What Is Email Marketing?
Email marketing involves sending promotional emails to a list of individuals. But what’s interesting is that you do not choose these contacts. Instead, these people allow you to send emails to them by subscribing to your services and sharing their information.
You can use this marketing hack for numerous purposes, from sharing brand newsletters to offering discounts and coupons.
Previously, businesses treated the contact lists as a whole. Simply put, they forwarded similar emails to each prospect.
Today, brands have turned to segmentation and customization. Studies show that businesses that prioritize personalized campaigns experience increased revenue.
Undeniably, most individuals online use social media, but as a whip-smart business owner, overlooking the magnificent email user base isn’t wise.
Implementing an effective email marketing strategy can upgrade your marketing game and earn new customers.
Different Types of Email Marketing
Different types of email marketing use varying email formats to approach prospects and customers.
Certainly, you won’t send a Welcome Email to your existing customers. Likewise, Thank You Email for a recent purchase won’t work for someone who never purchased from your brand.
Therefore, it is important to understand different email formats to meet your marketing goals.
Welcome Email
Good thing you gained a subscriber, but that doesn’t guarantee their contribution to your business success. Welcome email, however, gives you a chance to ensure they turn into customers.
Because 50% of qualified leads aren’t ready to buy from your brand, you must nurture them to take action.
Nonetheless, we do not recommend being cheezy and introducing your products in the first email; it’ll turn them away. Instead, try forming a bond with them.
Send a welcome email merely to welcome and thank them for subscribing to your mailing list. However, note that your email should depict your brand’s tone. Of course, a thank you email from a cosmetic company would differ from a software solution agency.
Product Launch
Whether you updated your old product or launched a new one, you must educate prospects and customers about its features. The more customers understand your product, the more they’ll be intrigued to purchase it.
Nonetheless, your product announcement emails should be captivating enough to capture their attention. Successful businesses often prefer creating an email sequence. This includes a teaser about the product announcement followed by the official launch.
Besides, the tone of product announcement emails should have compelling subject lines. For instance, sentences like, “Stay tuned! Something big is coming” would pique the audience’s curiosity and keep them engaged till the product launch.
Thank You Email
Everybody appreciates a gesture of kindness and gratitude, and your customers and prospects are no exception. There isn’t a better way to please your audience than by forwarding a Thank You Email.
It also helps you strengthen customer relationships and humanize your connection with them. You can send Thank You Emails to your loyal customers as a gesture of appreciation and to event attendees, thanking them for being there.
Besides, sending a special thanks to newsletter subscribers and customers on their birthdays is also a great way to capture their attention.
However, the key is to be creative.
Therefore, a simple “Thank You” won’t serve the purpose. Instead, a tone depicting emotions would work better. Therefore, something like, “Thank you for choosing us. We appreciate your gesture” will help.
Event Announcement
You aren’t the only brand they’ve subscribed to.
If that doesn’t motivate you to go the extra mile, then consider this: numerous brands send event invitations to prospects and customers and expect them to show up. So, their inbox is like a battleground. Every business aims to capture the customer's attention.
You need to integrate catchy subject lines to stand out from the crowd. However, make sure the style and tone align with the type of event you wish to arrange.
For instance, workshop events, dinners, meet and greets, parties, conferences, and webinars will require you to use distinct subject lines and varying styles.
As a rule of thumb, keep your subject lines short yet engaging. Also, try saying more in fewer words.
Newsletters
Newsletters are meant to educate your audience about your business projects and employees. Although brands use newsletters to target prospects and engage customers, they might not work for prospects.
In all honesty, your prospects would not be interested to learn more about your brand unless you offer them something exciting.
So, although newsletters may offer value to your customers, they aren’t a great marketing tactic for prospects.
When designing newsletters for customers, make sure you add your brand logo, attention-grabbing graphics, and exciting brand stories. Besides, do not forget to include social links to direct your customers to social channels.
Promotional Emails
49% of customers like receiving weekly promotional emails from their favorite brands. Therefore, businesses increasingly use these emails to cater to customer wants and maintain a positive brand image.
You can also use these emails to inform prospects and customers about your product, boost brand awareness, foster relationships, and increase revenue.
However, your emails must resonate with your brand’s tone. Besides, discounts and offers can also help entice customers and outpace competitors.
Sponsored Email
Sponsored email is a paid marketing tactic. It requires you to pay another brand to include your copy in their newsletter.
However, your copy design must comply with the seller's instructions. For this purpose, you’d need to consider several things, from image limitations to font size recommendations.
Nonetheless, you must give sponsors a reason to collaborate with you. Let them know how you discovered their brand and their business goals align with yours. Of course, the email sponsor wouldn’t prefer you if you failed to prove yourself the right fit.
Advantages of Email Marketing
Did you know that 81% of small businesses depend on email as their main customer acquisition medium and 80% use it for retention?
Given the stats, not having an efficient email marketing strategy means you’ll miss out on boosting sales and increasing revenue.
Here are the key benefits of email marketing.
Build Brand Awareness
What makes emails stand out among the other marketing strategies is it helps you reach your customers directly. You have access to their inbox, and the one-on-one communication offers you a chance to build your reputation as a brand.
You have an opportunity to understand the mindset of subscribers and design your products accordingly.
Besides, customized emails can be more effective than social media posts. You can check the click-through and open rates through email marketing tools, but you cannot know how many people saw your Facebook post and didn’t take action.
Besides, scalability is another plus. You can send emails to numerous recipients in a budget-friendly way. Other marketing channels may require you to spend hundreds of dollars for the purpose.
Gain Customer Loyalty
Because you can use emails to nurture your leads and drive them down the sales funnel, you have an opportunity to earn customer loyalty. When prospects see you helping them at different stages in the buying cycle, they feel you’re offering them value.
This way, your customers remain loyal to your brand and prefer it over your competitors any day.
Boost Conversions
There’s no better way to drive more sales than sending promotional emails when launching a product. Try using these tactics to increase conversions:
Send abandoned cart emails to inform visitors to remind them about the product in their cart.
Send offers and coupons to customers and subscribers on their birthdays. This re-engages the inactive members and captures the attention of new subscribers.
What a Successful Email Marketing Campaign Entails
Knowing email marketing basics doesn’t guarantee your campaign success. You must know what steps to take for a fruitful outcome.
- To begin with, you need to pick a reliable email service provider to send and manage your emails. A few email marketing tools help you choose ready-made templates and schedule emails at your convenience.
- You must build your email list through creative exit-intent pop-ups, free ebooks, offers, and deals.
- Adhering to email policies is also essential. Because you’re a guest in your customer inbox, make sure you do not act like their friend. Avoid sending numerous emails in a row because it won’t get you anywhere but in their spam list.
- Make sure you know your email marketing campaign goal. Without one, you cannot draft effective emails or choose an appropriate format. Do you want to thank your visitors for subscribing to your newsletter or offer them a discount on a new product? Your objective will determine your email template, design, and message tone.
- Keep your subject lines compelling and use a conversational tone to engage your audience.
- Optimize your email click-through, open, and conversion rates. This will help you determine your campaign's success.
Because you have a lot to deal with as a business owner, executing a winning email marketing strategy is not a walk in the park. Pretty hectic and time-consuming. Besides, you’re unsure if you’re putting your effort in the right direction.
Therefore, outsourcing your email marketing to a skilled and experienced firm makes sense. Not only will it lighten your burden, but it also guarantees a successful outcome.
Things to Consider Before Hiring an Email Marketing Company
If your open rates are low, your emails are entering spam, and your prospects aren’t converting, it’s time to hire an agency to upscale your marketing game.
So, instead of wasting time and money, consider investing both in the right direction by choosing industry experts. However, keep a few things in mind before proceeding.
Creativity
Everybody can design emails, but it takes skill and out-of-the-box thinking to craft creative emails. Your email must stand out among the rest in your customer inbox. As such, you need to hire a firm that knows how to design creative personalized emails.
On a side note, a company providing copywriting and A/B testing services will likely craft better emails.
Strategic Planning
Your business is unique, and the company needs to understand your goals and offer a strategic plan. They must share their approach in the event of an unsuccessful campaign and how long they’ll take to implement a winning email marketing campaign.
Result Monitoring
One critical reason to hire experts for email marketing is this one. You might be able to execute the marketing campaign, but why isn’t it working is judged by monitoring and analyzing the results.
An experienced firm must check how many people open your emails and how many click. Plus, knowing the number of people converting through emails is also important.
List Growth
Because growing an email list is also a part of the email marketing campaign, an agency must assist you in building one. They might include email signup forms, pop-ups, or social media pages to direct your visitors, encouraging them to subscribe for additional information.
Mistakes to Avoid
To make your email marketing campaign a roaring success, you must avoid committing a few mistakes. Make sure you do not:
- Go for companies offering cheap rates. Yes, considering your tight budget, it may tempt you, but you’ll waste your money on low-quality services.
- Hire agencies that aren’t showing interest in your brand. You cannot expect a positive outcome by choosing apathetic marketing firms.
Hire the Best Email Marketing Agency With Xpeer
Email marketing isn’t like writing an email to your employee. You need to put a lot of work into crafting an effective email marketing campaign, from building a subscriber list to choosing the appropriate format for your business goals.
Choosing a company offers an excellent way to have your cake and eat it too. It’ll save you costs involved in executing email marketing strategies and ultimately failing to do so.
Xpeer connects you to experienced agencies who know how to outshine competitor emails in your subscribers’ inboxes.
Plus, it’ll save you time and money, smoothening other crucial business tasks.