Email marketing is (essentially) using email to get the word out about your company. It’s a different and more personable way to connect with your customers. Building campaigns or sending monthly newsletters can be a great way to keep your audience in tune with what you’ve been up to, and it’s an easy method to reach multiple contacts at once, personalize communications, and segment campaigns so that they are reaching the right people.
Ok, I think I get it. But can we break it down a little further?
An “official” definition of email marketing
If you type “what is email marketing?” into Google, you’ll get the best in textbook responses explaining the baseline of what it is in some very roundabout terms, like:
- “The use of email within your marketing efforts to promote a business’ products and services, as well as incentivize customer loyalty”
or
- “Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message , typically to a group of people, using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing.”
Definitions like these are great — if a definition is solely what you’re looking for. But if you’re researching email marketing, it’s highly likely that you’re doing so with the goal of implementation, not just reading about it.
It’s not just about what you do (or how you define it), it’s about how you do it. This blog is all about diving into the nitty gritty of email marketing: the pros, the cons, and how the right content can help your marketing campaigns (and your business relationships) soar.
Email marketing can open up amazing possibilities for your business: building new relationships rekindling old ones, and nurturing your existing connections.
It all depends on what goals you want your email marketing to achieve.
3 paths to email marketing victory
If you’re just starting out with this type of advertising, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with how to begin your strategy. When it comes down to it, email marketing is used primarily for three things:
Raising brand awareness
Emails help businesses connect with existing and prospective clients by promoting brand content while building relationships between your brand and your audience. You can reach out to a large audience and ensure that you stay top of mind while carefully curating a positive brand image.
Your weekly, monthly, or whatever-frequency-suits-your-fancy newsletter gives clients the opportunity to read about the exciting new things you’re working on. It’s also the time to interact with your email list to gain a better understanding of what topics they care about — whether that be through a newsletter poll, request for feedback, or just looking at the analytics to measure what stories people are clicking on the most.
Generating and nurturing leads
Enter email campaigns. Skillfully creating and deploying a series of emails aimed at a particular audience can help you engage and secure qualified leads. This goal can go hand in hand with the previous point, especially if you’ve observed that only certain segments of your audience interact with certain content.
By finding out which content, products, or services members of your email list are more interested in, you can create more targeted short form and long form content with that specific audience in mind. Since typical campaigns and funnels involve deploying emails over time based on response, it’s important to think strategically about the process.
Promoting content
Yes, the overarching goal for your email (and all) marketing efforts is to effectively promote your product or service to your target audience. However, in doing so, you’re also pushing your company’s content. For this reason, it’s imperative that your content adds value for your audience.
Marketing has shifted, and people are not as keen on being ‘sold to’ — so give them a little background first! Putting great content in your emails can help your audience learn about your product or service and get the details they need before making a buying decision. Use your analytics reports and responses from your questions to figure out what your audience needs, and create your content to answer their questions.
“70% of individuals want to learn about products through content rather than traditional advertising.”
Apart from its marketing and promotion uses, email is also a nice tool to add to your strategy because it’s one of the most preferred methods of communication today. 89% of people send at least one email a day for something, which means just as many people are receiving them and keeping an eye on that inbox.
If there is a sure fire way to get your marketing message out, email is it.
Another perk about email marketing is its flexibility. On one hand, it provides a testing ground for your content and other marketing efforts. You can use analytics to find out what people are responding to, where they are clicking, and even host polls asking them what they want to see in future emails. On the other, it allows your audience to engage with your communications on their own time, removing the pressure from intense marketing situations and giving them time to really focus on your carefully curated email content.
Why is that important?
Because the quality of your content is a big part of determining the success of your email marketing campaigns.
Better content for better campaigns
Although you may create different campaigns with a multitude of goals in mind, one thing that’s true of all is that they all should give audiences a reason to want to engage with your brand. Part of email marketing (and marketing in general) is educating the public about your brand story, product, or service. By doing so, you’re not only completing the buyer transaction, but you’re also showcasing your thought leadership, building trust and relationships, and listening to your audience — which can ultimately increase your customer loyalty.
How your readers engage can all be indicators for what your next email campaign should focus on. Your analytics reports can also narrow down additional demographic information that will tell you which members of your audience are the most interested in your content, giving you the opportunity to segment your campaigns so your short and long-form content are delivered to the people who are most likely to engage with it. This ultimately can lead to better business relationships, and that’s never a bad thing.
There’s a lot more we can say about email marketing — it’s hard to fit it all into one blog. If we could get it down to a statement, it would be to seriously consider adding email to your marketing strategy. Start building campaigns, sending newsletters, and taking full advantage of the most preferred method of communication! And if you need help along the way developing campaigns, content, or both, contact us<. We’re always happy to help.