What is Email Marketing & why it is so popular?

In order to function successfully, it is very crucial for any business to attract customers and make relevant strategies to retain them. Customers are considered the king in any business and the whole business model revolves around them. Company’s find different ways to entice customers to visit the store/website and make the experience worthwhile. 

All big brands and companies tend to spend millions of dollars as a part of their marketing strategies. But in this ever-changing field of marketing, companies have to find innovative ways night and day. They have to figure out which techniques would suit their business model better. With the help of the right marketing agency, all methods including email, social media and others are taken care of. Out of varied marketing categories, like social media, video, traditional marketing, SEO, etc, there is one marketing that has stood the test of time viz Email marketing.

Email marketing is the usage of email in your marketing strategies to promote your services and products among customers. Since its inception and during the boom of the worldwide internet, Email marketing has time and again proved why it is still the better and most convenient marketing tool among the most successful companies. Email marketing methods have proved to be efficient in the booming markets of Australia as well. According to the DMA Marketer Email Tracker 2019 report, this form of marketing has a Return of Investment (ROI) of 1:42 i.e., on every $1 you spend on email marketing you get an average return of $42. In accordance with the 2020 Small Business marketing report, 66% of those who were surveyed, were using email marketing in their multichannel marketing strategies.

Why do consumers trust email marketing?

Everyone has been using emails for a long time and now it has become one of the main choices for uninterrupted communication. Through timely and relevant emails, company’s try to show their customers that they listen to them and understand their preferences and taste. This in turn helps in creating a long-lasting impact in the minds of consumers which increases their trust in the company. 

Building a cordial relationship with the customer and instilling a level of trust is a key to retaining them. Email marketing provides a company with a personalized way to get the attention of the target audience and ultimately help in increasing the company’s top line at a lower cost.

What are the 4 types of email marketing?

Most business owners use email marketing campaigns to reach more customers, engage them, and retain them to promote their products/services. The types of email marketing can be divided into the following four categories such as:

• Acquisition Emails: As the name suggests, these emails are used to acquire your prospective customer who has shown interest in your product/service by subscribing to the email. The best way to convert them into your customer would be to provide them with all the basic information and lure them with offers/discounts.

• Email newsletters: Newsletters are a good way to provide your customer with the required knowledge and updates. This can be done through the creation of engaging content like announcements of new product lines, how-to’s, information about the existing business, etc. 

• Retention Emails: Acquiring new customers is important, but retaining those customers is equally important in order to maintain stability in the business. This can be done through regular feedback about their experiences or providing them with offers so that customers don’t forget about the company and its products. This could also create word of mouth through happy and loyal customers. 

• Promotional Emails: Such types of emails are a good way to drive up revenues of the newly launched products or services. This can be helpful to reward your loyal customer with exclusive offers or to cross-sell products to your existing customer base.

How does Email marketing drives sales from specific customers?

Email marketing is very versatile which is why they are used extensively to target specific groups of customers in a short span of time. Nowadays, marketers analyze a large set of data and bifurcate customers on the basis of their preferences, likings, customer needs/wants, and tastes. These bifurcations and classification help the company to uniquely target a particular set of specific customers. These groups receive information and updates according to their preference which makes them feel better as they are receiving information which they like.

Email marketing bridges the gap of lack of communication between the buyer and the seller, by keeping them connected. Customers often look for subscribing to offers or discounts or newsletters from their favourite brands or stores so that they don’t miss out on any deals on the products/services or any related information.

Such activities become more important when there is rising competition in every field and business. Every such activity helps the company to create a good brand image in the mind of consumers. The consumers in turn reciprocate such desires/feelings by staying loyal to their brands. This drives up the sales for the company and boosts its growth.

How to implement a good email marketing campaign?

With the advent of email marketing campaigns, consumers have been receiving tons of promotional emails every day. In spite of this, marketers and digital marketing agencies are aware of how crucial email marketing is to their marketing strategies. There is a need to devise a strategy that will make your email marketing campaign stand out and be appreciated by the audience. Following are the points that must be addressed while creating a campaign

• Understanding your goal: You should think about what the campaign is trying to achieve. The possible goals could be segmenting your subscriber, welcoming new customers, engaging existing customers, retaining the consumers, etc.

• Understanding your audience and building a target list: There are many email marketing agencies that provide analytical services to understand the demographics, location, interest, and preference of the consumers. After collecting such data, it is important to filter and build a target list containing qualified leads. 

• Enticing subject line: Subject line is by far the make-or-break part of the emails. If the subject line isn’t well written or is too flashy, there are chances that the user may never open the email. So it is a good practice to be straightforward, simple and show the crux of the email.

• A crystal clear message by keeping it straight to the point: Only provide information that would be useful for the user. You shouldn’t try to include too many messages in one email. The content should be concise, precisely straightforward and in line with the subject.  

• Email marketing software/services: Taking a subscription of the email marketing services and software is not an expense but a long term investment for any company. They are very useful in providing a variety of tools like templates, segmenting audiences, managing subscribers, monitoring key metrics, optimizing reporting, and an eye-catching design. 

• The best time to send and Follow up: It is better to plan the entire flow of the campaign in advance. There are various sites and tools suggesting the best time to send an email so that it is read by the majority of the target audience. The help of email marketing services and agencies can be taken to improve efficiency. It is also equally important to take regular feedback and follow up to make the customer experience smooth and worth remembering.