Resources Hub » Knowledge base » What is Direct Email Marketing?

Most of the highest profile marketing takes place on television or on billboards. While these are guaranteed to attract the eyes of consumers, they remain the same, regardless of who’s seeing it.

Direct email marketing has a clear advantage over such methods, as it can offer higher levels of personalization.

Read on to get a good sense of what direct email marketing means and how it can benefit your business.

What is direct email marketing?

Direct email marketing refers to an email campaign that is sent directly to subscribers. It’s a form of marketing that establishes a relationship between the brand and the customer.

By establishing this relationship, direct email marketing immediately sets itself apart from other marketing strategies.

How to measure direct email marketing

Given the personalized nature of direct email marketing, it’s easier to gauge than other forms of marketing. Since viewers can’t interact with TV ads, there’s no metric that calculates the relationship between an action and the ad.

If you want to know how to measure the effectiveness of direct email marketing, the following are the metrics you should pay attention to.

Open rates

Your open rate represents the number of times your emails were opened by your subscribers. You can calculate your open rate by dividing the number of opens by the number of delivered emails, then multiplying that number by 100.

Having a strong open rate is the first indicator of how well your direct email marketing is working.

The average open rate of all industries is 17.92%.

Click-through rates

Once you have a strong open rate, one of the next metrics you’ll need to understand is the click-through rate. A click-through rate is the percentage of times your subscribers interacted with your email by clicking.

To calculate your click-through rate, take the number of clicks your emails received and divide that number by the number of recipients for an email, then multiply that number by 100. If you notice your click-through rate is lower than you’d like, consider working on your CTA.

Does it really matter?

Due to the personal nature of direct email marketing, it’s an incredibly useful form of building your brand. It allows you to connect with your subscribers on a personal level that’s not available anywhere else.

With direct email marketing, personalization can be achieved in several different ways. Two of the most popular forms of personalized email marketing are email retargeting and welcome emails.

Email retargeting

Email retargeting is the process of tracking those who visit a website and following up with content that’s specifically tailored to their browsing behavior.

These emails tend to give potential customers information on specific products that they’ve viewed, or redirect them to a signup form they may have started filling out.

Welcome emails

Once somebody signs up for your mailing list, you should consider sending them a welcome email. By introducing yourself to your new subscribers, you start your relationship off on the right foot.

Ideally, welcome emails should be as personalized as possible, such as including your subscriber’s name and products they may be interested in.

Ideally, welcome emails should be as personalized as possible, such as including your subscriber’s name and products he or she may be interested in.

Source: Really Good Emails

What now?

In a world that seems dominated by social media, many might get the impression that direct email marketing has lost a bit of its luster. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

In order to wrap your head around the enduring quality of direct email marketing, here’s all the information you need to advocate for its value.

This blog provides general information and discussion about email marketing and related subjects. The content provided in this blog ("Content”), should not be construed as and is not intended to constitute financial, legal or tax advice. You should seek the advice of professionals prior to acting upon any information contained in the Content. All Content is provided strictly “as is” and we make no warranty or representation of any kind regarding the Content.

Get started with Campaign Monitor today.

With our powerful yet easy-to-use tools, it's never been easier to make an impact with email marketing.

Try it for free