According to Statista, the return on investment (ROI) of email marketing is $36 per $1. Understanding what is email marketing is wonderful and it plays a vital role in the digital marketing world. So when you are into any online business you should consider email marketing as one of the best methods for promoting your business.
As a result of this alone, Email needs to be an important tenet of your digital marketing approach. If you don't make use of email marketing on your digital marketing journey, I think you are missing a lot.
So here in this article, I will reveal everything you need to know about what is email marketing and how does it work, the importance of email marketing, and the email marketing tools which I will suggest for you.
What Is the Meaning of Email Marketing?
Email marketing is exactly what it sounds like: marketing is done through email. However, it goes beyond that. Email marketing is the perfect channel to build relationships with your subscribers.
Email marketing is an effective marketing channel that uses email to advertise the items or services your company offers.
Email marketing is a type of direct marketing as well as digital marketing. Incorporating it into your marketing automation efforts can assist in informing your clients about your most recent products or offers. Through various forms of marketing emails, it can also be extremely important in your overall marketing strategy for lead generation, brand awareness, relationship building, and consumer engagement in between transactions.
In order to read some brief history of email check here!
What Are the 4 Types of Marketing Emails?
Here, I will tell you four (4) types of email marketing that you can send to your subscribers' inboxes and build relationships with them, here are:
1. Welcome email
It is always satisfying to gain a new subscriber. There is someone out there who wants to know more about your products or services. Sending a welcome email to that person will allow your business to introduce itself. They will either gain more knowledge about your business or your products as a result of this, or they will simply get to know a new fan a little better.
This is an opportunity for you to discover a little more about them as well. You can get information about them, such as where they live or their birthday or you can even ask them how often they'd like to hear from you.
However you portray it, just be mindful not to mislead anyone.
2. Promotional email
Promotional emails are a fantastic approach for your small business to increase sales, signups, and new product offerings. Promotional emails contain discounts and other incentives to persuade your target audience to purchase a new good or service. Use promotional emails to drive new items or services to subscribers, reward engaged subscribers with special offers, and cross-sell products to your clientele.
3. Newsletter
Email Newsletters are one of the most common and popular email marketing campaigns. As a small business, you can use an email newsletter to provide subscribers with helpful knowledge and tools. To measure the effectiveness of a newsletter ask yourself if the content helps build a relationship with subscribers, increases retention and engagement, and strengthens subscriber loyalty.
4. Retention Email
Consider Retention Emails for your small business if you have some experience with email marketing campaigns. Your small business can maintain touch with subscribers who haven't interacted with your brand or email campaigns recently by sending them a note asking for feedback or making an offer. You can keep your hard-won consumers by using the effective email advertising tactic known as retention emails.
Also, I advise you to read different types of email marketing.
How Does Email Marketing Work?
Although email marketing is not a difficult process, it does involve a lot of A/B testing to determine how to connect with your subscribers in a way that benefits both them and your business's objectives.
Here is a breakdown of the email marketing process:
- Register for an email marketing platform
- Come up with an email marketing strategy
- Build up your email list
- Setup automation task
- Use A/B testing to track and increase campaign performance
- Be cleaning up your email list regularly
Here, I will explain the terms I have mentioned above in detail:
1. Register for an email marketing platform of your choice
A competent email marketing platform can help you totally automate the email marketing process.
Your first step should be to decide which platform to join because trying to email hundreds of people using your own account while manually tracking the outcomes will not work.
A platform for email marketing will assist you in:
- You can add users to your list in a number of ways
- Send your audience emails
- Offer you statistics on the number of recipients who read and respond to your emails (click a link in the email)
- Offer you a range of options for audience segmentation based on predetermined parameters
- Create Facebook retargeting targets based on your email list
- Automate a variety of email marketing tasks, such as sending your subscribers a welcome email or customized emails based on their activity
- Create sales immediately from emails.
- Create email funnels to guide users to the pages, products, or activities you desire.
Here are some of the best email marketing platforms you can look into:
You can start with any of the above email tools I've mentioned but note that ActiveCampaign only offers a 14-day free trial because it's the only email tool that doesn't have a free version of their service but is awesome for small and mid-sized businesses.
So if I am to advise you, I think you should go for Mailchimp or Hubspot. I will discuss brief information about them if you stick to this article.
2. Come up with an email marketing strategy
The first step in developing a digital marketing campaign is to come up with a strategy.
Before starting any campaigns, having an email marketing strategy in place can assist you to:
- Make a decision regarding the integration of email marketing with the other web marketing efforts you'll be launching.
- Choose an email marketing platform and estimate your monthly expenses.
- Choose the tactics you'll use to expand your email list.
- Choose when to automate tasks and what messages to deliver at what times.
- Put the appropriate reporting systems in place to measure the success of your email marketing.
3. Build up your email list
The most crucial element in your approach should be learning how to expand your email list because email marketing only works if you have a sizable number of engaged subscribers.
As previously said, adding people to your list who manually signed up to receive your emails is also an option.
An email list can be a challenge to build and maintain, but with the appropriate strategy and tools, it can be a great asset for your business.
The most effective methods to grow your email subscriber list are:
- Post engaging content on your site - No matter what strategy you choose, it won't work if your content isn't what users want. On the other hand, if your content offers users value, your email list will expand more quickly.
- Offer incentives - Free eBooks, trial offers, and other "gifts" work well as enticements to get users to give you their email addresses.
- Make it easy to subscribe - The number of people who can sign up for your emails will change if your signup buttons are placed in areas that visitors can quickly detect (on both desktop and mobile).
I advise you to read how to collect email addresses from every angle.
4. Setup automation task
The ability to fully automate the email marketing process is one of its main advantages.
Email marketing automation is the practice of sending customers targeted emails based on the activities they take after receiving your emails or on your website.
The most typical email automation tasks include:
- Welcome Email - Sending new subscribers a welcome email as soon as they join your list
- Email Campaign - Sending a series of emails to them (replicating a sales funnel)
- Abandon Cart Email - Emailing website users who added items to their shopping carts but did not complete the transaction
- Cross-selling / Upselling - Customers should be given product recommendations based on past purchases.
- Feedback Forms - Asking clients for feedback/reviews X days after they have completed a purchase
5. Use A/B Testing to Track and Increase Campaign Performance
You need to conduct a lot of A/B testing in order to operate effective email marketing campaigns, in addition to having the correct kind of subscribers on your list.
You can utilize A/B testing to see what kind of email messages might result in greater user engagement and more conversions.
A/B testing can be used to test the following:
- The word count in email subject lines
- The emails' structure (HTML, text, with or without images)
- The email body's length
- How frequently emails are sent
- The volume of commercial messages in the email
- Placement of your signup forms
- The text that appears on your sign-up forms
- The "deals" offered as rewards for signing up for emails
- The procedure for authenticating emails in order to ensure their legitimacy (no authentication, double-opt-in)
You need to monitor the appropriate metrics and take out any variables that can affect the outcome of your testing before you can execute any type of A/B testing (not only emails).
You should always track the following metrics when using email marketing:
- Number of daily fresh email subscribers
- If you have multiple placements, such as a sidebar, exit popups, or another, you need to know which one they used to sign up for your list.
- Email click-through and open rates (the number of recipients that opened a given email campaign and those who clicked on a link inside it)
- How many users arrived at your website via an email link?
- how many email conversions were made (and from which campaign)
6. Be Cleaning up Your Email List Regularly
If you are just starting-off email marketing, you need to understand the following things below:
- A huge amount of your subscribers will be inactive - Having a large number of inactive subscribers on your list is common. A campaign's average email open rate is roughly 20%, which means that a sizable portion of the recipients on your list won't read your message.
- Having a lot of subscribers is not always the best approach - Sending emails that only a small portion of recipients open will cause them to be marked as spam. This implies that your reach will gradually get shorter. Emails that are opened by the majority of recipients, on the other hand, improve the campaign's effectiveness as a whole.
- Managing large lists will cost you a lot of money - The monthly cost increases as your email list grows. Once you have 10,000 subscribers, a competent email marketing tool subscription may cost you more than $150 per month.
Perform a regular list cleanup and remove inactive subscribers from your list as one way to reduce costs and improve the health of your list.
It is best to remove users who subscribed to your list but did not open your campaigns because they are not helpful for your company's objectives.
Keep in mind that having a smaller list of active subscribers is preferable to having a large number of inactive ones.
Why Email Marketing is Important?
Even if I didn't tell you email marketing is important, you got to understand that based on the above sentences, you will realize that it plays a vital role in any online business. Let's look at some of the importance of email marketing here:
- 50% of the world's population used email
- Your audience belongs to you
- You can communicate with your subscribers directly
- People voluntarily signed up to receive a message
- High ROI in email marketing
- Emails are one of the perfect selling tools
- Email marketing can be automated
- Tracking of performance is easy
- It's an excellent survey tool
- Boost the value of your digital business
1. 50% of the world's population used email
Email is by far the most widely utilized form of communication in the world, which makes it crucial for marketing purposes. Based on OptinMonster statistic shows that:
- More than 4 billion email accounts are currently in use (The total world population is around 8 billion)
- 99% of people who use email check it at least once a day, and many do so several times.
- The average email open rate is 20%, the average click-through rate is 3.71%, and the engagement rate on the top social networks is 0.6%.
- Only 20% of consumers follow the same brand on social media, compared to 60% who subscribe to a newsletter to receive messages and discounts.
- The ROI for email marketing is 440%. This indicates that a $1 investment might yield as much as $44.
Email is therefore the ideal channel for digital marketing efforts because it has the highest ROI and the highest level of engagement of any channel.
2. Your audience belongs to you
You don't have to share your email list with anyone else since you own it; it is a valuable resource for your business. Unlike your followers on Facebook or Twitter, who are personnel of those companies.
The worth of your online business when it comes time to sell can be greatly increased by having a sizable list of users who manually and freely signed up for your list.
3. You can communicate with your subscribers directly
You have a direct line of communication with your audience with email marketing.
Without having to pay Facebook advertising expenses or rely on their algorithms, you can use a strong email list in whatever way you like to engage directly with your audience.
Emails have a high degree of personalization capability and can be used to start one-on-one conversations with potential buyers.
4. People voluntarily signed up to receive a message
Users that sign up for your list do so because they believe in your business and want to hear from you via email. As opposed to Facebook users who see irrelevant adverts, this is different.
From a commercial standpoint, you may develop them so that eventually they will take a step that adds value to your business.
5. High ROI in email marketing
As was already stated, email marketing can have an ROI of up to 440%. That is more than twice as much as SEO, which is the second-best channel.
An online business can benefit from email marketing by:
- Higher-income
- Raise sales conversion rates
- Boost online traffic
- Increase brand awareness
These figures are merely estimates; your real return on investment will be influenced by a variety of elements, including the nature of the things you sell, your profit margins, the price of acquiring new customers, and the effectiveness of your email marketing efforts.
6. Emails are one of the perfect selling tools
At the end of the day, every business wants to boost sales, which is why running email marketing campaigns is so crucial.
Because email can be customized, unlike other media, it has been shown to be a fantastic selling tool.
Emails can be tailored based on user activities as you move through the various stages of an email sales funnel.
Because no other channel provides this level of adaptability, email is more efficient and has a higher ROI than ads.
7. Email marketing can be automated
Email marketing may be totally automated, which is one of its wonderful features. The entire process—from a user's subscription to your list to their purchase from your store—can be fully automated.
Automated processes are easier to optimize (because they have a lot of constant variables) and require less time to manage.
8. Tracking of performance is easy
Email marketing also has the advantage of being highly measurable in all respects. This is crucial because without measurement, something cannot be improved. You may increase your profit by knowing exactly how much it costs to conduct a campaign and the income generated.
Other digital networks are not like this. When you execute an email campaign, you can precisely track the number of email recipients who have opened it, clicked on a link, and completed a purchase as a result of it.
To fine-tune your campaigns or start a one-on-one interaction with a specific person, you can even dive down and discover the activities they took.
9. It's an excellent survey tool
You need customer feedback to continuously enhance your products and online presence if you want to create a successful online business.
The most qualified sources of useful information for you are your community and subscription list. These individuals subscribed to your list in order to follow your brand, and their views are more important than everyone else's.
Email marketing can also be used to survey your community and get information that will enable you to produce content, products, and services that are better.
If you were going to outsource this task to a different business, you can use your list to test a new product idea and save a ton of time and money by doing it yourself.
10. Boost the value of your digital business
Having a targeted email list and well-optimized email campaigns can significantly raise the worth of your internet business for resale (or other reasons), which can have a significant impact on the amount you can earn.
Three variables are typically taken into account when valuing an online business: monthly organic traffic, monthly traffic, and monthly revenue. In addition to that, prospective customers search for more criteria, and email marketing is one of them.
A business that can demonstrate both a consistently expanding email list and high conversion rates is worth much more than one that can only demonstrate traffic performance.
Which Email Marketing Tool To Go For?
In this section, I will suggest some of the best email marketing tools for you that can help your digital marketing campaign improved. Here are the followings:
ActiveCampaign is a cloud-based software platform for small-to-midsized businesses. The business provides software that combines the categories of transactional email, email marketing, marketing automation, sales automation, and CRM. You can check ActiveCampaign reviews for in-depth details.
GetResponse is a comprehensive marketing tool that is especially well-suited for e-commerce businesses. They provide their users with simple landing page builders, a built-in CRM, and advanced automation options in addition to their email marketing tools. You can also check GetResponse reviews for more detail.
HubSpot is a CRM platform with all the tools, integrations, and resources you need to link content management, sales, marketing, and customer support. Also, it's easy to use HubSpot CRM to expand your business.
Mailchimp is a comprehensive marketing tool that facilitates communication with and management of your clients, consumers, and other interested parties. Our marketing strategy emphasizes sound contact management procedures, gorgeously designed campaigns, and effective data analysis. We're here to assist you in becoming a competent marketer.
Mailerlite is one of the simplest email tools, especially if you are just starting your digital marketing journey, and they have a very cheap pricing plan.
So if you still don't find the email tools of your choice here, you can visit the best email marketing platforms that boost online business.
Conclusion
Email marketing is a strong tool for customer acquisition, engagement, and retention. Your small business might gain a lot by launching a fruitful email marketing strategy. In order to achieve your small business objectives, make sure to choose the appropriate email marketing approach.
Remember that your consumer or target is more likely to forward and/or share your email with others if they feel it to be extremely valuable (make sure to always include your social media share buttons).
Please get in touch if your small business needs help creating or running an email marketing campaign. Always happy to assist!
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email Marketing tips