What is Email Marketing? And how to start Email Marketing?

As the world is moving towards technology and technology is improving day by day, people used to use mail for any formal communication and now as the technology has changed the way we used to communicate we now use email for any formal or official work.

We now use email for many official works like we send resumes, official notices, and offers to our prospective customers, etc. Email is not just free but also it is fast and secure.

What is Email Marketing?

what is email marketing

Email marketing is a type of direct marketing where we send personalized emails to our email subscribers – whoever has signed up to our email subscription and has permitted us to send them emails.

Email marketing is a part of digital marketing which helps companies to convert their prospects into their customer by nurturing and educating them to take some specific actions like purchase. It is highly effective marketing as you direct contact with your prospects.

Email marketing is a type of marketing in which we can make our customers and prospects aware of new products, events, and discounts, etc. it can help in our marketing strategies with the help of brand awareness, building customer loyalty, etc. through engaging and stylish emails.

Types of marketing email

Welcome Emails: So you finally got an email subscriber and now you will have to use welcome email to introduce your brand, it is one of the effective forms of marketing email as it has a better chance of opening your emails and clicking on the emails.

It is recommended to not directly start your marketing techniques on welcome emails as this can badly affect your strategy and if your first impression doesn’t impress your prospects then it will be very hard to encourage them to take certain actions in the future. Instead, you can start with greetings and gifts that can be useful for them.

Promotional emails: This is one of the most used types of marketing email and you must be aware of this email as you must have hundreds of emails in your inbox. Most companies send more than one email per day. This is not what I recommend as it can irritate your prospects and they might end up unsubscribing your email.

Promotional emails are great to encourage prospects to take actions like purchases, downloads, etc. It generally contains eye-catchy words and CTAs. It helps to teach prospects about new offers so that they are aware and they never miss any offers.

Newsletters: Newsletters are a great way to market your brand through content like video, photos, podcasts, blogs, etc. Most companies use newsletters on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis to share information like new events.

The main aim of this marketing is to make sure that your customer is regularly in contact with your company through blogs, Social media, and websites, and for that, you will have to make eye-catchy and well-structured templates.

Announcement Emails: The main objective of these emails is to aware your subscribers of your company’s new products, services, or any updates. If you do announcements on emails it will make your audience feel special because they will get the announcement before anyone else also if you announce your products or services on other platforms, it will cost you more as compared to emails where this can be done at very low or no cost at all.

Survey Emails: Survey emails are also a great way to grow your brand, because of this you will get to know how your subscribers are feeling about your brand, what they want your brand to make improvements, what are their feedbacks about your brand’s services or products.

Because of survey emails, brands can improve the quality of their products and services. You can start by listing some questions and sending them within a week of purchase so that your subscribers will know that your brand wants to get improved.

Lead Nurturing Emails: Lead nurturing emails are used to convert the leads into customers. It is quite effective when it comes to email marketing but you will have to invest some time to design attractive lead nurturing emails.

Is email marketing still working?

How to start email marketing

 

Sources: Finances Online

As we all know email is not something very new but nowadays people are using it a lot. If you don’t trust me, then see the statistics:

  • 80% of marketing experts believe that email marketing increases customer retention (Source: Emarsys 2018)
  • In 2019, there were 3.9 billion users of email (Source: Statista)
  • In 2019, 293 billion emails were sent (Source: Statista)
  • Every $1 spent on email marketing returns about $42 (Source: Litmus)
  • A shopping session study of more than $1 billion shows that email marketing has a conversion rate of 2.3% while the conversion rate of social media marketing was 1%. (Source: Smart Insights)

How to start email marketing campaigns?

As I mentioned above, how effective email marketing is? But it is also very tough to convert the leads as there is very high competition in email marketing. So, to ensure that your email marketing campaign works you will have to follow these steps below:

Email list: To start your email marketing campaigns, you will have to make sure that you have the email lists of your leads and for that, you will have to provide your audience some gifts in exchange for the emails like free eBooks or any free content that can be useful for your audience.

Email marketing platforms: Email marketing platforms are also known as ESP Email Service Providers. It is software that will store your audience’s email list. It also helps to design email marketing templates and also helps your marketing team in executing email marketing campaigns successfully.

Clear marketing goals: Email marketing campaigns help the marketer to reach many marketing milestones like increasing sales and awareness, nurturing leads, and improving customer loyalty, etc.

To make your email marketing campaigns work efficiently you will have to make sure that your marketing goals must align with your email’s template, leads demographics, etc.

Pros and Cons of email marketing

Like any marketing platform, email marketing is also having its pros and cons

Pros

Direct marketing 

You can directly communicate with an audience who has subscribed to your emails. So it will be very easy for you to convert them with the help of your email marketing campaigns.

Permission-based

Unlike any other marketing platform, email marketing is permission-based marketing, which means your subscriber has already given you permission to email them. So, it means you will have more chances of converting your subscribers into your customers.

Affordable

As you don’t have to pay any third-party marketing ads provider, it will be very affordable as compared to other marketing platforms. You just have to pay your Email Service Provider (ESP) so it makes your marketing budget low.

More control

On other digital marketing platforms where you will have to follow all the rules and regulations for advertisements and if you forget to consider any rules then there will be a high chance that your ad account might get blocked and your hard work will be sabotaged.

Email marketing strategies

To run your email marketing campaigns more efficiently you need to make strategies from start to end.

Use a good quality email list

The most important part of your email marketing campaign is the email list. If you have a good quality email list then it will be very easy to convert your subscriber into your customer. To get a good quality email list, provide your targeted audience with some good, relevant, and free content on the relevant platforms. For example, if your targeted audience is from the age group of 18-30 then make sure that you try to get your email list through social media platforms like Instagram.

Check your email list regularly

Another strategy on your email marketing campaign is to check your email list regularly and delete inactive subscribers or emails which are not in use because if you don’t do it then, it can affect your sender’s reputation.

Be regular 

To make sure that your subscribers are not losing interest in your brand, you will have to send your email regularly to keep them engaged with your brand.

Focus on a single objective

When you are working on your email marketing campaigns and designing your email template make sure that you have one objective it can be sales or brand awareness but you can’t do both on a single email, because this can confuse your subscriber.

Check the performance of your campaigns

After successfully sending your emails to your subscriber’s inbox, you have to check how is your campaign is performing. You can use tools that many ESPs provide for better understanding.

Cons

Flooded emails

Email marketing can be very tough to attract to your audience, as your audience’s inbox will be flooded with emails and there will be a high chance that your email will not be noticed. You will have to be very creative to ensure that your emails will attract your subscribers.

Email list

To make your email marketing campaigns work, you will need an email list of targeted audiences. So if you don’t email list then it will be tough to campaign through email marketing.

Delivery issues 

Delivering your email into your subscriber’s inbox is not guaranteed as there are many rules for commercial emails, even though your audience has subscribed to your email but it is not necessary that your email will go into their inbox. Many subscribers reported that many emails that they have subscribed went into spam.

Tools for Email marketing

For successful email marketing campaigns, you will need great tools to help you in your email marketing campaigns.

For ESP

MailchimpMailchimp is the best Email Service Provider (ESP) for small and mid-sized businesses, it is very easy to use and also it’s affordable. Its plan starts from 0, yes you can use it for free with some lacking features but you can upgrade your plan anytime.

Sendinblue: Sendinblue is also a great email software to handle all your email lists and for executing email marketing campaigns.

For deliverability

Email deliverability tools ensure that our ESP doesn’t send any of your emails to spam. These tools help to test any issue on the email before sending it to your subscribers.

MailGenius: This tool searches every text on your email to find any spam triggers. You can use it to ensure that the email that you’ve designed will not go on the spam of the subscribers, also it is free to use.

Summary

If you were thinking that email marketing is dead then I hope I have cleared your misconception about email marketing. If you want any help in achieving your marketing goals then Aimsmark will guide you through the process and we are happy to help you. Contact us for marketing services.

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