Have you ever heard of Email Marketing? No, but you’ve seen it every single day, when you go to your email and, muttering words under your breath in very bad “French”, delete mailing lists with various offers from companies. But this is one of the most reliable and effective strategies for expanding your customer base and developing your business. Have you ever thought about it? Automation and personalization based on artificial intelligence have further increased the potential of email mailings. Of course, this is all a no-brainer when you don’t have your own “business”. And if you do, why don’t you use email marketing? Let’s talk about how to promote your business with the help of this most powerful marketing tool.
What is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is a digital form of direct marketing that should be an integral part of every company’s marketing mix. Since email marketing is often confused with the term “mailing”, people do not always understand its importance. As a result, there is a lack of understanding in this area. However, apart from regular newsletters, all types of commercial emails sent to registered users are fully covered by email marketing. Examples include transactional emails, such as order confirmations, or automated ones, such as birthday greetings.
Advantages of email marketing
In the age of social media and WhatsApp, email remains one of the largest digital communication channels, both professionally and personally. Thanks to the large number of audiences it reaches, it provides high visibility for content. However, email marketing offers even more useful benefits and reasons to rely on this communication tool in the future:
- Economy;
- High level of penetration, high level of coverage of target audiences;
- Potential for automation and long-term customer loyalty.
Let's start figuring out how to increase email open rates.
How to create an effective email campaign
Define your email marketing strategy, then gradually move forward:
1. Identify potential customers and create a mailing list
What do you think about lead generation tricks? Do you like them or not? Well, lead magnets are little attractions that attract the right audience. Since people share their contact information (email) through them, these contacts are much more tangible and useful than Facebook likes. A lead magnet should be a one-time, limited-time offer that cannot be refused, such as a significant discount or a free trial. It should be offered in a variety of ways:
2. Contact form (like a lead magnet)
It’s not enough to just fill out a blank form and hope people will write to you. Give them a reason to fill out the form. Whether it’s a free download or a targeted, immediate solution to a problem.
3. Offer webinars/courses
Let your target audience learn about your new crash course through short paid social media posts and sign up with one click on your website or landing page using their email address. Continuing with the life coach example, this could also be a 10-minute private introductory session with you.
4. Freebies, pliz (like an ice magnet)
Offer free samples of your product in social media campaigns and directly on your website. If you offer a service or sell an e-book, provide free introductory information. If people sign up for your newsletter, they get it for free.
5. Create an email marketing campaign
Your email marketing campaigns are event-driven and depend on what you want to achieve. Define your goals. For example, do you want to attract more customers or increase the loyalty of existing ones? Most likely, you will first run two or three campaigns simultaneously in test mode to see which one will be the most successful based on statistical analysis (open rate, number of clicks).
What to avoid at all costs
You need to be clear about your goals and target audience. You need to have an idea of what type of emails you are sending, when and how often. Blindly bombarding a few contacts with emails can, at worst, lead to unsubscribes and a bad reputation.
1. Always ask permission
Double-opt-in consent is an absolute requirement for marketing emails and newsletters. Accept the Cookie Policy and Privacy Policy directly on the consent banner on your website, as well as on your contact form, by checking the box that links to these documents.
The emails you send must also comply with various anti-spam standards and laws, including the Can-Spam Act. CSA (Certified Sender Alliance) certification guarantees the quality of commercial emails, prevents spam, and improves your reputation by ensuring that your emails are delivered.
2. Sending too many and too long emails
Brevity is the spice of life, and regular, infrequent emails are the icing on the cake! Inxmail research shows that the sector with the highest open and click rates (culture) sends an average of about 9 emails per month. A realistic starting point is to send once a week. You shouldn’t send emails more than 2 times a week.
Successful email marketing campaigns
According to Inxmail.de statistics for 2024, topics like culture, tourism, finance, and electronics have crazy open rates (50-30%), while culture, tourism, and electronics also have the most clicks (12%-5%). If you cover some of the culture, tourism, finance, and electronics topics in your sales emails, more people will read your emails. However, topics depend on trends. Treendly.com and Explodingtopics.com are Google Trends services that you can use to stay up to date on trends.
Regardless of the topic, the following options are particularly popular for marketing campaigns aimed at attracting new customers and strengthening relationships with existing customers:
Greeting letters
If someone is contacting you for the first time—through a contact form or when registering for a webinar—say a quick “Hi!” Tell them they made the right decision to contact you. A 30-second video embedded in the “body” of your email is a great way to show how you’re meeting expectations.
Promoting your product
Existing and new customers want to know about your offerings. For example, they want to know about special offers you’ve already promised as a lead magnet: product discounts, VIP offers for loyal customers, or even a beta version of your product for testing before launch.
Product launch letter
If you are launching a new product in your online store or offering a new course, let your customers know via email and, of course, on your social media pages.
Seasonal letters
Announce summer sales, holiday specials like Black Friday, or just send out Christmas greetings. Emails don't always have to sell something. You need to develop a genuine and heartfelt relationship with your subscribers.
Reminder letters (abandoned cart letters)
There are many reasons why people abandon your cart, but they can be avoided. Sometimes they just forgot to make a purchase and got hungry during their lunch break. Remind them that they have until the next day to complete their cart. Also, offer to help them at this stage by sending a list of frequently asked questions and contact information. Who knows, maybe they still have questions before making a purchase?
Surveys and feedback emails
They are especially useful when you want to optimize your services and products according to customer preferences. Since surveys are always time-consuming, keep the questions short and easy to answer — with multiple choice, yes/no answers, or the so-called NPS (Net Promoter Score) index. The latter indicates, for example, how highly (on a scale of 0 to 10) a service/product is recommended. The advantage of this type of survey is that it becomes possible to perform a quantitative analysis or use it to improve your service or product.
Gratitude
A thank you should be sent no later than after the product or service has been purchased. The same goes for anything that requires the customer to make an extra effort. Depending on the situation, this could be coupons, discounts, or other special offers.
Sending newsletters
Strictly speaking, this type of email is a one-time email, it cannot be automated into an ongoing campaign. As the name suggests, you are informing people about something new. It could be a new blog or video post that your customers or subscribers might be interested in. It is more about building good customer relationships and a closer connection with your subscribers.
Newsletters can also contain information about promotions and seasonal offers, such as summer sales or new products. That's why we mention newsletters last, as they are the best form of email marketing.
What should the perfect letter look like to get read?
The content of each email should be focused on building a connection and relationship with your customers. They need to be engaged, entertained, and helped at every stage of the customer lifecycle—from prospect to new and loyal customer. This also applies to people who eventually drop out of your services and unsubscribe from your newsletter. Ask for feedback, thank them for their responses.
The text in your emails should always explain, offer something new, be useful, contain some added value that the reader can think “wow, I got a great offer.” This advice is worth its weight in gold!
We won't go into detail about how to make your headline intriguing, but let's say it should be something like this:
- Short (no more than 45 words, so that it can be read at a glance).
- Relevant to the content.
- It should not use spam vocabulary.
Words like “discount,” “%,” “promotion,” and “free” are automatically filtered as spam by email clients. Mailjet.com has created an Excel spreadsheet with the most common spam words—download it and keep it updated so you can easily see which words and phrases you should avoid.
What is the best email marketing software?
Most email marketing software, such as Hub Spot and Constant Contact, have a trial period. Some offer special features, such as MailerLite, which allows you to sign up and integrate services and products directly through email. The email software MailerLite and Brevo are available for free. E-Mail-Tooltester provides a detailed overview. To effectively analyze your email marketing campaign, you need to know whether it is working and have:
- The tool measures opens, clicks, bounces, and conversions.
- Allows you to segment your email list and personalize greetings.
- Allows you to personalize your emails according to your company's style and tone of voice.
- Provides letter templates.
- Easily automate campaigns and save time.
If your software meets these criteria, it's worth comparing prices and testing your choice.
Conclusion
Now you have everything you need to launch and evaluate email marketing for business and work on building a satisfied customer base with personalized messages, offers and assistance, as well as grow your business or project independently of other applications and media.
