What Is Email Marketing & Why Does My Business Need It?
Email marketing is not only one of the most used methods of digital communication but also one of the most successful methods of digital marketing that is now available. There are certainly more modern ways to communicate with your audiences, such as via social media and live chat. Email marketing, on the other hand, reigns supreme among marketing channels thanks to its user base of more than 4.5 billion individuals.
Email marketing is still considered to be the most successful marketing channel, ranking higher than social media marketing, search engine optimization marketing, and affiliate marketing. Why? With all the buzz around new channels, this technology that’s been there for decades still one of the most successful ways to sell and educate your audience?
Why is Email Marketing Important For Business?
It’s possible that you’re wondering to yourself, “Do people actually still use email?” Isn’t social media taking over these days? Even while it’s true that social media is an essential channel for every digital marketing plan, email offers a number of benefits that set it apart from the competition.
What makes email marketing so effective and profitable is the fact that it provides you with direct access on an individual level to the inboxes of your audience.
Let’s have a look at the statistics, shall we?
- In the year 2020, there were more than 4 billion people using email throughout the world.
- Email is the most favoured method of contact for consumers when dealing with small firms, according to 62% of customers.
Email marketing just converts better.
Consumers who make purchases after receiving offers through email spend 138% more than those who do not subscribe to get email offers. In point of fact, the returns on investment (ROI) for email marketing come in at a whopping 4400%. That is a tremendous deal! And if you are thinking that social media converts even better, you should reconsider since the average order value of a customer who makes a purchase via email is at least three times larger than that of a customer who makes a purchase through social media.
Simply said, email is by far the most effective method for making sales online. Now that you understand the significance of email marketing, let’s discuss the most effective strategies for doing it.
Types Of Email For Businesses
Emails for marketing purposes may be delivered in a variety of formats thanks to the many options available. They may be promotional or informative in nature, or they may fulfil a distinct function throughout the customer journey.
- Promotional Emails
Promotional emails used for marketing purposes always include a distinct “call-to-action,” or CTA for short. The CTA is the exact action that you want the reader to perform, such as seeing a particular page on your website or making use of a discount to make a purchase.
- Informational emails
A chance to share your views, observations, and suggestions with your audience—whatever it is that they will find most valuable.
- Re-engagement emails
The re-engagement email is an additional sort of marketing email that is very crucial. Re-engagement emails, which are exactly what they sound like, are used to re-establish communication with clients or subscribers who have been inactive in recent times.
The Fundamentals of Email Marketing
Keep in mind that you are a Guest in your audience’s email inbox.
People are constantly confronted with interruptions, sales pitches, and advertisements in every direction they turn. It’s possible that you believe your email is unique, but from the perspective of the reader, it’s just one of a million, and not in a positive sense. Because of this, it’s essential to behave politely at all times.
A couple of things to keep in mind when drafting an email
- Stay Human
Since email marketing is so widely used, there is a lot of competition in the industry. Make advantage of email to communicate with your users on a more personal level, address them by name, and show them the human side of your company.
- Use Engaging Titles, But Don’t Bait And Switch
It is essential to use attractive subject headers in order to increase the percentage of people who read your emails; nevertheless, you should be sure to stay on topic and avoid sending spam. When consumers believe they have been tricked, they are more likely to unsubscribe or report your communication as spam, both of which have a negative influence on deliverability.
- Keep Messages Short
Because the vast majority of email is read on a mobile device, it is important that you keep your text brief and to the point. If you have a lot of information that needs to be shared, you should send readers to a landing page or a blog post instead.
- Include CTAs At The Top And Bottom
It is standard practice to include calls to action (CTAs) at the top of landing pages; you can replicate this tactic in your email marketing by placing powerful CTAs after the first paragraph and once again at the very end.
- Ask Permission And Deliver On Your Promises
Never purchase email lists, since doing so is against the law in most places and provides no return on investment. Be careful to give high-quality content or deals when sending an email.
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Best Email Marketing Strategies
Email marketing requires careful planning and execution of campaigns in order to be successful. The following is a list of some of the most effective tactics that you may use.
- Implement the Appropriate Methods for the Building of Email Lists
Your email list’s calibre is the single most important factor in determining the effectiveness of your email marketing efforts. You need to use list-building tactics that are geared at attracting your target audience.
- Practice Good Email List Hygiene
Keeping your email list clean is an additional crucial component of an effective email marketing plan. Improving your sender reputation requires you to remove inactive subscribers as well as email addresses that are inaccurate.
- Keep Your List Warm
Send out emails to your list on a regular basis to maintain engagement from your subscribers. Sending out emails on an irregular basis might cause readers to forget who you are, which in turn can result in poor conversion rates.
- One Goal One Campaign
Create each campaign and email with a single goal in mind when you do so. When it comes to email marketing, it is not effective to attempt to accomplish two (or more) goals at once. Your audience will only get more confused as a result, and your conversion rates will suffer.
- KPIs
To achieve success, you need to do more than just send an email to your readers once every few weeks. You need to monitor the performance of your campaigns if you want to have an understanding of which techniques are successful. This requires identifying and keeping tabs on the appropriate key performance indicators (KPIs).
Your KIPS can be
- Open rates
- CTR’s
- Sales
- Traffic
Advantages Of Email Marketing
An email will remain in the inbox until it is either read, deleted, or archived, which is one of the reasons it has become such a popular marketing tool for businesses. Another reason why email has become such a popular marketing tool for businesses is that it forces the user to take some kind of action.
Email marketing can assist you in building a connection with your target demographic while simultaneously driving traffic to your website, social media accounts, or any other location you would want people to go. To ensure that you are just sending individuals the content that they are most interested in reading, you can even segment your emails and target consumers based on demographics.
The most important one would be you control the platform. You do not control the vast majority of other marketing platforms. In the event that the platform is no longer operational, all of your efforts will be for nothing. It is possible that your reach will be significantly diminished if either Google or Facebook decides to tweak their algorithm. On the other hand, when you communicate with your subscribers by email, you retain ownership of the connections you build with them.
Disadvantages Of Email Marketing
Not everything about email marketing is sunshine and rainbows. You should be aware of the following potential drawbacks.
- Competition
It might be difficult to be noticed in an inbox that is already full of messages. To increase the likelihood of people opening your emails, you’ll need to be creative.
- Email Lists
In order for your campaigns to be successful while using email marketing, you need to build an audience list. Creating an email list is a time-consuming process that may be challenging.
- Delivery and Deliverability Issues
There is no assurance that the email will be delivered. The majority of email service providers, such as Gmail and Outlook, use spam filters. You are going to have to deal with delivery and deliverability problems if you want your email marketing initiatives to be successful.
Best Email Marketing Tools For Businesses
The following are the top email marketing services that have been tried and tested and are highly recommended.
Not only does Sendinblue provide businesses with all-inclusive email marketing software, but it also provides them with SMS marketing tools. I have a detailed review here if you want more information
Although HubSpot is best known for its CRM platform, the company also provides very effective email marketing tools for companies of all sizes. You won’t need the assistance of a designer if you use an editor that allows you to drag and drop elements and that provides you with templates that are already designed. The programme also includes a number of other capabilities, such as customisation options, A/B testing, and more.
Drip is a marketing automation solution that gives customers the ability to design complicated processes for email automation and include conditional statements inside their email content. Campaigns, workflows, and triggers are all neatly structured, and Drip can be as basic or sophisticated as you want it to be in order to meet your needs.
Mailchimp is one of the most used software programs for email marketing. Because it is simple to use and has a user interface that is straightforward, it is an excellent choice for those who are just beginning with email marketing.
Summing Things Up
Your understanding of the field of email marketing should have improved, hopefully as a result of reading this article. If you’ve been ignoring email marketing or putting your strategy on autopilot, it’s time to step up your strategy.
If you’re prepared to put in the time to learn how to do it properly, email marketing can generate enormous returns for your business, and it doesn’t have to be complex. It is imperative that you keep the commitments you make. Make sure you provide individuals with what they’ve requested and communicate with them through email on a frequent basis to live up to their expectations.
After you have a firm grasp of the fundamentals, you can move on to more advanced areas like email segmentation and analytics. You will be able to provide more helpful messages to recipients if you start sending individual emails to each group.
What email marketing do you practice to keep your readers engaged?