What Is Email Marketing?

What is Email Marketing?

Email Marketing is all about promoting your business using Email.

Ever since the introduction of the internet to the world, Email has become the most popular form of communication.

It’s the most powerful and most essential marketing channel available.

Email marketing is a must-have in your digital marketing strategy.

It allows you to connect with your audience to promote your brand, nurture your leads, and turn them into customers.

So, what is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email.

Every email you send to a potential or current customer is considered email marketing.

It is the most popular and cost-effective way to communicate something about your brand or sell your products or services.

You can reach your consumers directly via electronic mail.

When you include email marketing in your marketing strategy, you can use this electronic mail to communicate product information, policy changes, special discounts, free shipping offers, and more.

Also,

You can educate your customers, send advertisements, request business, or solicit sales or donations.

So, the main purpose of email marketing is to acquire new customers, keep the current customers informed, develop relationships with potential customers, build loyalty, trust, brand awareness, and encourage repeat business.

Why Is Email Marketing Important For Your Business?

According to Statista, the number of global email users was 3.8 billion in 2018 and is set to grow to 4.4 billion by 2023.

Though social media like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc., and mobile messages and chat apps are the most effective way to reach the masses, email is an integral part of daily online life.

Email is the most effective way to build relationships with your customers, nurture them, and turn them into repeat customers.

You can also personalize your email marketing.

For example, on your customer’s birthday, you can offer him/her special deals or discounts on particular products and/or services.

Here are some of the top reasons why email marketing is so important for your business:

#1. Good ROI

If done right, email is the powerful channel to drive conversions.

And as a marketer, your ultimate goal is to convert potential customers into paying customers.

An email has an ROI of 4400%. (Campaign Monitor)

This means for every $1 spent on email marketing, the average ROI is $44.

That’s huge.

No other digital marketing channel gives you such a high ROI.

But why does email marketing yield higher ROI than other channels?

On the channels like social media, you can only post your status updates.

You don’t have any clue about their location, interests, and purchase history.

But with email marketing, you are very much targeted with your communications.

And it allows you to deliver personalized and relevant messages.

According to McKinsey, email is 3 times more effective at promoting purchases than social media.

The average order value is also 17 times higher than that of social media.

#2. Effective Channel to Acquire New Customers

According to McKinsey, email marketing is nearly 40 times more effective to acquire new customers than Facebook and Twitter combined.

#3. It Improves SEO

Just create captivating content and fill it with popular keywords.

Add all the information related to search queries.

You can include this content in your email marketing campaign.

When your subscribers get relevant information and answers to their questions, they’ll love to share your content.

This helps you get quality backlinks and you’ll have greater chances to drive traffic to your website.

#4. It is the Number One Communication Channel

As per the stats of Optin Monster, 99% of consumers check their emails daily and that is not the case with any other channel.

Through email, you can provide your customers with more information about your products and/or services.

But your network on social media can only see your photos and updates.

Thus, we can say that email is much more professional medium than social media.

#5. You Own Your Email List

When you make the list of your subscribers, you own that list.

You can use this list in your email marketing campaign.

Nobody is going to take that list away from you.

On the other hand, the accounts you make on social platforms is not your own.

Your account on social media can be suspended at any time, without giving any prior notice.

#6. Time-Saving

You can automate your email marketing campaign using platforms like Constant Contact or Get Response.

For example, when someone subscribes to your website, you can send him/her a welcome email.

For the users who don’t open their emails, you can automatically resend emails.

You can also segment your contacts to send the right message every time.

All you need to do is schedule an email to be sent at a specific time.

You don’t need to push any button to send your campaign.

What Are The Types of Email Marketing?

You can use different types of emails in your email marketing campaign.

#1. Email Newsletters

Newsletters are not part of the email marketing campaign.

These are not the sales pieces containing sales messages.

These are just the regular emails you send to your list of subscribers to update them about your business, products, or services.

Newsletters help you build relationships with your audiences.

And if you do newsletters right, they can do great service to your audiences.

You can use newsletters to educate them, provide information about products or services, or even just entertain them.

Newsletters help you too in building brand loyalty and if you provide your list of subscribers with share-worthy content, it can help you grow your audience.

#2. Transactional Emails

Certain actions on your website by your customers trigger these emails.

The main purpose of transactional emails is to provide your customers with information regarding their actions that triggered them.

According to Wikipedia,

To be qualified as transactional or relationship messages, these communication’s primary purpose must be “to facilitate, complete, or confirm a commercial transaction that the recipient has previously agreed to enter into with the sender”.

For example,

Purchase or order confirmation emails
Order statuses
Reorder emails
Email receipts
Return confirmation emails

The open rates of transactional emails are higher than those of newsletters.

(Transactional emails have 51.3% whereas newsletters have only 36.6%.)

So, here you have a great opportunity to build strong relationships with your customers and increase the sales of your products and/or services.

#3. Direct Emails

Sending emails directly to your customers o potential customers to promote your business is called Direct Email Marketing.

For sending such direct promotional messages, you need to make a list of customer or prospect email addresses.

The goals of direct email marketing are:

To inform the customers about new products, sales, special offers, etc.
Establishing relationships with new and existing customers.
Tracking the feedback of the customers.
To increase brand awareness.

The most important thing in direct email marketing is a mailing list and segmenting the audiences.

Customer segmentation is very important.

Otherwise, what purpose is it going to serve if the messages are not appropriate for the group it is sent to?

What Are The Different Email Marketing Metrics?

You may have different goals for your email marketing campaign. For example,

Growing your subscriber database.
Generating more leads.
Converting existing leads into customers.

Once you determine what your goals are, the next step is to learn to track some basic metrics.

This will help you to measure your success – what worked and what didn’t.

Here are some email marketing metrics that you should be tracking:

#1. Open Rate:

It tells you how many subscribers opened the email sent by you.

#2. CTR:

This shows the percentage of subscribers who clicked on one or more links contained in your email to visit your site.

#3. Conversion Rate:

The conversion rate will tell you that after clicking on the link in your email, how many people completed the desired action.

For example, filling out a subscription form, making a purchase, or signing up for an event or webinar.

#4. Bounce Rate:

This is the percentage of your subscribers’ email addresses that couldn’t receive your email.

#5. Unsubscribe Rate:

It tells how many users unsubscribed upon receiving an email sent by you.

This rate should stay at low levels.

If there is a spike in unsubscribes from a particular email, then it’s time to analyze.

What exactly caused this increase?

Is it increased frequency or poor messaging?

You need to analyze what your subscribers didn’t like and not to repeat that in your future email marketing campaigns.

#6. List Growth Rate:

This is the rate at which your email list is growing.

List Growth Rate = ([No. of new subscribers – (No. of unsubscribers + email/spam complaints)] / Total no. of email addresses on your list) * 100

#7. Email Sharing / Forwarding Rate:

This is the percentage of recipients who shared your email contact to a social media by clicking on a “share this” button, and/or forwarded it to a friend after clicking “forward to a friend” button.

#8. Overall ROI:

Overall ROI tells you the overall return on investment for your email marketing campaign.

To find overall ROI, take the money you made minus the money you spent in executing the campaign, divide that by the money you invested in the campaign, and then multiply that by 100.

#9. Email Signup Rate:

This is the percentage of your website visitors who joined your email list.

Email signup rate = (No. of email signups / No. of total visitors) *100

#10. Mobile Open Rate:

Both mobile open rate and regular open rate work the same way.

The only difference is that the mobile rate applies to mobile devices only like phones and tablets.

The desktop users have higher open rates during the weekdays as they often open their emails during business hours.

On the other hand, mobile open rates may be higher in the evenings and weekends.

Conclusion:

You just can’t ignore the potential of Email Marketing in your Digital Marketing strategy.

Do make it a part of your marketing campaign.

Several studies have confirmed that, of all the digital marketing practices, email marketing is the most effective channel.

When compared to all other channels, the conversion rate of email marketing is the best.

All you need to start the campaign is the list of your subscribers’ email addresses and a subscription to an email marketing software platform.

And then communicate consistently offering valuable, relevant, and entertaining information.

The people will start to know you, like, and trust you as an expert in your industry.

And, if you are not incorporating Email Marketing into your digital marketing strategy, then you are doing nothing but putting your business at great risk.

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