Email Marketing

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

Email uses and types

Email is one of the oldest and most widely used digital channels. It’s great for one-to-one communication, and for delivering personalized messages and offers to large numbers of people. Also, it’s a high-ROI inbound channel and it’s relatively inexpensive to send out many emails. Emails are sent to people who have explicitly said they want to hear from you. These people are likely to be more engaged with your email content. 

Furthermore, email has many effective uses such as:

•      Engaging past and current customers using email is an excellent way to keep the brand front of mind.
•      Email also encourages repeat purchases by sending reminders and product suggestions. 
•      And email can encourage upselling and cross-selling to customers during their buyer’s journey. 

There are a number of email campaign types which you can choose from and include in your channel mix. These email campaign types include: 

•      Newsletters to let people know about relevant updates, and promotions to let people know about sales, discounts, and special offers. 
•      Automated emails automatically engage people based on different preset conditions, such as the stage of the buyer’s journey. 
•      Product updates let people know about new features, releases, or updates to existing purchases. 
•      And finally, content waterfall emails can be used to distribute different content types designed to match typical customer journeys, again, these emails can be automatically sent in sequence based on a number of preset conditions. For example, a preset condition in an email workflow can specify that an email with a discount code is sent out 15 days before Christmas to customers with no purchasing activity in the past month and so on. 

It is important to always consider which email campaign type is best to deliver on your objectives. Use best practices, past performance, and A/B testing to optimize the performance and deliver on your objective. It’s important to recognize that email can be a closing channel leading to conversion, or an assisting channel that drives consideration. And based on its purpose – whether it is consideration or conversion – appropriate KPIs need to be assigned to reflect the type of email that you are sending to show performance. 

Matching email types to goals

It’s important to choose the right email type to deliver on your objective.

New customer acquisition goals work well with email types that include introductory offers, access to onboarding content, and access to free trials. They are usually sent within set time limits to encourage urgency. For example, sending messages like ‘last five days’, ‘last two days’, ‘final chance’ are often used to onboard new clients with such introductory offers. 

Furthermore, when you’re working towards customer retention goals, it’s important to use email types that offer access to exclusive content, events, or a selection of products based on past purchases, discount codes, or free gifts. This email type can be very engaging for past customers and helps to engage the valuable pool of customers who have already bought from you before.

Email campaign metrics

To measure the success of your email efforts, it’s essential to become familiar with the types of email campaign metrics that are available. Commonly used email metrics include:

•      Sends are the number of people that the email was sent to from your email list. 
•      Opens are the number of people who opened that email. 
•      The open rate is the percentage of people who are sent the email and then went ahead and opened that email. 
•      Clicks are the number of people who clicked a link inside the email. 
•      Click rates are the percentage of people who opened the email and then clicked the link inside the email. 
•      Unsubscribes are the number of people who don’t want get emails from you anymore. 
•      Finally, complaints are the number of people who complain that they were sent your email. 

You can improve email open rates by using database segmentation techniques and by writing effective subject lines. Segmentation helps you match the email message with the recipient’s interests while an effective subject line helps to grab their attention. 

Similarly, creating email content that lives up to the promise of the subject line and audience expectations will boost clicks within the email itself. It is a sure sign that people are engaging with the content. 

Furthermore, the number of unsubscribes and complains can be reduced by optimizing: 

•      Personalization 
•      Send times 
•      Customer segmentation
•      Delivering content types that match the preferences of your segments

Doing so will reduce the negative metrics from your campaign and ensure that customers are less likely to ignore the emails they receive from you.