Despite the emergence of social networks, email marketing still remains as one of the most effective mechanisms to communicate with your audience. It has turned into a necessity for every type of online business.

With email marketing, you can surely do wonders. But if one is new to the scene, it becomes crucial to know about what are the basics of it and how it works. When done in the right way, email marketing can assist in boosting a business, enhance profits, traffic and maximize sales.

WHAT IS EMAIL MARKETING?

Email marketing is a process that comes under digital marketing. It involves communicating with the audience using electronic mail messages(email). Commercial emails are used to establish relationships and sell various products as well as services to the audience.

A good email program will aid in keeping the audience engaged and informed with the brand and whatever it offers. It will also assist in turning the window shoppers into consumers and the one time buyers into loyal brand advocates.

Email marketing has been there for a long time, however, it still continues to generate a remarkable return on the investment for a large number of marketers around the world making it a considerably good digital channel.

EXAMPLES OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF EMAIL MARKETING

PROMOTIONAL EMAILS

There are many email marketing campaigns that are used to promote special offers, new releases of products, ebooks and the brand at large. The campaign could consist of sending 3 to 10 emails within a span of several days or weeks.

These emails have a clear call-to-action or CTA. CTA represents the particular action you wish the reader to take. It could be visiting a website or a coupon to make a purchase.

INFORMATIONAL EMAILS

These consist of newsletters as well as announcements.

Newsletters : It shares the news that is related to the business. It shares the new milestones reached and features vital content such as the case studies of the product. It is an amazing opportunity to share the insights, different thoughts and tips- whatever brings the highest value to your audience.

Announcements : Customers can be informed about the company announcements, latest releases of the products, variations in the service etc by means of email.

Also, email is the go-to-channel for important messages. If by any chance, the website has a glitch, delay in the shipping process or outrage in the software or system, email is the best method to maintain communication. It is quite secure, quick and can match the tone of all the important announcements.

RE-ENGAGEMENT EMAILS

It is also an important type of marketing email. These emails work in order to reconnect with the subscribers as well as the customers that have not been active in the recent times.

Options of reengaging with the contacts consist of offering them discounts, giving them news about the products as well as services and checking their contact preferences.

HOW DOES EMAIL MARKETING WORK?

Email marketing is not an intricate process at all but it requires a lot of A/B testing in order to evaluate the best method of communicating with the subscribers that is beneficial for the business goals. Hers is how email marketing works:

SIGN UP FOR AN EMAIL MARKETING TOOL

A good email marketing tool can help to automate the process of email marketing. Using a personal account to email a lot of people and keep track of the results side by side would not work at all. Thus, choosing a platform is the first step that should be done.

An email marketing platform would help in:

Creating an email list
Sending emails to the audience.
Making sales from the email messages.
Add users to your list.

FORM AN EMAIL MARKETING STRATEGY

Any type of digital marketing campaign requires forming a strategy. Having an email marketing strategy would help in :

Deciding the strategies to increase the email list
Deciding how email marketing would be used simultaneously with the other online marketing campaigns
Deciding when to use the automation feature
Deciding on what kind of messages should be sent

BUILD AND EXPAND THE EMAIL LIST

For email marketing to work effectively, a big list of active subscribers is required. Growing the email list and maintaining it is a bit tricky but if the right approach is adhered to it could give fruitful results for the business.

The best method for increasing the email subscribers are:

Publish high quality content on the website
Give incentives to the customers
Make it easy for the people to subscribe

SETTING UP THE AUTOMATION TASKS

The major benefit of email marketing is that it can be fully automated. Email marketing automation includes sending targeted emails to the customers based on their response when they receive your emails or depending on the different actions performed by them on the site.

The most common tasks related to automation are:

Welcome emails
Email campaigns
Abandon cart emails
Cross selling
Review or feedback forms

MONITORING THE CAMPAIGN PERFORMANCE USING A/B TESTING

A/B testing is a must improve in order to run successful email marketing campaigns. This testing will help in finding out what specific type of email messages can help in generating higher engagement of users.

Things that are to be tested in A/B testing are :

Length the email subject title
Formal of the emails
Length of the email body
Frequency of sending emails
Offers used as incentives

CLEAN UP THE EMAIL LISTS REGULARLY

These things are to be understood when dealing with email marketing

Majority of email subscribers will be inactive

It is absolutely normal to have inactive subscribers on your list. A large majority of people would not read the messages.

Having a large list is not the best approach always

Sending various emails that are just read by a small percentage of people would be marked as spam. The reach of the business would gradually decrease.

Users that have registered to the business and do not open the campaigns are not beneficial to the goals of the business. It is better to have a smaller list of subscribers but they should be regularly active.

CONCLUSION Email marketing is quite substantial for every kind of business. It can help in increasing the sales and consequently improve the business. Once you gain experience and learn about email marketing few campaigns should be created and the results be monitored. Do not be afraid of testing the messages. You can induce such proliferative digital marketing strategies in your business by associating with Digital Kangaroos, Ludhiana.