Email Marketing
November 1, 2020
The goals for marketing emails are finding new customers, retaining the existing ones, and informing them along their journey with valuable content. Regardless of the type of email you send, you need the receiver to open it, read to the end, and take action. Most marketers understand the basics of sending a marketing email – personalize the copy, be precise, and make the call to action pop.
Once you master the basics, you need to understand which type of marketing email to send to which category of your audience, and when. Your brand is unique and you need to tailor your email content, depending on its unique needs. Below are 10 types of marketing emails to incorporate into your email content strategy.
Did you know that 74 percent of your subscribers are hoping to receive a welcome email once they give you their email address? Surprisingly, only about 50 percent of brands have an automated welcome email. Sending a welcome email is a simple way to build a business partnership with your readers. When done correctly, that welcome email can help forge a lasting relationship.
If you personalize the email, it will have a better click-though than any other email you might ever send in future. Better yet, these emails are less promotional and more intimate. When sending a welcome email, focus on introducing your readers to your business rather than marketing products. Here, the first impression matters – what the readers think about your business from that first email stays with them for a long time. In the email, tell the new subscriber what to expect, and show them how to navigate through your business to find the product or service they need. Don’t forget to start off by thanking them for joining in the first place.
Subscribers who receive a well-crafted welcome email are more likely to read 40 percent more content from you in the next six months. Because welcome emails have a better click-through rate than any other email, you will boost your business metrics with that first email.
With all its benefits, a welcome email can give a bad first impression if you don’t craft it right. If you start off wrong, you burn all your chances of creating that lasting relationship with the readers, so take your time and write an email that makes the subscriber feel positive toward your brand.
These are educational or hand curated emails that ensure your subscribers have your brand on their mind every time. An email newsletter is a simple way to start your marketing campaign programs. You can use the emails to tell your readers more about your business, your industry, the products or services and their benefits, employee profiles, or just solve your customers’ problems with guides and tutorials.
When crafting newsletters, you want to have a goal for the email. Do you need to educate your readers, nudge them to take action, introduce a new project, or get your customers thinking about your brand? You might also want to create shareable content to attract new customers from the existing ones.
Whatever your goal is, your subscribers will only open, read, and share the newsletters if it offers them value. If your email is stuffed with promotional content, you may not get the response you hope for. You can use the email to introduce a new product, announce an event, and request your subscribers to give feedback. When you keep your customers in the loop, you will likely keep them coming back to your business.
With newsletter emails, you need to track your metrics to ensure you achieve your goals. You can use a CRM such as HubSpot or Goodbits to track the performance of your newsletter email open rates.
When used right, a newsletter email helps you create more brand awareness, diversify your content, repurpose content, and find new customers through shared content. They can even create an additional revenue stream for your business. However, with a newsletter emails, you have to carefully consider the layout - where to place images, text alignment, and other readability considerations. If you don’t do it right, you might end up losing readers who find the layout messy. Again, you need to prioritize the information you need the readers to focus on so that they are not lost in tidbits of blurbs. Here's a great example of a newsletter from Unsplash, a free and popular photo site that we use often to curate amazing images.
Also referred to as standalone emails, dedicated emails provide customers with information about one offer. For instance, you could write an email inviting your readers to a webinar you will be hosting, or inform them of a new product you are launching. The content of the dedicated emails helps you set the foundation to add a call-to-action at the bottom of the email.
For instance, a smartphone brand about to release a new phone might want to request readers to pre-order the upcoming device. However, the brand has to start by informing the customers of the new phone and its features and benefits before asking them to pre-order.
Again, these emails are easy to measure since you only have one message and one goal. You can track the progress of the email by checking the email click through rates to the landing page, and long term ROI from the subscribers who click through.
Social media is a marketing channel that no digital business can be without. If you are using social media marketing, it is easier to link it to your email campaign. You can use software that automates the social media emails, or you can send the emails immediately after updating your social media accounts.
Ensure the content layout is easy for readers who scan the emails if it has several steps like the South Side example below. You can also use bullets and numbers to deliver precise information for the readers. Providing links to your social media posts increase your social engagement online.
These emails have the advantage of increasing engagement on social media and through your emails. However, if you update your social media several times a day, you might lose customers who feel like you are spamming their inboxes. It is, therefore, crucial that you pay attention to the frequency in which you send these emails.
Have you ever received educational emails that are part of a series? These are common with many brands that need to keep in contact with their customers. They are like newsletters, but they are not continuously sent at the same frequency. You can offer a series of educational emails for a few weeks in regular intervals to cover a given topic. Once you cover the topic, you can leave the series until you are ready to handle another topic.
These emails are crafted like blog posts - meant to offer information to your readers. However, you can still add a small section at the bottom of the email with an effective call-to-action. Depending on your goal, the email can be simple or in-depth. Other than giving tips, you can use the emails to give instructions to your subscribers on how to use your products or services. For instance, if you sell make-up products, you can offer make-up tutorials showing new subscribers how to use your products. The tutorials can run a week or a few weeks and then stop. How will you know which topics to choose? A good start is to ask your customer service representatives. They can probably name the top 5 questions that your customers ask which can lay a foundation for an educational email series.
Each tutorial comes with videos, texts, or infographics, depending on how your audience learns. Inside, the tutorial, you can include some direct links to help you market your products and services. You can also include an offer that sends your subscribers to a page where they make the first order from your business.
Your customers have a lot of stories to tell from their experiences using your products, the results they get from using the product, problems the product has solved, and much more. Some customers even have tips to help other customers better use your products. The stories can take any form including videos, infographics, texts, or pictures. Udemy is one of the brands that use success stories in emails to improve conversions. Since the brand started using customer stories, they saw a 35-percent increase in user engagement. If you use this kind of email marketing tactic, your brand will keep growing as user stories create a sense of community and brand authenticity.
To create these emails, you can interview some of your loyal customers, or ask your customers to send photos or videos of their engagement with your products. This is often referred to as user generated content (UGC). Many brands also include an incentive for customer feedback such as a future discount code for the product or service.
Brand stories are different from customer stories in that you tell the story of the brand. You can offer a personal story or stories in a series of emails. The goal of the story is to make the readers connect with your brand even more. The Chipotle example below demonstrates how they educate readers about the sourcing of their ingredients. Research shows that customers who read brand stories are more likely to say positive things about the brand and buy from the brand. If you’re the founder of the company, you do not have to tell all the stories yourself. You can also ask a few employees who have been with you to tell the stories that have led to the success of the business.
What do your subscribers need? Are you able to deliver it to them? Unlike other types of emails, lead nurturing emails are meant to understand your customers better so that you can tailor your content, products, or services for them. With these types of emails, you need to segment your audience lest some readers delete emails without opening.
Lead nurturing occurs in a series of well-crafted emails with a goal to connect with your readers on a more emotional level. They speak to different audiences, depending on where these audiences are in your brand’s marketing funnel or buyer's journey. While the main goal is to understand your customers better so that you can give them what they need, when done strategically, you can also suggest the right solution through your product or service at the right time.
If you have a lead, do not hesitate to email them as the response to emails decline as the lead ages. As new leads come in, you automate the lead nurturing emails, making the process simple and scalable. Better yet, target and segment these emails, which help improve click through rates.
The example below from Autopilot recognizes that the customer has been actively browsing their website, but perhaps didn't understand how to use a feature so they left the website. This email meets them at the consideration phase of their journey and invites to them to view a demo where they cover all the common challenges new customers run into.
Do you want to reach out to prospects beyond your current subscribers? You can do so through sponsorship emails. These are emails you craft to be sent to subscribers to another brand's email list. The sponsor brand might choose to include the emails as dedicated send or as a newsletter.
This type of email works when you already describe the target audience of your sponsorship email. When crafting the messages, the restrictions set by the sponsor will guide how you craft your email body. Before crafting the email, ensure you understand the sponsor’s audience and their business. This way, you will not write an email that will never get opened.
One of the advantages of this type of email is that it is highly targeted and offers you exact ROI. The downside is that you have to pay to get the email placed with another audience.
Only the companies and brands that create human connection are going to succeed. This is extremely true with email. You might get short term benefits from very promotional content, but honest, human, and personalized content creates a following for the long term. (Henni Roini, Marketing Manager EMEA. Quote Credit)
Transactional emails are automated emails triggered when a customer takes an action in your business. The email helps the customer complete the action that triggered the email. For instance, if you are holding an online event, customers who subscribe for the event will receive a welcome email that gives them the login details for the event. The transactional email might also ask the subscribers to click on a link to confirm their registration.
These emails are also common in e-commerce sites where they are sent to confirm your order and show your shipment information and any other details about your purchases. Transactional emails have the highest click through rate as readers are often waiting for the emails to complete an action.
It is important not to mix the intention of the transactional emails. For example, don't try to promote another product in the confirmation emails. This could confuse the readers and prevent them from completing the step that the original transactional email was meant to achieve.
These are emails you send to a portion of your subscribers that have not been active for a while. They offer you a way to re-establish contact with the inactive audience to find out what they need. The main goal for these emails is to ask for feedback from the readers as you re-introduce your brand to them.
From the feedback, you can improve your business significantly. If the subscribers opt to unsubscribe instead of answering your emails, you will still have achieved your goal as that is a feedback in itself. Better yet, your email engagement rates will improve and so will your email reputation.
ActiveCampaign estimates that acquiring a new customer is five times more expensive than re-engaging an inactive customer. Again, re-engagement emails help you filter out subscribers no longer interested in your products or services.
If any subscriber has gone silent or unsubscribed before, this is a cue to stop engaging with them.
This list is by-no-means exhaustive. The unique nature of your business determines the kind of emails you send to your subscribers. However, you need to be careful not to make your customers feel like you are spamming them with emails. It doesn’t make sense that the day you send a welcome email is the same day you send a social media and a promotional email. Your readers and customers need to connect to your brand, and they can only do that if you personalize your emails and provide value to each interaction.
Like any other form of marketing, you need to measure the progress of your emails. This allows you to see the types of emails that bring the best results and which ones stall. It is also a way to find out how readers engage with your emails and the best way to improve the emails for better engagement with their feedback.
Setting email goals and ensuring the reader connects with the content improves the chance that readers will engage with the call-to-action and your brand and customer’s experience will both be better for it.
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