What is Email Marketing?

What is email marketing?

In a nutshell, Email Marketing is the function of sending electronic messages to a group of people with a view to increasing awareness of a brand, their products, or services, and with a view to increasing sales.

Email marketing drives revenue

Of course, there’s a bit more to it than that! The most effective email marketing campaigns have strategy behind them: it’s not just sending out random messages in the hope that some of those messages strike a chord with your audience and prompt someone to buy something!

To be effective, email marketing campaigns should follow a logical progression and have a purpose. There are different types of campaigns you could consider:

 

  • Welcome series – a must have, welcoming new sign-ups to your brand and giving them an overview of what they can expect from you
  • Re-engagement – for customers who haven’t interacted with you for a while, whether that’s not clicking on your emails or not purchasing anything. This is good practice because if people aren’t interested any longer, then keep your hit rate figures looking better by removing them from the figures.
  • Educational – what your products and services can be used for, how they’ve helped others. This helps to inspire your customers giving them ideas about how they could use them too.
  • Abandoned cart – essential for any ecommerce outfit! Sometimes people don’t finish their purchase and leave something in their virtual basket. Reminding them it’s still there, or perhaps offering them an extra incentive might help them decide to complete that purchase.

Happy customersSending a regular newsletter style email can also be great for maintaining that touchpoint with your customers. Many businesses use them to keep customers updated with new product lines and services, links to blogs and videos, reviews, testimonials, competitions, discount codes, events they’re attending or hosting – the list goes on! A newsletter gives you the opportunity to develop that ongoing relationship with your client base; it gives your audience the chance to develop a better understanding of your brand, your ethos, your mission, and that’s what keeps them coming back to you.

Of course, to get the most out of email marketing, you need to incorporate all the benefits of the channel, including audience targeting, personalisation, segmentation, and automation. And using a dedicated email marketing platform will also give you access to detailed analytics, so you can see what calls-to-action are working best, so you can keep refining your email strategy to make each campaign more effective than the last.

Importantly, email marketing is proven the most effective channel when it comes to return on investment, delivering around £40 for every £1 spent. It offers the ability to be more targeted in who receives your message over such channels as social media, where you have no control over who sees your message. Email is delivered directly into the inbox of the intended recipient who will be someone with a legitimate interest in what you’re offering – either because they’ve signed up to receive the emails or because they’ve already bought from you and so they are an existing customer. And you know what they say about a bird in the hand being worth two in the bush!

So, if you’re not using Email Marketing as part of your overall marketing strategy, you’re literally leaving money on the table!

Shaun Reynolds has been specialising in email marketing since 2005 and in February 2019 launched Email-Postman. Since then, Email-Postman has helped over 90 clients build successful email marketing campaigns across a range of email marketing platforms. For further information or to discuss getting help with your email marketing, you can arrange a free call-back today by clicking here!

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