What is Email Marketing?


email-marketing-300x213 What is Email Marketing?Email marketing is considered by many as one of the new age marketing techniques. Most internet users are likely to have email accounts allowing them to receive an unlimited number of messages instantly. Email marketing delivers commercial messages to a targeted group of people using email marketing tools. It is an effective way to promote your business, remain connected to clients and build customer loyalty, trust and brand recognition.

 

 

Types of email marketing

Broadly, email marketing is classified into transactional and promotional.

Transactional email marketing: This includes email messages like thank you message after a user signs up, order details email, subscription confirmation, and email. The primary purpose of these messages is to engage with visitors who have already visited your website and provided you with their email IDs.

Promotional email marketing: This is aimed at bringing new visitors to the site by sending them promotional messages. This involves acquiring email addresses of people who match the demographic of your target audience and sending them targeted messages. When people talk about “email marketing” they are usually referring to promotional emails.

How to use email marketing?

Companies can choose to manage their email marketing campaigns or can outsource this activity to different online marketing companies. They provide simple software tools to manage email lists, design ads, and track process. Usually, large businesses can make use of these services as they use emails to push multiple products, updates and offers through bulk or daily emails to thousands of different customers.

While email marketing is a relatively inexpensive and straightforward way to connect with their clients, campaigns must be carried out systematically. A poorly planned email campaign can lead to annoyed customers and poor sales. Moreover many countries have laws against sending spam. Spam refers to emails sent to users who have not subscribed or are on ‘do not disturb’ lists. Companies that send out unsolicited emails can face significant fines.

It is important only to send emails to customers who want to receive them, and this is possible by making the email update sign up process simple for customers. To encourage higher subscription rates, you can offer incentives such as special schemes, one-time coupons, and or discounts.

The first step for email marketing is to source and assimilate email ids of your target group. Analyzing the emails of competing businesses can be a great way for companies to plan their own. You can do this by signing up for their emails to understand the different images, messages and offers being used by competitors to appeal to customers. Businesses can then tailor their email campaigns to match or beat such offers.

Designing the email is the next important but tricky step. The choice of images and text must not only reflect the demographic that is being targeted but should grab the reader’s attention and draw them into the details of the sales pitch quickly and succinctly. If the email is confusing or unattractive, users are likely to delete without reading.

To drive higher sales and better customer satisfaction, segregate emails being sent to customers based on relevancy. Matching the message to the customer leads to higher sales and greater levels of customer satisfaction. Marketing software for emails makes it easy for companies to categorize email delivery based on criteria that they establish.

After an email campaign is sent out, it is important to track and evaluate the success of the not performing well, marketers can change the design of the ads, deals being offered and the products on sale. The versatility of email marketing makes it simple to implement changes quickly and inexpensively.

Advantages of email marketing

  1. Email has a wide reach: An email ID is the first information requested when anyone has to sign up for a website or create an account. Email addresses are needed even to create social media accounts such as Facebook and Twitter. It is evident that the email is the currency of the web, and most people who are active online have a valid email ID. This makes it unlike any other channel, providing the widest possible reach in connecting with prospective and existing customers.
  1. Surety of message being delivered: Majority of emails get delivered to the intended recipient’s inbox. If you send an email campaign to 10,000 subscribers, at least 9,000 of them would receive it in their inbox. Secondly, since there are strict laws and regulations on spamming, emailing a prospect or customer is only because one has permission to do so. Email subscribers have voluntarily and specifically signed up for the email list. If marketers were given the option to add a subscriber to their email list over gaining followers on Facebook, they would choose the email subscribers each time.
  1. Higher ROI from email marketing: Given email’s unmatched ability to drive conversions, it also becomes the most effective marketing channel to drive return on investment (ROI). Emails are cost-effective and deliver highly personalized relevant messages and allowing you to be hyper-targeted with your communications. The more data you have about your customers through email marketing tools including insights from integrated systems, the more targeted you can be. This use of segmentation and dynamic content helps ensure the relevance that drives people to click-through, make purchases and increase the overall ROI of the email marketing campaigns.
  1. Emails are the preferred communication channel: Emails are a medium of communication that is considered professional. Studies have shown that majority of people are likely to consider or prefer information about products and services through email than any other online source.
  1. Emails are an open platform: Emails are not owned or controlled by any particular entity. It is an open communication platform where multiple services provide access to send and receive mail. The various companies involved in email marketing ensure that there are no vested interests where one party can make changes that have a widespread Investing time and money into setting up a valid email list is an asset that can be leveraged for a long period of time.
  1. Emails are permanent: Emails have stability and has been growing consistently. The email space itself has evolved to tools today where a ‘Campaign Monitor’ empowers the modern marketer to create and customize emails. This development has transferred the power of email marketing into the hands of the users. Building an email contact list, as compared to a social media following, is a more stable and long-term investment.

As a marketer, you may have many channels available to reach your audience, but with limited time and resources, there is a need to prioritize your efforts. Email marketing is an effective and versatile channel to reach your target markets and stay connected with the purchasing base. With efficient use of email marketing, you can retain current clients, easily monitor how effective a marketing campaign has been and targets new markets. This drives sales and revenue for your business. Professionals at Flying Cow can help you use email marketing to your advantage and ensure your marketing initiative is successful.

fb50c5bf790872a8ecad33a6bd15d358?s=100&d=mm&r=g What is Email Marketing?

CEO, Flying Cow Design
Attended University of Auckland
Lives in San Francisco Bay Area

October 15th, 2016


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