E-mail Marketing

Perusal Tech Pvt Ltd

16 Jul, 2021

WHAT IS E-MAIL MARKETING?

It's an effective way to convert leads into sales by sending personalized e-mails to targeted audience. If somebody is interested in your product, you can reach out to them via E-mail. It can also be used to remarket pre-qualified leads. So, anybody who's pre-qualified we can go ahead and communicate with them as well.

E-mail Marketing is effective at every stage of the customer lifecycle. The stages are as following:

(1) AWARENESS: E-mail Marketing allows customers to recognise their problems after which you can educate them on how your brand can solve their problems. That's what e-mail is going to do, we're going to communicate with them via e-mail and bring awareness to the problem by solving the problem.

(2) CONSIDERATION: Customer is now focused on searching for relevant products (solutions) and compares the products with similar ones. They're definitely looking a little further in the process. They're educated, they know what they're looking for, so, we can really hit them with the right e-mail. We can send a relevant e-mail to promote our product.

(3) PURCHASE: With purchase we can send an e-mail that encourages the purchase of our product by offering something, by giving an offer or a discount to the customers.

(4) RETENTION: Nurture your relationship with customers to ensure that they remain loyal to your brand. They've already purchased and how do we get them to purchase again, that's RETENTION, we want to retain our customers, we want to get them back to buy our products. So, we're going to send an e-mail to active customers or we can gives offers or discounts to them.

(5) ADVOCACY: We want to convert that active customer into brand advocates. We want that customer to talk about our brand for us and to promote it. Send e-mails to customers and ask them to promote products.

E-MAIL MARKETING SET-UP:

STEP 1: Identify target audience and create segments. Segmenting is about targeting a specific audience.

STEP 2: Create campaigns and set an appropriate CTA (Call-to-action).

STEP 3: Test your e-mails before sending.

STEP 4: Send the campaigns immediately or schedule a time.

STEP 5: Analyse performance (open rate, CTR, response rate) and optimize campaigns.

BASIC CHECKLIST OF E-MAIL MARKETING SET-UP:

• Creating and adding contact list.

• Creating your first campaign.

• Selecting the list (either we can send it to all contacts, or we can select the recipient list).

• Choosing a suitable format for your campaign.

• Modifying the template and updating subject line.

• Finally, we can send our e-mails to relevant customers.

E-MAIL MARKETING METRICS:

• OPEN RATE: It is the percentage of the total number of recipients who opened an e-mail campaign. Open rate = E-mails opened ÷ E-mails sent - E-mails bounced.

• CLICK THROUGH RATE: It is the percentage of recipients that have clicked on CTA in your e-mail message. CTR = Number of click-throughs ÷ Number of delivered emails.

• RESPONSE RATE: It is the percentage of the total recipients who clicked on the link of your e-mail campaign and completed an action. Response Rate = Number of actions taken ÷ Number of e-mails delivered.

BENEFITS OF E-MAIL MARKETING:

(1) It is cost-effective.

(2) It is time-saving.

(3) It is real-time marketing.

(4) It is less intrusive.

(5) It builds credibility.

(6) It increases visibility and brand awareness.

(7) It is an easy way to track ROI.

A/B TESTING:

A/B Testing is key to E-mail Marketing. In E-mail Marketing, gaining high open rates and click-through rates will result in more website visitors and sales. In theory, that's what's supposed to happen, we get more opens, we get more people to click and we get more people to purchase. But, it's not as easy as it sounds. So, how do we make that possible. Well, we're going to do that via A/B Testing.

A/B Testing is a method to analyse which of the two e-mail campaign strategy is most effective in terms of high open rates and click rates. So, in this case you can send out two emails, two subject lines, two call-to-actions. You're testing one against the other, that's what A/B Testing is.

For better results A/B Testing can be done with the Subject Line or with the E-mail Content. The Subject Line impacts the open rate. So, if I write a subject line, I don't even know how that subject line is going to perform, but, if I write a second subject line, then, I’ll be able to basically give myself a better chance of getting a better open rate because I’m offering up two different subject lines, likewise for E-mail Content. The Subject Line and E-mail Content are the most important elements in E-mail Marketing. When a Subject Line and E-mail Content is interesting, it results in high open rates.

In order to keep improving your e-mail rates, you need to do continuous experiments, which means continuous A/B Testing. In continuous, A/B Testing, we can test various elements of the e-mail campaign such as, sender's name, subject line, e-mail copy, CTA, e-mail design, image, etc.

OPTIMISING THE SUBJECT LINE:

• Include a number in your subject line.

• Include an emoji in your subject line.

• Personalize subject lines for better rates.

• Prefer title case subject lines.

• Watch the length of your subject line (17-24 characters).

• Develop a sense of urgency.

OPTIMISING THE E-MAIL CONTENT:

• Send content that is relevant to customer expectation.

• Use bullet points to make the content readable.

• Follow a logical structure

• Use compelling images.

• Prefer to design emails with responsive designs.

• Avoid grammatical mistakes.

• Personalize e-mails for your readers.

• Choose the right fonts and colours for your e-mail.

• Build a rapport with customers by sharing insights they value.

• Use recipient names.

• Add a clear call-to-action at the end.

AUTOMATING E-MAIL:

Triggered e-mails that are sent to customers based on an event, date or user behaviour are known as E-mail Automation. An event could be a special occasion, date could be birthdays or anniversaries or specific day of the week and user behaviour are those who abandon the cart or it could be product recommendations.

Autoresponder E-mails are e-mails that are sent at frequent intervals based on the behaviour of subscribers.

TYPES OF E-MAIL CAMPAIGNS:

(1) NEWSLETTERS: With e-mail newsletters, subscribers are connected and informed about the product updates. It doesn't necessarily have to be a product they buy, it could be a product they subscribe to. You always want to be able to send out that Newsletter to let them know what's going on with your product, are there upcoming product updates ahead, is there one that just happened, is there a webinar that discusses the new product update. So, that's what the Newsletter is going to do, inform the end user about the update.

HOW TO OPTIMIZE?

• Stack your e-mail content.

• Create a compelling header.

• Share different variety of useful content like videos, articles, webinars, etc. with those recipients.

• Follow a consistent schedule.

(2) PROMOTIONAL E-MAILS: We want to be able to drive revenue by sending special offers through Promotional E-mail.

HOW TO OPTIMIZE?

• Personalise your campaigns.

• Include time sensitive offers.

• Prefer to send offer e-mails on holidays.

(3) ABANDONED CART E-MAILS: We want people to purchase and as much as you try on your E-mail Marketing campaign to drive traffic to the website and as hard as the website works to get people to convert through the shopping cart, it's never going be a 100% and so Abandon Cart E-mails give us that extra incentive to get that person back to the shopping cart to purchase. These e-mails are shared with customers who have added product to their cart but didn't finish through the checkout process.

HOW TO OPTIMIZE?

• Use a simple Abandoned Cart E-mail template.

• Personalize your abandoned cart recovery e-mails.

• Send a series of e-mail reminder.

• In your e-mail reminder, add a product image.

(4) RE-ENGAGEMENT CAMPAIGN: It's a series of emails sent to inactive email subscribers. It boosts engagement and helps to maintain a high Inbox Placement Ratio.

HOW TO OPTIMIZE?

• Prefer gamification to re-engage subscribers.

• Prefer subject lines like, "hey we've been missing you" or "did we do something wrong".

• Run a poll or competition to re-engage with your subscribers. so for example