Email is essential in any modern digital marketing strategy. No matter what industry you’re in, what products or services you sell, or who your audience is, emails are probably the best way to get your message out there.
Statista predicts there 3.93 billion email users in the world. That’s about half of Earth’s population.
With all these prospective subscribers ready to engage, it’s no wonder that so many companies say email marketing is a vital pillar.
And you can easily start any type of email marketing today with the help of your email service provider.
What is email marketing?
Email marketing is simply the process of sending relevant content to an interested audience. If their interests align with what your business has to offer, then you can send them emails that pique those interests and captivate their attention. It’s no different from any other type of marketing, except that with email, you have direct access to a subscriber’s inbox.
But first, you need people to receive those emails. Typically this means creating content on your website that draws in those interested in your area of expertise, then supplying means for them to subscribe and keep the relationship growing. Subscribe forms come in a variety of formats.
From there, you can segment your list to make sure you’re sending to the right people at the right time. Email marketing is most successful when you deliver a personalized experience to each of your contacts.
Consider the different types of email marketing strategies.
Running different types of automated email marketing campaigns is the best way to send individualized emails to each segmented group of your contacts. Some of the most common types of email marketing include:
- Welcome emails: Messages that welcome subscribers to a list, confirming their subscription and showing what they can expect to receive from you. This is also a good time for them to learn more about your company or products.
- Promotional emails: Messages that push a specific product, sale, or service with the intention of encouraging subscribers to purchase.
- Re-engagement emails: Messages sent to inactive members of your list trying to get them to open and interact with your emails again.
Each of these strategies has a different short-term goal, but every campaign is aimed at eventually converting your leads into customers.
How to measure email marketing
There are many ways to measure the success of your emails. You might be interested in different metrics based on the type of email marketing campaign you’re running. For instance, in a promotional email, you might be most concerned about the number of people who make a purchase in a specific region. With re-engagement emails, you might place a higher value on clicks to update preferences.
However, with any type of email marketing, you’ll be mostly concerned with your opens, clicks, unsubscribes, and return on investment. Your email platform’s dashboard and reporting tools should provide you with most of the analytics you need.
Campaign Monitor insights dashboard
Does it really matter?
Despite all of the new technology available, 86% of professionals still say email is their favorite mode of communication.
It’s important to give your customers what they want, and your customers want to receive promotional and sales offers through email.
What now?
Now that you understand why email is important, and the different types of email marketing that you can use to interact with your customers, your next step is to determine how to implement this tactic into your marketing strategy. One great way to get started is to create a welcome email for your new customers.