What is the right type of email marketing strategy used by a brand?
“Email has an ability many channels don’t; creating valuable, personal touches - at a scale”- David Newman.
According to Neil Patel, Email marketing is the act of sending promotional messages to people in mass quantities. It typically is to generate sales or leads and it may contain advertising. (Patel, n.d.)
Another definition provided by Mailchimp.com is ‘the use of email within your marketing efforts to promote a business’s products and services, as well as incentivize customer loyalty’. Email marketing is a form of marketing that can make the customers on your contact list aware of new products, discounts, and other services. It can also be a softer sell to educate your audience on the value of your brand or keep them engaged between purchases. It can also be anything in between. (Email Marketing Definition - What Is Email Marketing?, n.d.).
What are the different kinds of emails?
A marketer can write four main types of emails to its customers. These four kinds of emails are,
Newsletters
The recipient of the newsletters could be either a customer or target audience who has expressed interest in the product but yet to make a purchase. These emails contain information about updates, new product launches and tips & expert opinions from the brand. The frequency of the emails can be weekly, biweekly or monthly. These emails are sent to subscribers who have signed up and would like to stay in touch with the band. The goal of the newsletters is to keep subscribers connected, engaged, and informed about what’s new with the business or industry.
Acquisition Emails
As the name suggests, the email is used to expand the company's customer base. More an awareness campaign, this is sent to prospective customers interested in the company’s offerings. Successful email acquisition is dependent primarily on two things: a carefully crafted email marketing list and adequate email marketing collateral. These kinds of emails push the prospective customer closer to conversion. It is critical to provide them with the right data so that they can make an informed decision.
Promotional emails
These emails are intended to provide incentives for revenue and sales. They are personalized and crisp while focusing on a singular message. They could also include discounts and special offers to entice customers into taking action.
Retention emails
Retention emails are the retainers of the existing customer base. As the retention of customers is as important as acquiring new customers, these emails help maintain the brand’s loyal customers. It has been proven that it is more effective to stay in touch with existing customers than convince someone to become a customer. Retention emails should be an ongoing process and can include loyalty programs, special offers and incentives to keep them shopping.
Some Data for You
What is the right kind of email marketing strategy for the brand?
Measure your email benchmarks
Writing unique emails is essential for email marketing in 2022. Without smart content and engaging methodology, metrics like open-rate and click rates will see a dip. According to email marketing statistics set out by HubSpot, In 2021, the highest email click-through rate goes to the consulting services industry at 25%.
Measurement of realistic goals set in terms of email marketing benchmarks can help gain and analyze trends and competitor data while highlighting the gaps in the marketing campaign.
Understanding of your targeted audience
The writer is a guest in their inbox for the audience to whom the emails are written. To appeal to them, the email needs to be relevant to painpoints, benefits and special features of the products or services. Customizing the content based on the recipient's previous purchases or activity on social media can help improve click rates and conversions.
Transparency is the best policy.
It is not what you do, but why you do it that can make an impact on your customers. By explaining everything in detail can help build a bond and cultivate a relationship that a transactional mail could never achieve.
Timing of the emails for the win
According to Campaign Monitor.com, most of the emails are opened on a Friday, followed by Saturday and Sunday. Do your research and understand your customer's behavior. This makes a big difference to the success of your marketing strategy.
Tips to improve email marketing
- Personalize your subjects and make it interesting (ensure that it is not click-bait)
- Understand the right tone of voice and length of the mail and the subject
- Understand the target segments and connect with them with appropriate content
- Schedule the mails with follow up messages for opened, not opened, replied and not replied accordingly.
- Space out the messages so that the recipients do not feel spammed.
- Always test your mails before launching your mail marketing campaign.
But why choose email marketing?
Email marketing has been seen to be diminished and reconstructed many times in the past. Yet again, this is the only channel that has seen a 4200% ROI, meaning if $1 is put into email marketing, $42 is reaped out from it. This makes email marketing the most efficient channel compared to contemporary communication methods.
Email marketing is the oldest form of communication, and marketers should not be distracted from the oldest form. In a report curated by Statista, in 2021, there were about 306 million emails sent and received daily. Daily email users are expected to reach 4.6 billion in 2025, from 4 billion.
With this growing number of email users and the momentum email marketing has, marketers face some pain areas while using the channel to market.
Relevancy in emails
The relevance in any platform can be overlooked, but email marketing will quickly miss the desired turnaround rates if relevancy is missed. The marketer writing those emails needs to ensure that the email is customized to its recipient. If no relevance is found in the email, it will be immediately moved to trash. Not just that, the entire email could be blocked, directly impacting your domain.
Spam reporting
With limited storage space in businesses and work accounts, the emails that come from profiles not saved to the contact list can be directed to the spam folder automatically. This makes it difficult for the audience to notice the mail, not just read it.
While social media platforms can use the power of targeting ads that will appear on the screen of the targeted audience, the pain area of email marketing is that the email needs to be opened by the receiver; otherwise, the marketing fails. This, in turn, results in low click rates and open rates.
Compatibility to different devices
Most audiences today view their emails via their mobile devices. A simple and staked email to fit the mobile screen is essential instead of a multi-column layout. One of the other ways for emails consumed via mobile is to keep it single column and under 500 to 600 pixels.
Email marketing is here to stay!
Email marketing has moulded itself despite the hurdles and has stood out as the oldest yet successful form of communication. Today, 23% of the brands have already experimented with interactive elements, and another 32% plan to incorporate it within their scheme, as mentioned by HubSpot, 2020. As rightly mentioned by Bob Frady, Not enough talk about the importance of brand in email. Customers don’t sign up for email - they sign up for your brand.