Why Email Marketing is a Vital Marketing Strategy to Your Success

You can reach more people with email marketing than almost any other form of marketing because well we check out email often! According to a Harvard Business Review, professionals spend 28% of their workday inside their email boxes. Consider this, in 2020 it was noted by our friends over at Statista that there are over 316.9 million emails sent and received daily! When looking at other forms of marketing such as organic social media there is no comparison. Organic social media as we have discussed before continues to have a declining reach, whereas, with email marketing, there is a better chance that your message will be seen. According to Campaign Monitor, 90% of emails get delivered to their intended target, and email marketing open rates still hold strong with an average open rate of 19.36%.

How Does Email Play Into My Marketing Funnel?

Every person who is a potential client, whether you know or not goes through a funnel to purchase, and email marketing plays an important part in that funnel. If you are not sure how to build a marketing funnel, check out this blog post. Email marketing can be used to nurture someone both before and after someone becomes a client making it integral to a marketing funnel.

Whether you are trying to get someone to understand your products and services to buy or keep someone informed that is already a client, email marketing should be part of that marketing strategy. There are several types of emails to be used for both situations, and they will help you know how to move someone from someone who just found out about you to a longer-term client. So let’s talk about the different types of ways to engage with both your prospects and current clients by using email marketing.

How Can I Engage with My Audiences with Email Marketing?

Newsletters

The first one we will talk about is sending a monthly newsletter. Who you are sending your newsletter can include both prospects and current clients making it very versatile to use across multiple audiences. This is often one of the most common types of email marketing because well it’s the easiest to implement. Newsletters are a form of email marketing that lets you message your customers informing them of all kinds of information including company news, any tips you may have to offer, promoting a new product/service, etc.

Newsletters can be sent out weekly, monthly, or quarterly and should be based on the amount of information you have to share. When picking a time frame think through quality vs quantity. Sending out a weekly email is a big understanding in ensuring you are able to have enough content that is valuable to your end-user on w weekly basis. You don’t want to send emails if they are not packed with valuable information because once you have someone unsubscribe it can be hard to get them back. Pick a timeframe that suits your business the best and one that customers will appreciate. Remember the information should be presented in an engaging way in order to keep your audience connected to your business.

Automated Email Sequences

Another great way to use emails is to create an email sequence that is triggered on specific events such as signing up for service, making a purchase, or a drip campaign. These automated sequence emails are useful in situations where the same action should require the same set of emails.

Take for instance signing up for a service or software. There is likely a series of emails that you likely would send to onboard someone to your service or product. This helps take off the heavy lifting of questions that often get asked in the beginning stages of a relationship. This same thing happens when someone makes a purchase on an eCommerce website. You can send emails that are automated and are sent every time based on the fact they have purchased. You can also send emails that are sent when someone doesn’t quite finish their purchase, often called an abandoned cart email.

The last and usually the most common is a drip campaign which is usually reserved for when you are trying to convince someone to buy your service. These are great tactic to use in long sales cycles and are usually a series of emails that explains the value of your products or service.

Promotional Emails

The main focus of this type of email marketing is to attract potential customers by informing them about what your business offers. Unless you have a revolving schedule of offers these types of emails do not necessarily have a specific time frame for sending them out and are less likely to be automated. It’s okay for instance to have a regular newsletter and send a separate email for a promotional offer. Just be sure to balance the cadence of emails. The end goal of a promotional email is for a potential customer or someone who is already a customer to complete a conversion and generate revenue.

Milestone Emails

Now milestone emails are ones that are related to existing customers, not potential new ones. These emails are sent because of a specific occasion. These occasions can range from your company celebrating a birthday to other significant anniversaries. That could be for a birthday, celebrating how long someone has been a customer, etc. If you are sending a milestone email for someone’s birthday, it would be smart to include some type of deal/discount. According to Experian, birthday emails have a 481% higher transaction rate when including a deal/discount compared to promotional emails. When a customer receives the message, there will be gratitude towards your company for remembering such an event and this will increase customer loyalty. Another benefit of implementing this type of email is that inactive users could become active once again when they are reminded of your business.

Survey Emails

Survey emails are ones sent to a preferred target(s) to collect quantitative data. The most popular form is a questionnaire. While creating a questionnaire, do not make it that long and ensure that it works. Test it out a few times before sending it to play it safe. The benefits of survey emails are that they are cost-effective, the respondent can provide honest answers (at least you would hope so), and you can easily gather information about someone. The survey sent out could be one that you want to learn more about how customers feel about a certain product/service. There could be a follow-up survey post-purchase to understand how the consumer felt about the transaction process.

Now that we have talked about all the different types of emails you can send. Let’s go talk about how you build that email list.

How to Build That Email List

Building an email list can be done in a lot of different ways. It is important when building an email list in different ways that you funnel these emails into specific segments to ensure they get the right type of content for where they are in your funnel.

• Offer resources on your website in exchange for their email such as PDFs, videos, etc. In this method, you are usually asking for the opt-in to your list while still giving value in some form of free content.
• Promote newsletters on your website through pop-ups, posts, etc. This is one of the most popular and easiest ways to grow a list. Be sure to create a separate page that really showcases the value of signing up for your newsletter. After all, no one is volunteering to sign up unless they see the value.
• Offer pop-ups with quizzes, this is a great way to get people engaged with your brand by having a quiz on your website that helps them better understand if they need your product or service.
• Offer surveys/conduct market research asking for the recipient’s opinion on something that is related to your business. This also serves the same purpose as quizzes in getting someone involved in the process of understanding if they need your product or service.
• Host free webinars. This method can serve two purposes of adding someone to your email list and starting a funnel down the path to becoming a client. They will get valuable great information with a webinar and follow-up information.
• Utilize your social media pages. This seems like a no-brainer but do not forget to post on your social media pages promoting the value of signing up for your newsletter.
• Social media ads can also be a great way to build an email list using their built-in forms that pop up in your social media feeds.

Email Marketing is Part of Every Successful Online Marketing Plan

Email marketing is still as prominent and relative as it once was. No matter the size of your business, incorporating this type of marketing into your marketing strategy will be influential as it can bring more success to your business. This is a great way to expand your reach and to make even more relationships.