a list so that they can send mailers periodically to their customers.