The purpose of this article is to provide the first building block for the general public to understand email marketing.
Email marketing is one of the tools that entrepreneurs often use or misuse, causing serious technical problems for corporate email.
So here is an article dedicated to this topic to provide a more conscious idea about how this tool can be useful to the company.
Table of Contents
What is Email Marketing?
Let’s start with ABC or “What is Email Marketing” by understanding.
From Wikipedia:
Email marketing is a form of direct marketing that uses email as a means of communicating commercial (and non-commercial) messages to the public.
In the broadest sense, any email sent to a customer (or potential customer) is considered email marketing. However, the term is commonly used to refer to:
- Sending emails with the intention of taking the relationship between a company and its past or present customers to a more advanced level and promoting their loyalty.
- Sending emails with the intention of gaining new customers or persuading previous people to buy something immediately.
- Adding line items to email messages that other companies send to their customers.
Companies in both the United States and European countries and emerging economies are investing more and more resources in email marketing, often used by both public and non-profit organizations.
Why Email Marketing?
Of course, email is not a new tool, it is one of the first digital tools of communication. But contrary to what some people think, email marketing is relevant due to its high reach, reaching a wide variety of people every day.
There are currently a large number of communication channels that you can incorporate into your digital marketing strategy, all of which provide favorable results for your company or business. Today we will talk specifically about its importance: Email Marketing.
As we have already seen, email is an important tool for communicating with people because it helps your teams in a variety of ways: from confirming orders to sending newsletters, to managing your business growth. Should be an important point
For both your current customers and potential customers, email marketing is a strategy that helps you add value by engaging with your company and creating more personal communication.
As we already know today it is practically impossible to run a business without resorting to digital media and emails. If you still have doubts about emailing best practices.
Who is for Email Marketing is?
Not all promotional tools apply to all situations in the field of web marketing because there is usually no promotional tool that is always good in all respects but here is an exception.
Email marketing is for everyone
The exception to the Email Marketing Rule.
It really is an online marketing tool that is effectively compatible with all types of companies compared to all other companies.
The response to this ad can be easily found in everyday life: everyone asks for email, clothing store, supermarket, pet store, supplier company, sometimes even a favorite restaurant. Because with email marketing,
It is possible to get the most “spiritual” contacts available to you through web promotion tools: Enter your customer (or potential customer) mailbox, creating a “unique one-to-one” communication relationship. This cannot be achieved in any other way and if this relationship is used well, it can produce the best results.
How does email marketing assist in the online marketing process?
Email marketing plays a very important role in this process: it establishes a consistent engagement with the customer and keeps the company’s memory alive as long as the customer is ready to buy.
The advantage of this method is that it saves us from making too many phone calls, getting heavy, or spending time and money on personal meetings from time to time.
By contacting the subscriber, you manage their email address and authority to subscribe to our newsletter, you will establish a “relationship” with them, you can proceed at the right time. Who will contact you?
Please note! All that has been said so far applies only to the condition that email marketing is done properly. This way email marketing assists online marketing in multiple ways.
Sending a thousand newsletters with exceptional offers, discounts, and promotions with the consistent and unique message of “Buy, Buy, Buy” is not the right way … these newsletters and this kind of email marketing will not work.
We have dedicated the entire article to this topic with the title “How to Write a Successful Newsletter”.
As mentioned in this article, the email marketing campaign should be based on an editorial plan, the foundation of which is to create valuable content for the user they want to read.
And to be clear, The valuable content is not:
- Promotional offers;
- Discount offer;
- Demonstration of the features of your product or service.
Guidelines for solving common customer problems;
- Free and practical advice on how to fix the activity;
- Specify any parameters to measure when purchasing a product or choosing a supplier;
- Industry information on whether your company may or may not request
And here are some examples of valuable content:
At this link you will find an article by pharmacist Roberto Boccia, which explains “how to cure a headache without medication” and he follows several practical tips to solve that annoying problem;
At this link you will find an article by logo designer Patricia Parca, which explains why it is wrong to create a logo before the company’s strategy is well defined (and therefore gives useful advice for their own purposes).
Or you can consider our articles on this blog, in which we try to advise entrepreneurs on the best ways to maintain their online presence, without offering our service directly.
That way, by sending them contact newsletters that indicate useful and valuable content, you’ll build a trusting relationship with your audience so that they know every time an email arrives from the address that you provide. They are useful information. Without trying to sell anything, you will be able to build a stable and consistent connection over time.
It is very important to specify the technical requirements required to properly manage email marketing activities.
In the article “How to avoid ending up in spam“, I gave several tips on how to handle the technical part. In this post, I want to explain a very important point, without going into too much tech.
If you decide to do email marketing effectively, you must have a tool to send it professionally.
Do not upgrade with DIY or the thousands of free tools available online. Do not send newsletters from your PC with Thunderbird or Outlook …
Invest just a few dollars in purchasing a professional service (we recommend Getresponse) and equip yourself with a tool that will protect you from the most common pitfalls that can end up in the spam box of your newsletter. Reporting you as a spammer and blocking a company e-mail domain (and sometimes serious problems sending regular corporate e-mail)
You can compare email marketing to a particular part of the recipe, however, there must be other “gear” in it to work well …
If the rest of your online presence does not exist (see dating websites, old blogs, etc.), you will not be able to successfully manage e-mail marketing.
You can not succeed in email marketing unless you are committed to writing valuable content for your readers …
If you plan to use this tool by capturing it with a broad and complete communication strategy you will not be able to do successful email marketing.
Best Practices related to email Marketing?
Here is the list of some best email marketing practices which are needed to be followed in order to run a successful email campaign:
1. Personalization is important
It is not a good idea to send the same message to everyone on your contact list, as they may have different reasons for subscribing to your mailing list.
To get started, you can do some simple things like calling them by name and addressing them with the appropriate gender. But personalization does not end there: it is an ongoing process so you can use different criteria to group your contacts. The most common are age, gender, date of last purchase on your site, etc.
To get a good segmentation of contacts, you need to have good tools to manage this large database. Only then will your brand send the right emails to the right people.
2. Monitor and evaluate your email campaigns
Relevant metrics include important data such as the starting rate of emails you send, click rates on links you include in emails, bounce rates, number of canceled subscriptions, or location of email readers. Reports for your email marketing tools.
By analyzing this data along with your target audience segmentation, you will have valuable information to evaluate your campaigns, which means that the improvement of your email campaigns will not stop.
You can also do the A/B test by sending different messages to different contact groups to match the ones that get better results.
3. Take care of the design
When the customer opens your mail, he spends a few seconds deciding whether the message body is of interest to him. At this point, it is necessary to think about aesthetics (email design depends on contact profiles), tone of communication, and many other variables.
Creating a good email from scratch takes time and technology, so it’s a good idea to use a design template as a basis. There are many options and they are adapted for different purposes: newsletters, special offers or announcing events, etc.
Finally, do not forget the responsive design adapted to the device the reader is using (mobile, tablet, computer, etc.).
4. Offer concise content with Call to Action
As we have already said, it is important to remember that the reader does not spend much time on your content, so you should go straight to the point by skipping long messages.
When writing content you should be concise and clear and explain the benefits that the message conveys: reading the article, participating in the event, taking advantage of the offer, answering the survey, etc.
Note: Beware of spam terms like a gift, free, best price, making money, etc. In addition to annoying the recipient, there are many email providers who send messages with this title or have filters directly related to the spam folder.
Don’t forget to use Call to Action or Call to Action (CTA) so the recipient knows exactly what they need to do to take advantage of your email (download the ebook, get the offer before the expiration date, etc.).
5. Focus on your contact list
The first thing you need to think about is the compliance of your contacts: How are you going to get it? This is one of the steps you can take to begin the process of preparation for mediation. You must include the Unsubscribe button that appears in every email you send.
Only with consent and termination can you, in the long run, create a list of contacts who are genuinely interested in your content. So, the list is still alive and those responsible should take care to keep it up to date.
Final Thoughts
Failure to have an email marketing strategy means losing sales opportunities and losing the opportunity to strengthen your bond with customers.
So if you are ready to plan your email marketing campaigns, we have the best solution for you.
GetResponse is an all-in-one sales and marketing solution with features such as email marketing, marketing automation, SMS, landing pages, Facebook advertising, CRM, and more.
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