How does Email Marketing work?

As a digital marketing strategy, email marketing is the most direct and effective way to connect with your contacts, nurturing them and turning them into loyal customers. Email marketing messages vary between commercial, educational and informative content, while personalisation is key to email marketing success. Compared to other marketing channels, email marketing costs very little, and its return on investment is one of the most promising. Read more in our article “4 Best ROI Digital Marketing Strategies!” What is Email Marketing, and why is it important? How to get started: Build and grow your Email list Use an Email marketing tool Segment your email list Choose the right content Use automation tasks Clean your email list to improve Email open rates What is Email Marketing and why is it important? Email marketing is more than just sending multiple emails to customers and prospects. As part of direct marketing, it is the process of sending personalised emails at the right time and to the right person. Email marketing can provide important information, improve brand loyalty and increase sales, which makes it a crucial part of the sales channel. Email marketing is beneficial because it is fast, efficient and comes with low costs. A successful email marketing strategy will allow you to reach potential and existing customers by reminding them of the value or benefits they can get from your business. That can include products, services, blog posts, or other content relevant to your audience. There are several advantages of email marketing, which we explain in our article “Reasons to invest in email marketing”. Are you wondering how to do email marketing? Don’t worry; we are right here to help you! Email marketing has some essential steps and tasks that you should consider. Here’s how to get started: 1. Build and grow your Email list Starting email marketing campaigns requires, as a pre-condition, a list of active subscribers. To grow your email list, you need to attract people with a compelling offer, known as a “lead magnet”. A lead magnet is something of value that you offer for free in exchange for an email address, such as templates, eBooks, white papers, case studies, a scam of tips or resources, coupons, etc. The list is long, and it doesn’t have to cost anything. As well as giving incentives when you publish great content on your site, you could also consider having the subscribe button in the right places on your webpage to make it easy to subscribe. 2. Use an Email marketing tool How does Email marketing work? Sometimes, email lists are extensive and sending personalised emails becomes increasingly challenging. Email marketing software can help you automate and track your email marketing campaigns. There are many platforms you can use for free or with a subscription, depending on the type of functionality you prefer: SharpSpring ActiveCampaign Drip ConvertKit AWeber GetResponse Constant Contact The best free platforms are: Mailchimp Benchmark OmniSend Sendinblue Depending on what your business requires, you may decide to invest in fully paid packages or free subscriptions with limited functionality. 3. Segment your Email list It is crucial to have a segmentation of your subscribers to ensure your email campaigns reach the correct people. Segmentation is the subscribers splitting process into smaller groups based on specific criteria to target the right person with the right message at the right time. That will lead to a more successful campaign with higher conversion and increase the email open rates, since you send relevant content based on demographics, interest and behaviour. 4. Choose the right content Before starting any marketing strategy, it’s necessary defining your objectives and identify your audience to create personalised content and send the correct email. With email marketing software, you can easily personalise your emails with dynamic content, inserting the subscriber’s name, changing images and text according to each customer and segmentation attribute. Email marketing is more customisable than most other forms of advertising. As you create your email content, remember to stick to your brand voice, colours and other important brand identity features. Examples of email content can include: Links to articles on your website Customer testimonials Information on new promotions or sales Important announcements Coupons and offers You can also use your message to remind existing customers that your brand exists, encouraging them to return to your website. 5. Use automation tasks Email automation is an automatic message sent by your email service provider in response to any action performed by your subscriber. Automated emails allow you to send real-time and one-to-one messages, which increases customer engagement and retention. It enables you to follow up with individual customers or prospects and send user-specific messages, which is accomplished by creating complex automation workflows and conditional statements within email messaging. 6. Clean your email list to improve Email open rates Clearing your mailing list involves removing inactive and inaccurate data from your email database. You can clear your email database manually or automatically by choosing a timeframe in which you consider a subscriber inactive. In addition, you’ll have the option to remove anyone who has unsubscribed from your list, to have a pure list of users who are still interested in receiving your emails. If you haven’t started your campaigns yet, maybe it’s time to reconsider your strategy and include one of the most effective online communication channels. Today, email marketing delivers a personalized one-to-one message with a high return rate and helps you follow up with your prospects and existing customers.