What is E-mail marketing? : Types of Email marketing you need

You've probably heard mixed opinions about email marketing techniques - "Email marketing is dead" "It doesn't make enough money" etc.

 

What we can remember is that even today, email marketing is one of the most powerful digital marketing tools.

 

So, take note of this article to learn how to achieve a winning email marketing strategy.

 

What is email marketing?

Email marketing is a digital communication strategy that encompasses the entire process of creating databases of contacts, emails, and the strategy of converting these leads or contacts into customers and thus transforming them. into concrete actions.

 

In email marketing strategies, as the name suggests, your company mailbox is used to send emails to a group of contacts offering them quality content and value.

 

• Email campaigns or e-mail marketing have different objectives:

 

• Convert your leads or email accounts into customers

 

• Retain contacts or customers from your email marketing list.

 

• Generate a community

 

• Increase your sales

 

• Give visibility to a product or service

 

In summary, emailing is a means of communication with customers or potential customers and an effective strategy that gives excellent results.

 

Benefits of Email Marketing

You now know what emailing is and what it is for. If you still have doubts, dispel them with the following section on the benefits of this email marketing strategy.

 

Effective

 

Email marketing is a form of direct marketing that works. When users give you their contact details, it is because they know they will receive information, which means that they are open to your offers, news, etc.

 

Economical and scalable

 

It's a strategy that doesn't require a lot of expense beyond an email marketing tool and the time invested in writing your emails. You will write the same email for hundreds or thousands of people.

 

Customizable

 

Segment in a database, and you can also customize the different emails. This way, you send emails to the target you need or that match each campaign you create.

 

Measurable

 

If anything sets an email marketing strategy apart from traditional email marketing campaigns, it's metrics. By sending your emailing campaign, you will obtain measurable data such as: openings of emails, number of times a link has been clicked, etc. Data that will allow you to make the right decisions for the rest of your marketing strategy.

 

Non-intrusive

 

When someone gives you their email to send them information, it's because they want to receive those messages, so it's not an intrusive way to do marketing!

 

As in the case of the newsletter, the e-mail constitutes a mode of information that you send to a subscriber who has previously been interested in your activity, your company or your product.

 

Keep in mind that you need to add a button to allow them to unsubscribe from your emails, they need to have the option to do so.

 

 Immediate

 

In case you want to send one-time offers, like Black Friday, the email campaign is a good way to communicate about it. Emails arrive to your customers at the same time you send them, so they know what's new very quickly.

 

 Types of Email marketing you need

 

There is no a strict classification of emails. For instance, some marketers choose to group emails into transactional and non-transactional, while some choose to go beyond that, and have even more narrow groups, so they have a welcome email, a notification email, etc.

 

The first main division we could highlight is based on the number of emails you send in the campaign, so we have one-to-many and then one-to-one emails.

 

One-to-many email

One-to-many emails refers to the emails sent to the entire mailing list or a certain targeted group within that list. The core advantage of these emails is that they have a huge reach, thus the great potential to generate traffic and escalation conversions.

Even though you reach out to a huge number of subscribers, you will still be designing a single email. This could also have a negative effect because your email might seem too general and it might lack personalization.

Within this large group of one-to-many emails, there are several types of emails:

Newsletter

 

A newsletter is one of the most popular types of emails. These generally contain information from your blog or website that you have recently published. They could also feature the news about your company, events, announcements, etc.

 

 

By sending regular emails, you establish a connection with the readers, you bring them back to your website in the attempt to engage and convert them. On one hand, a newsletter is a very useful type of email as it allows you to combine different types of content, such as new articles from the blog, the announcement of the upcoming event, etc.

Advantages of email newsletters

Brand Awareness:

Newsletters create certain anticipation in readers. Whether it is a daily newsletter or a weekend communication, readers get into the habit of receiving it.

Repurpose Content:

Newsletters generally contain information that you have already published. Many companies do quick summaries of their most popular blog posts and link to the articles from their newsletter. In this way, they bring subscribers back to the company website and engage them with more company content.

Diverse Content: 

Email newsletters give you the freedom to include different content types all in one email that might be important to your organization.

Disadvantages of email newsletters

Diluted Call-To-Action:

Newsletters can be overwhelming with multiple calls-to-action. If you include a series of blurbs or article summaries, the attention of your recipients will most likely be spread across these tidbits of information as opposed to staying focused on a certain element.

Design:

With newsletters, the layout becomes a much more complicated task than with dedicated email sends. You’ll have to spend some time deciding on the right placement of images and text, alignment and prioritization of information.

Digest email

This type of email is similar to the newsletter, but the design is much simpler and concise. In a digest email, you share the most important pieces of content in a form of a short list with links.

This way you help your subscribers find your content easily, which is especially helpful for blogs that publish a lot of content. The goal is the same as with the newsletter, you share information, increase brand awareness, and generate traffic, but the design is what differentiate these two.

 

Digest emails are frequently automated so that the software simply picks up the scoop from your blog and send it to the subscribers.

 

This is a perfect way to keep the subscribers informed if you have a lot of content published each day. Having a schedule for sending a digest email could be helpful to your subscribers, as they will know when to expect the new digest.

Dedicated send email

A dedicated send email is an email your organization will send to a specific group of people that subscribe to your business. For instance, when you’re hosting an event, like a conference or webinar, you may want an announcement to only those who have registered or signed up.

The main benefit of a dedicated email is the ability to highlight a single event that is important to you. You will have a strong call-to-action button, which will have much more impact on your campaign.

Sponsorship email

Like with paid ads in search engine marketing, email marketing also allows getting promotion through paid methods. With a sponsorship email, you pay to be included in a newsletter of another website or company. This means a huge new lead potential, as you will be targeting an entirely new community.

Advantages Of Sponsorship Emails

Highly Targeted: 

The biggest advantage of sponsorship emails is that you can be specific in defining the segment you want to reach. Get granular in identifying the different characteristics of your target audience.

Exact ROI: 

There is a very specific investment in sponsorship emails — you know how much you are paying the vendor. Now you only need to track the results you are getting (visits, leads, sales) to determine your return on the cost you have paid.

 

Knowing the exact ROI will help you fit it into your marketing budget and build accurate marketing reports at the end of the quarter.

Disadvantages Of Sponsorship Emails

It's Paid: 

Sponsorship emails are sent to people you haven’t earned as subscribers (they didn’t opt-in to your list). In this context, you have to pay to get content in front of them.

Dedicated Resources: 

Sponsorship emails and management of the vendor relationship require a big marketing effort and tight control. In addition to brand synergies, you'll also need to understand the data behind their emails.

One-to-one email

This group of emails includes the types of emails that are sent to a single user. The focus of such email campaign is not a huge reach because you will not be contacting the entire community.

 

The main benefit of these emails is that you can focus on one user as you introduce the user to your brand and community. Usually, you will use the existing content to do so.

 

The most common types of the one-to-one emails include:

Lead nurture

This is a type of an email that is supposed to establish a firm connection with your subscriber.

After someone signs up for your newsletter, sending out lead nurture emails can help them discover more about your brand, obtain even more free resources, discover more great content on your blog, etc

Advantages Of Lead Nurturing Emails

It's Timely: 

Study after study shows that email response rates decline over the age of the lead. You need to use lead nurturing campaigns to take advantage of the dynamic between subscriber recency and CTR.

It's Automated: 

Once you set up lead nurturing, emails are sent out automatically according to your schedule as new leads come in. This leads to a high return on a low investment.

It's Targeted: 

Studies show that targeted and segmented emails perform better than mass email communications. Lead nurturing enables you to tie a series of emails to a specific activity or conversion event.

 

Disadvantages Of Lead Nurturing Emails

Generates Less Concurrent Buzz: 

With dedicated sends to your email database, you can generate a lot of buzz around your brand.

 

If you're sharing a brand new product or service, there is usually an increase in engagement resulting from simultaneous forwarding and social media sharing (especially if you have Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter sharing links in your email).

Passive Tracking: 

Because lead nurturing is automated and marketers often forget about it after they’ve set it up, it also tends to be underreported.

 

 

Notification emails

Notification emails are also known as alerts and auto-responders. They notify the recipient each time something happens, and these actions are also known as triggers.

 

The sender needs to establish some criteria for an outgoing message, something that will be a trigger for notification email to be sent.

 

Social media emails

 

Unlike the above email campaigns, where you reach out to your subscribers, social media gives you an option to reach users' inboxes through the social media platform.

 

 

For example, LinkedIn groups allow their administrators to send LinkedIn announcements, which will be sent to the members' inboxes. The same goes for Google+.

 

 

Although you do not really have access to user's email, nor could you use a software to customize the email or track conversions, this could still be a good way to leverage the power of an email campaign.

 

 

This approach opens up new opportunities to grow your business. You are able to reach the people who might not be completely familiar with your brand which is a great way to gain new leads and potential customers.

 

Conclusion

The choice of the email type you are going to send depends on the goal you want to achieve. Each type has its distinctive features and it fulfills a certain purpose. Understanding the distinctions among them will help you make a better choice for the future campaigns.