Do you consider email marketing is long gone or a thing of the past? Stat says not a chance!!
With the advent of new social platforms: Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, or any other Chatbots or virtual reality, it feels like email marketing lost its charm. Do you think email is dead, then you are ignoring the real metrics? It’s just a fallacy about email marketing. Email marketing has been the strategy to be adopted to date.
# What is Email Marketing
Email Marketing is an influential content marketing practice that is used today by many e-commerce businesses. It is the practice of sending augmented commercial messages through email to targeted consumers. Real-time email marketing is all about using real-time data to create timely emails that connect with the subscribers and fulfill their expectations of personalization and gratification. Effectively utilizing email marketing its benefits to improve brand loyalty, increase sales and deliver important information. To mass-target people, Email marketing was used as direct marketing in past. Personalization is the master key for prosperous email marketing. It is the process that includes promotional and transactional emails, testing, and maintenance. It is more effective and efficient than snail mail in terms of direct marketing. It is also closely linked to email advertising.
# How does Email Marketing work?
In email marketing, there is an ESP known as Email Service Provider to send marketing emails. To send and manage email marketing campaigns an email service provider is there as software. ESP is also known as an email marketing tool, email marketing platform, email marketing services, or email marketing software. ESP is an obligatory setup to ensure email deliverability.
You might be questioning, can’t I send these emails from my regular inbox provider? Is it compulsory to pay for the additional service?
We can send mass emails from our inbox providers, but we should not because we will run into problems with limited design, email bandwidth, and more importantly email deliverability. ISP’s like Outlook, Yahoo, Gmail, etc. are designed for personal use and not for email blasts. It’s easily flagged by spam filters and your account will be disabled for suspicious activity.
# Email Advertising
Email Advertising is a kind of email marketing in which you can send advertisements or promotional material from certain brands with the consent of recipients. It functions by giving the opportunity to consumers to opt-in to receiving the content. There are few tips to advertise via email:
· You should not send unsolicited messages, always ask for email addresses
· Keep registrations records
· Option to opt-out should be available
· Disclose your privacy policy
· Email list should be kept secure
# Types of Email
Email Marketing falls into multiple sacks:
• Transactional Emails - Used to confirm transactions and have a normal conversation.
• Newsletter Email – Used for important information, discounts, offers, and promotions.
• Behavioral Emails - There These are mainly triggered by customer reactions.
# Types of Email Opt-In
Opt-In marketing is the process of welcoming website visitors to sign up for an email list, by applying lead allurement or other inducements to persuade them. This tells that people who populate your email database want to hear from you. When a potential customer opts into your email list, it means that they give you permission to send marketing emails. Prospects acknowledge consent to receive marketing emails and also acknowledges that the subscriber read his privacy policy and terms of service. It helps in maintaining trust with your prospects. Businesses are using opt-in email marketing rather than buying lists or using different tactics. There are diverse types of opt-in process:
· Single Opt-In – It is a single action sign-up for the email list. In this, prospects need to enter their email address in the significant box to sign up to the company’s mails, no confirmation or follow-up action is required in this. They will start receiving the company’s emails as soon as details are entered. It is much easier to make a list of subscribers because we just need their emails and not the confirmations. The chances of getting your emails in spam are higher. It is more of quantity over quality.
· Double Opt-In – It adds another requisite action into the proceeding before a subscriber actually receives your mails. After proving the email address, potentials will receive an email to verify their address. By verifying the address potential has actively signed up for the newsletter and given confirmation for the same. Companies who use double opt-in their subscribers are 100% happy receiving future emails. It has better engagement and click-through rates. The list of subscribers may be small in the double opt-in process but there is quality over quantity.
# Benefits of Email Marketing
Email marketing is valuable because it is speedy, efficient, and cost-effective. Indulging this technique of marketing delivers you the means of reaching out to potential customers and retaining existing ones by encouraging repeat visits to a site. To nurture leads to convert emailing is the best method.
Below are the top Email marketing benefits to reap rewards:
· Low-Cost Marketing channel
· Easy to start with Email Marketing
· Brand awareness is improved by sharing content
· Improved CLV and customer relationship last long
· Boosted up sales and revenue
· Unmatched and Unrivalled Return on Investment
· Have higher conversion rate than other channels
· Drive more sales with highly targeted messages
· More customer reviews
· Analyzing and optimizing marketing efforts are easy
# Start an Email Marketing Campaign
When we start an email marketing campaign, we should set goals and identify our audience. It is an incredibly versatile process. Once you set the goals for your campaigns and identify the audience, we can customize it to our needs. Customizations help us email with the subscriber’s name and can send personalized emails for birthdays. It helps to segment email lists to send out different offers and promotions to a variety of audiences. In long run, this helps to increase CTR.
The first and foremost step to starting an email marketing campaign is to gather an email list. When a potential subscriber gives you their email address, we have to make it clear that they will be benefited from subscribing to our email and we are not going to spam them or share their mail address. The best place to build your email list is from registration on your website. It will leverage existing website visitors and offer them special discounts and information in exchange for email addresses. This trick is commonly used because customers love the offers and coupons showered on them.
# Email Content
After creating a solid email list, it’s time to plan your emails. There is a massive range of content to include and a unique formatting option to choose from. The sky is the limit when it comes to email marketing because it is much more customizable than other forms. While creating content for emails we should stick to a brand guide which means brand colors, brand voice, and further elements that set your business apart. We can add announcements for new products or services, information about new promotions or sales, customer testimonials, and loyalty rewards for subscribers. Content can be used in different formats such as Quizzes, Puzzles, GIFs, Interactive Videos, and polls. As your client share their email address send them warm and compelling welcome mail. Try to impress your customers and they will turn into you brand ambassadors –but don’t bother them by sending constant emails. If you want your mails to be cohesive, then they should match the style of the website, ads, and social media accounts for consistent branding. The last point to jot down is that as your websites are mobile-friendly, your emails should also be mobile optimized for more conversions.
# Email Optimization
Email optimization is the progression of cultivating your email campaigns so that they reach more of your recipients and lead to better brand-consumer relationships. Optimization will help you implement methods that work best and can help you get the most out of the investment. Your mail should be sent at the optimal time, to make sure that it gets open and not sit in the inbox. Many marketing platforms will help you know which times are ideal to send out emails. You can also send emails at the time when your target audience is likely to be free. A/B split testing is the finest way to know which type of content resonates the best with your audience. To reach the goal of your email marketing is the right message to the right person at the right time.
# Email Marketing Service Providers
The services depend upon the functionality you prefer, and on that basis, there are many platforms that serve. Following are the names for best email marketing services:
• MailChimp
• ConvertKit
• GetResponse
• SendinBlue
• Drip
• AWeber
• Constant Contact
Above listed providers are some of the most used and are the best choice for building and managing campaigns.
# Email Deliverability
Many companies spent incalculable hours with compelling content strategy and building an invidious list of quality subscribers, but they succumb. What goes wrong when everybody worked hard??? Having a good subscriber list doesn’t always mean there will be higher conversion rates. So the first question to ask is that are the emails getting delivered? To answer this one it’s compulsory to understand what email deliverability means??
Email deliverability is the set of procedure which determine whether an email will land in subscriber’s inbox or not. Now You will think about why my emails are not landing in the subscriber’s inbox? It is because mailbox providers scrutinize numerous facets of an email sender and message content to preclude users from spam and malicious content. There’s also a possibility that your email never lands in the subscriber’s inbox cause of issues like blacklists, bounce, domain and IP reputation, etc.
# Email Spamming
The Bizarre thing about spam is that there is no consensus on what construes as SPAM. Sending Updates of you blog, sending promotional offers, or sending knowledgeable template is considered sometimes as SPAM. Why these emails are spammed? The veracity is that spam filters don’t know senders' intentions and they completely rely on how you follow the rules of email marketing. If your attitude mimics that of a spammer, then you are tagged as one of them and your emails will be landed in the spam folder. If we see the sats, 70% of emails are considered as SPAM mails.
Spam Filters were invented to solve the problem of massive SPAM. These filters decide whether the email should exist in the inbox, promotional tab, spam folder or should be completely blocked. Many factors contribute to the spamming of mails and the reason behind why your emails land in the spam folder:
· ‘Spam like’ email content
· Email design protocols are not followed
· Spam laws are violated
· Poor domain reputation
· Bad IP reputation
· Email Authentication is failing
· Poor Email engagement
# Importance of Unsubscribe Button
The feeling of getting unsubscribed and disappearing from mailing list is very heartbreaking. It is a disappointing event but very necessary for healthy and successful email campaigns. There are many different ways to opt out but the unsubscribing link is the best feedback you will ever get. No clever way of placing an unsubscribing link can save you against a client who lost interest in your products and services.
Talking about email subscribers, “the more the merrier” is a complete myth in email marketing. Never focus on the number of the mailing lists, rather focus on the quality which also means engagement. Ghosts subscribers will never benefit you and will just ignore your emails.
Need of an unsubscribing link because :
· To comply with the CAN-SPAM act.
· To keep your list clean.
· To be polite with your customers.
· To remain on good terms with your clients even after they have left you.
· To gain useful information whenever a client unsubscribe.
# ROI for Marketers
It is not an old personal letter from a colleague, neither it is spam. Email marketing if used right can help build customer relationships as well as profit. It depends on the customer's foundation and not on you or your company. Some facts about email marketing.
• Email is the 3rd most persuasive source of information for B2B audience. It’s just after word of mouth.
• Click through rates are northward for B2B emails than B2C email campaigns which are 47%.
• Consumers spend 138% more who purchase products through emails.
• 73% of consumers identify email as their desired means of business communication.
The ROI of email marketing is incredibly ascendable relative to other marketing mediums. The ROI for email marketing is 122%, which is four times higher than any other digital marketing channel.
# Conclusion
Outdated It Is !!! What everyone thinks about email marketing, but they couldn’t be more wrong. It’s time to re-evaluate your strategy if you were ignoring email marketing. It has been shortly used after the birth of the Internet.
Email marketing delivers huge returns for marketers willing to learn how to do it right. It doesn’t have to be too complicated. Email marketing has progressed significantly since then and it is still a useful marketing tool. Many entrepreneurs discuss that email marketing is important now than ever before. In the U.S. 85% of retailers consider email marketing as one of the most effective customer acquisition tactics. So now, it’s time to embrace the benefits of email marketing into your digital marketing strategy.