A Detailed Guide for Email Marketing

Email marketing is neither out of fashion nor is it an old way to promote products and services. Yes, it is an old form of communication, but it is one of those mediums that reigns supreme when it comes to usage. Marketing experts know and understand really well that if email marketing is used correctly, it can be a great relationship-building and profit-building tool.

Email marketing campaigns can be created to build an existing customer relationship. Offering relevant and valuable information is significant for leading the customers to take action on emails. So basically, an email marketing strategy is not really limited to a business or a company for that matter. It is actually about a customer.

Once a business keeps this in mind, the subscribers do not just read the emails, but they also look forward to hearing from the brand each time. If the brand has the time, money, and power to build a personal relationship with all the prospects then it is all good. However, if any of this is not possible then email marketing campaigns can be the most proven and reliable marketing strategy of a brand.

In this blog, we will understand email marketing in detail. Before delving into further details, let us first begin by defining email marketing and really understanding how it works.

What is Email Marketing?

The digital marketing practice of communicating with leads and customers with email is called email marketing. Some of the commonly used email marketing messages include promotional campaigns, event announcements, and email newsletters. Email marketing is often known to have a higher ROI as compared to many other marketing channels.

Basically, email marketing is proven to be more effective as compared to SEO and social media because you can have a direct line to your audience while using it. Out of the multitude ways in which email marketing can be used, some of the common ones include:

• Email marketing strategies can be used to build connections along with a personalized engagement.
• Brands can lead their customers to understand more about their products and services, particularly when the prospects are ready to engage.
• Email marketing can also be used to share important brand content or some important brand news with prospects.
• Brands can entice their subscribers to offer personal information in exchange for an asset they would find valuable.
• Email marketing campaigns can be used for promoting products and services.
• Finally, it is also possible to delight the customers with useful brand knowledge with email marketing.

Working of Email Marketing

As mentioned above, email marketing is one of the best methods for marketing your products and services. It is very often automated and intuitive as well. There is a relatively easy way in which an email marketing process works and that requires the three most important elements.

1. Email List

To ensure the success of an email marketing campaign, it is necessary to create an active email list. This list is a database of all contacts that have expressed their interest in receiving marketing communication from a brand.

There are multiple ways to build an email list and one of the easiest ones is to create a lead magnet that the target audience is interested in. For example, you can create an offer in exchange for their email address.

2. Email Marketing Platform

An email marketing platform or an email marketing service provider is an application that helps in managing your email list. It helps in designing and executing email marketing campaigns easily.

The use of an email marketing platform is often advised because it helps in automating different actions triggered by the behaviour of the target audience. These actions also allow you to personalize all interactions, engagements, and conversion rates improve.

3. Well Defined Goals

You can use email marketing for achieving many business objectives. Some of the common ones include driving sales, enhancing the brand image and awareness, generating and nurturing leads, keeping customers engaged, and increasing customer loyalty and value.

For executing an email marketing campaign, it is necessary to list all goals and ensure that they align with one another. After this is done, you can get to real work. The first thing to do is to email list segmentation based on the actions of subscribers.

Next, you have to create an email or services of emails to get the customers to do something. Finally, you can send the emails and monitor the campaign automatically.

Benefits of Email Marketing

1. Permission-Based Email

Anytime a customer trusts you with an email address, it is the virtual equivalent of having access to their personal space. Gaining permission to enter rather than showing up uninvited increases the chances of engagement and conversion.

2. Direct Access to Audience

You can easily communicate with the subscribers on their time schedules. Since most working professionals check their emails every day, it is more than likely that your email will be viewed.

3. Better Control

With many marketing platforms, you do not really own the platform. In case there comes a time when the platform stops existing, all the hard work goes away with this. With email, there is a relationship that you form with the subscribers.

4. Personalization

Brands can use demographic data for creating personalized and hyper-targeted campaigns. The results are always better when there is a segmented and personalized campaign because that helps in increasing the revenue.

5. Scalable

The email marketing campaigns can be scaled up easily without any stress on the resources and on the overall quality as well. These campaigns are easier to manage as compared to other digital marketing methods.

6. Measurable

It is also possible to measure the effectiveness of an email marketing campaign. Automated email marketing makes the process of email marketing effortless and effective as well.

Three Steps to Automate an Email Marketing Campaign

Even though the automation process might differ from one platform for email marketing to another, there are some useful tips to automate the email marketing process. The steps mentioned below are as follows:

1. Define the Segments

An effective email marketing campaign begins with list segmentation. You can use the data you have about all the subscribers and group them accordingly. This helps in the creation of a more personalized email marketing campaign.

2. Design a Workflow

Once the email list segmentation is completed, it is now time to design a workflow. This can include a series of emails needed to fulfill the objectives of the email marketing campaign.

3. Find the Triggers

After you have designed the workflow, you can find the triggers that set off the following email in the sequence. Some examples of triggers can include customers opening the email, clicking on the included link, or maybe not opening it at all within a predetermined time frame.

Proven Email Marketing Strategies

If you want to succeed in ensuring the success of email marketing campaigns, it is important that you become strategic in the way the campaigns are designed. Some of the best email marketing strategies that you can employ are:

1. Use Lists for Building Strategies

The success of an email marketing campaign is completely dependent on the kind of quality you maintain for an email list. When you want to build a list like that, you have to use list-building strategies so that you can attract the target audience. For example, some lists may help a B2B brand while some may help B2C brands.

2. Use Good Email List Maintenance

An important essential for an email marketing campaign is practicing good email list hygiene. The practice of cleaning out all the inactive subscribers and email addresses that do not serve you anymore will make sure that you have a good sender reputation.

3. Maintain Engagement

It is very important to continue sending emails to the contacts in your list for keeping the subscribers engaged and warm. However, any changes in the emailing process can also result in subscribers forgetting who you are while also leading you to low conversion rates. In case your subscribers go cold, you can also run a re-engagement marketing campaign.

4. Focused Goal Setting

You can design all campaigns and emails to focus on one objective. That said, keep in mind that you cannot aim for hitting two goals with one stone. This will not work with email marketing. If you do this, it is only going to confuse the audience further and reduce the conversion rate.

5. Key Performance Indicator Defining

The process of email marketing is not merely limited to sending just a few emails to your subscribers. It is alot about defining and tracking the key performance indicators as well. To do this, you should define and track the right key performance indicators as well. This will help in knowing how well the email marketing campaign is doing and if you are achieving your goals.

Writing Email Marketing For Better Results

No matter what you may want to achieve with email marketing, everything comes down to how well you write your copy for email marketing. This is why it is important to write well while composing a copy for email marketing.

1. Understand Your Audience

The most important that you can implement while creating attractive and valuable email marketing content is knowing and understanding your audience. This will also help you segment the list and create a hyper-targeted email copy.

2. Attractive Subject Line

To make your email marketing campaign successful, an important thing to understand is that you will have to create an attractive subject line. It is a necessary element of email copy because it helps the readers to decide if they want to open an email. You can use keywords, active voice, personalization, and benefit-driven words to make the copy attractive.

3. Preview Text

The email preview text appears almost instantly below or beside the subject line. It is limited to a maximum of 140 characters and it acts as an elevator pitch when it comes to convincing people to open an email. When you optimize the preview text, it becomes an extension of the subject line and reinforces the value proposition.

4. Easily Readable

All marketing activities have one thing in common and that is to generate the interest of users. Most people are busy which is why it is important to write the email copy in a way that is attractive and easy to understand. The copy must include short sentences, easy-to-read words, bullet points, etc. In case the readers find emails easy to read then they will be likely to engage with them more.

5. Use Storytelling

Stories can be a powerful method of attracting attention and getting your messages across the audience. This is the reason why it is important to make the most out of storytelling in the email copy.

6. Psychologically Smart Writing

Most human beings are wired to react in a specific way. You can use psychologically smart writing to direct the attention of your readers towards fulfilling the campaign objectives. Some of the examples of these triggers include color psychology and social proof. If you ensure using these triggers in the right way then you can create an effective email copy.

Conclusion

In case you have been looking past email marketing then it is time for you to plan and implement email marketing campaigns. Email marketing is capable of offering high returns to marketers who are willing to learn how to do it right. There is no need for it to be complicated.

You just have to be mindful that you are like a guest in the private space of customers. Whether you will be a pleasant one depends on how polite, respectful and valuable you are. If you are any of these then you are just a click away from losing the interest of people.

You can definitely follow the process of creating a smart email marketing strategy or better yet, you can get in touch with an online marketing agency such as Encaptechno. Doing the latter will help you streamline the email marketing process and it will also help you to get the most out of it.