Does email marketing really work?

Know how to market effectively & boost business.

Image by Talha Khalil from Pixabay

Email marketing is no longer done in the traditional way of manually sending emails to small groups of customers. The scope of email marketing has widened to a large extent to include personalization, automation & integration. We all know that quality & enticing content, imagery, headlines & CTAs are the crux of every email. In this article, let’s dive deeper into some of the other vital aspects & new developments in the email marketing domain.

Some numbers around email marketing:

59% of respondents say marketing emails influence their purchase decisions. (Hubspot, 2020)

There are 3.9 billion daily email users. This number is expected to climb to 4.3 billion by 2023. (Statista, 2020)

86% of consumers would like to receive a promotional email from brands they subscribe to at least once per month. (Hubspot)

All the above statistics make it clear that email marketing is nowadays being increasingly used for marketing activities & is performing better than before. Now is the best time to leverage all the potential benefits of email marketing by using it the right way for your business.

Email Marketing Automation Strategy:

If you are running an e-commerce site or any other website, it is really important to nurture & engage your contacts by delivering the right content at the right time. Email marketing automation makes this possible by setting up automated emails & drip campaigns that go out when a particular condition/action is fulfilled. It saves time, energy & helps increase the business conversion rate.

Below are some of the common email marketing workflows that can be used for designing a custom content strategy for your business email campaigns.

• Welcome Email -

This workflow can be triggered to greet anybody new who visits & registers/signs up on your website. This gesture is appreciated since it shows that the business cares about its new customers. It is a good opportunity to guide your customers on their journey with you by making easily available the content that might interest them, & giving them more information about your business & social channels.

• Download Email -

This workflow can be used when a user fills a form to download any resource on your website. It is useful to have some quality resources/lead magnets like free ebooks, videos that can be shared with your customers at the right time in their customer lifecycle. Once you come to know that a customer is interested in a particular topic when they fill the form, you can send emails around that topic & some other related topics to nurture those leads & guide them in the direction of making a full product/service purchase.

• Free Trial Email -

This workflow is triggered when a client signs up on your website for a free trial of your product/service. It is our job to make it easy for the user to use our product/service & failure to do so leads to dissatisfaction. These emails are useful for onboarding & guiding the new customers through the process of using the software and thus making their lives easier.

• Lead Nurturing Email -

These emails can be triggered to send customized to your business needs & objectives. An example would be to send an email to your customers based on how they are interacting with the web pages, reading a particular blog on your site, adding a product to the wish list, etc. These interactions give you a base to start a conversation with your customers on a topic that interests them & thus give a kickstart to a sales funnel. This platform can be used to showcase & advertise the right products to your customers & turn them into valuable leads.

• Re-engagement & Follow-up Emails -

These automated emails can be sent out as friendly reminders to re-engage inactive users or to build relationships with existing customers as a follow-up after a successful purchase. Nurturing relationships with existing customers plays a vital role in building a loyal clientele.

• Abandoned Cart Emails -

These workflows are useful when a customer visits your website & leaves without a complete purchase i.e. leaves some items in the cart without making the purchase. These emails can be used to notify the customer that they have some items added to the cart, creating a sense of urgency, making an offer, or solving a problem related to the purchase. Similarly, upsell emails offering product upgrades/complementary services can be sent to customers who have purchased some of your products/services.

• Event Emails -

Communication is a must to drive a smooth event & make it successful & emails are an important part of this communication workflow. Emails can be triggered to send event invites, event registration details, reminders, feedback & more.

However, to make the above-mentioned automation work, you need to keep your email lists updated & accurate with contact information based on contact behavior. This can be done by integrating the tools that you use for your business, for eg: integrating your e-commerce platform/CRM with your email marketing software.

Let’s see some examples:

• Add the contact to a list in the email marketing software when a new contact is added to the CRM system. Automation can further be used to send them welcome emails, lead nurturing emails, etc.
• Add the contact to a list in the email marketing software when a sale is made on the e-commerce platform. Use automation to send them feedback emails, thank you emails, etc.
• Add the contact to a list in the email marketing software when they register for an event or webinar in the event management tool. Use automation to send them invitation, reminder & follow-up emails.

Email Personalization:

Emails with personalized touches are more effective in terms of open rates & click-through rates than the generic ones since they make your audience feel special.

Some ways of personalizing your emails are listed below, these can be done with the help of many email marketing tools that allow for personalized tokens.

• Adding the recipient’s ‘first name’ to the email subject line
• Ensuring to add a proper ‘from name’ to your email, eg: adding the name of the executive with whom the client interacts regularly
• Dynamically changing blocks of content that your customers will see in the email body. This can be based on their industry, lifecycle stage, gender, location, or any other thing you know about them
• Adding in ‘region-specific’ information where applicable, eg: changing imagery for different locations to make the email campaign personalized to the subscriber’s location
• Regional holiday mentions or birthday greetings/surprises
• You can make use of information like the contact’s industry, company, t-shirt size etc. to change the body copy content
• Ecommerce companies make use of personalization to send targeted personalized emails to customers based on their purchase behavior, for eg: upsell, cross-sell, cart abandonment, VIP Loyalties, etc.

It is useful to segment your email lists & then send targeted personalized email content to different groups of customers based on their interests. 1:1 experiences are proven to increase customer engagement & sales to a large extent.

Email Regulations:

An important thing to remember before sending your emails would be to ensure that they are CAN-SPAM Compliant. Make sure to -

• Include your company name & address in each email
• Use real email addresses in ‘From’ & ‘Reply-To’
• Include your location
• Place clear & easily visible unsubscribe links in your email to enable your customers to opt out from the email list
• Make subject lines relevant to your email body content & avoid spamming
• Only collect contact information that is necessary for your business & store it securely

Ensure that you dive deep into the email rules & regulations for your region and comply with them fully.

Ingredients that make a ‘Good Email’:

• Send emails to only those recipients who have opted-in to receive your emails to avoid falling into spam folders
• Make it easy for subscribers to unsubscribe from your emails
• Write useful & quality content each time
• Keep your email template clean & add clear CTAs
• Don’t use deceptive subject lines. Instead, make them stand out
• Send your emails from a good IP address & through verified domains & reliable email service providers
• Get your emails whitelisted by showing your subscribers how to add you to their address book
• Don’t make your content ‘salesy’ by using words like ‘discount’, ‘buy’, etc. in excess
• Keep cleaning your email list by removing inactive subscribers periodically
• Send emails on the day & time at which your subscribers engage the most. This can be found out with the help of A/B testing your emails & getting insights through analytics
• Write as if you are writing to one person with a tailor-made message
• Optimize your emails for mobile devices
• Lastly, always analyze, A/B test & improve your emails to make them more & more effective

Email marketing plays a vital role in any organization’s digital marketing efforts & automating it gives you plenty of opportunities to set yourself up for success. Some most widely used & effective tools that you can try for your email marketing campaigns include Hubspot, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Mailchimp, Mailjet, Marketo, Omnisend, and more.