Understanding Email Marketing
Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. It involves using email to send advertisements, request business, or solicit sales or donations.
Email marketing strategies commonly seek to achieve one or more of three primary objectives, to build loyalty, trust, or brand awareness. The term usually refers to sending email messages with the purpose of enhancing a merchant’s relationship with current or previous customers, encouraging customer loyalty and repeat business, acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately, and sharing third-party ads.
Advantages
Email marketing is popular with companies for several reasons:
- Email marketing is significantly cheaper and faster than traditional mail, mainly because with email, most of the cost falls on the recipient.
- Businesses and organizations who send a high volume of emails can use an ESP (email service provider) to gather information about the behavior of the recipients.
- The insights provided by consumer response to email marketing help businesses and organizations understand and make use of consumer behavior.
- Almost half of American Internet users check or send email on a typical day, with emails delivered between 1 am and 5 am local time outperforming those sent at other times in open and click rates.
Why Your Brand Needs an Email Strategy
Email is arguably your strongest tool in your digital marketing strategy.
Chances are, your target audience uses email, and checks their inboxes daily (99% of consumers do). It’s for this reason that 87% of B2B marketers and 79% of B2C marketers use email as one of their core organic digital marketing tactics.
Email is the one chance you have to completely curate the message your reader sees, and then deliver it directly to their inbox. Marketers who utilise email marketing see strong ROI – as much as 42:1.
Personalisation is one of the most powerful aspects of email marketing. You can segment your audience into specific categories based on their past interactions with your brand, on their job title or duties, on their online behaviour, or a vast number of other criteria. This detailed level of personalisation means you can speak directly to the stage of the sales funnel they’re in, ensuring you’re delivering the right message to the right person at the right time.
As lucrative as email can be, brands will only see the results they need if they approach this tactic with expertise, knowledge and skill. Your email marketing campaign can only be as strong as the attention you give it.
That’s where Ventura comes in. We’re a full-service content and email marketing agency, and our email marketing experts understand how to leverage this medium to produce high-quality results. They’ve worked with brands in a wide variety of industries, including software and technology, consumer goods, health care, education, manufacturing, finance, food and beverage and many more. As such, they know how to tailor messages to every stage of the funnel in B2B and B2C audiences alike.
Elements of Successful Email Marketing
You may write emails on a daily basis, but the typical business or personal email is very different from an effective marketing email. To create a successful email marketing programme, you must take into consideration these details:
Compelling email copy
Your emails must be well-written. That begins with the subject line and carries through the body of the email, and even into the signature at the end. Email writing is short-form writing, which means every single word counts. It takes a deft approach to ensure your email copy says everything it needs to without a single excess word.
Attractive email template and graphic design
Plain-text emails might be just what your marketing programme needs. On the other hand, a bright, colourful template may work better for your brand. Whatever the case, it’s essential that design and layout is taken into consideration and each email template is professionally created and implemented.
Analytics and data
Every email marketing campaign should have specific, measurable goals. Collecting data from your email marketing software, website analytics, social media metrics and other sources gives you insight into your campaign performance. With this information, you can proceed confidently with your email marketing programme, making adjustments strategically to meet your objectives.
Audience segmentation
Strategic segmentation is one of the key drivers of successful email marketing. Dividing your database into lists based on contact activity, characteristics, position in the sales funnel or other criteria allows you to tailor messages to the reader and gives you more control over your overall email programme.
That said, arbitrary lists and categories won’t deliver results; this process must be carefully planned with specific goals in mind.
Supporting digital marketing materials
Captivating subject lines and exceptional copywriting can only get you so far in email marketing. After you’ve enticed someone to open your email, you must provide something worth the reader’s time. There are countless types of materials you can share through email, including:
- Blog posts.
- Videos
- Case studies.
- White papers.
- Quizzes and interactive media.
- Free or discounted offers.
The bottom line: If a reader feels that opening your email was a waste of their time, they’ll be less likely to open the next one.
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