E-mail marketing

What is Email Marketing?

You've probably received a newsletter or two over the years from brands you'd like to keep up to date with news, offers, etc. Note, however, that email marketing today comes in many forms, and the classic newsletter with info on offers and news is therefore only one of them.

Building credibility and thus warming potential customers via emails has become a best practice in the marketing world. This is done by companies sending out emails to their mailing list with free guides, fun videos, or content with specialist knowledge to name just a few possible examples.

E-mail marketing has evolved

In the past, a company sat down and wrote a newsletter in their newsletter program, which was sent out to all recipients on the company's mailing list. Today, email marketing has evolved and more technical software tools are used to help companies manage this form of marketing.

It has been found that it is much more effective to segment mailing list, in order to target the mails sent out to be relevant to the recipients - this is called direct mail. It is particularly clever because the more relevant the communication is to the recipient, the fewer people will be annoyed at receiving the mail, thus reducing unsubscribe rates.

With the right email marketing platform, this exercise could be largely automated. This means that today you have the ability to create automated mail flows that allow your mail platform to automatically send targeted emails to your recipients. Which email each recipient should receive depends on the specific action the recipient has taken on your website.

A good marketing automation can communicate with a large number leads via personalised content to each potential customer's situation, needs and willingness to buy. This is possible because the system is able to track and analyse what your potential customers find interesting as well as their stage in the buying process via data about their visits to your website.

What are the benefits of email marketing?

Looking at email marketing vs social media, it's worth mentioning that your mailing list is yours! Have you ever heard the horrible stories about companies' media profiles being shut down? Because they had unknowingly broken a rule on the media they had otherwise spent an extremely long time building fans on. You can't go wrong with email marketing. Here you have your own mailing list and neither Facebook, Instagram or other media can delete the recipients on your mailing list.

As previously written, you have the opportunity to communicate more directly to your target audience via direct mail. This is to reinforce your relationship with your customers even without you having to do much. Because once your mails have been automated, your system takes care of most of it and you can concentrate on other things in your business. For example, if you have a customer who is unsure whether or not to buy, you can use email to build trust so that the customer is warmed up enough for you to eventually call and complete the purchase. This saves you both time and money compared to cold canvassing, as they don't have to call the customer over several times to build up the same interest, which is instead automatically sent via your email flow.

What types of marketing emails are there?

There are several ways to conduct your email marketing. Most businesses use different types of marketing emails to keep their customers updated with useful and relevant information about their business. They all have their advantages so instead of listing all types of marketing emails, here are some examples of the most frequently used types of marketing emails:

Newsletters - Help keep your customers up to date with your business news. In addition, it gives the customer an insight into what is happening in your company, such as what projects you are working on or the hiring and promotion of new employees. It is the best way to keep your customers updated so that they can follow your company's development.

However, it is also important that you keep in mind that your newsletter will not be a nuisance for your customers. As a general rule, stick to the following:

• Short and precise text: make sure your newsletter contains only the relevant information and text, so that the newsletter is not long.
• Design: make sure the images and layouts in your newsletter are consistent with your brand.
• Beware of spam: If you send out your newsletter too frequently, your customers may not read it and, in the worst case, unsubscribe.

Dedicated mails - If you have an offer that you want to send information about to your customers, you can send them a one-off email to let them know if it is an offer that is attractive to them. This could be anything from an offer of free webinars to advice on a specific marketing area. The advantage is also that through the email you can create a call-to-action button which allows you to get an overview of which of your customers have said yes to the offer advertised in the email.

Transactional e-mails - If your customer has accepted a specific type of email, they will receive a separate email with information about the offer they have accepted. An example of this is if your customer has agreed to participate in a webinar, they will receive a separate email describing how to join the webinar online.

Generate leads with automated emails

Whether you have a good sales team or not, there will be potential customers that you miss out on because calling isn't always enough. Many customers need to build a credibility to who you are and what your business can offer. This is where automated emails can be a much more profitable marketing effort, with the aim of providing your customers with valuable knowledge so they go from being cold leads to being warm.

So with automated emails, you can warm up your potential customers with specific and targeted content - sent to them automatically, while giving your sales department valuable insight into which stage of the buying process is most likely to result in a call.

The conclusion is that automated emails are a very good idea to include in your marketing strategy.

How do I get started with marketing automation?

The very first and probably the most time-consuming thing for you is to write some good workflows, with quality content for each segment you want to split your mailing list into.

Next, you need to choose a provider for your so-called email campaigns.

And last but not least, your written newsletters need to be set up in the system you have chosen and associated with the segments and actions you want the system to work from.

The vast majority of companies choose to hire a marketing agency or a consultant to help with this exercise, but that doesn't mean it's impossible to do it yourself. If you have a marketing manager on staff, they will most likely know about it, or at least be able to get to it.

Frequently asked questions about Email marketing