If we are talking about email marketing then, the first important thing to do is, to understand its meaning and to know what importance does it hold for your online marketing business.
“Email marketing is a part of the inbound marketing strategy, used to entice, nurture and build a relationship with customers.”
It can also be proven one of the best eCommerce marketing strategy to regain lapsed customers for the business.
After knowing and understand what is email marketing, let’s try to figure out why marketers need to use email marketing for brand awareness by going through the following stats.
“Globally the number of email users last year was announced 3.718 billion. In 2018, it has reached 3.823 billion. And according to the prediction made by statista, it is expected to reach 4.258 billion in 2022.”
This stats shows the active number of email users from 2017 to 2022. Through the stats, we can clearly understand that the number of email users is increasing year by year. And if the eCommerce marketers invest in email marketing strategy they have a great opportunity to reach out to the wide audience to make money online.
Through email marketing brands can fulfill their desire to
- Reach wide audience
- Understand the user field of interest
- Gain loyal customers
- Make conversions
- Boost engagement rate
6 Types of Emails you should include for your Marketing Campaigns
1. Newsletter
In this type of email, we can include multiple links. In the newsletter, the marketers include information about blog posts, product updates, special offers, etc. That’s why newsletter emails can be proven as one of the best brand awareness email marketing campaigns for online marketers.
But this type of emails have a drawback is that as these emails include a number of call to action, therefore, the user might get distracted and he might not reach to the page you wish they should arrive at. Therefore, it’s always better to include less call to action buttons and links.
2. Lead Nurturing Emails
Lead nurturing emails requires a series of similar emails. This kind of email is sent over a regular interval of time.
Marketers create lead nurturing emails to convert leads into customers. This type of email can also boost the engagement rate of the audience. The lead nurturing emails have a 5x more click-through rate than general emails.
3. Transactional Emails
The transactional emails have more click-through rate than any other kind of email. The transactional emails have more open rate because they work as a confirmation message for the customers. This type of emails is used in the close stage.
4. Emails for the Special Occasion
You can send emails on the special days of your customers like bday, anniversary, etc.
And you can also include offers and discounts in the email. This type of email also has a more click-through rate than others and can help your business to make more money and loyal customers.
5. Educational Emails
The purpose of educational emails is to provide knowledge about the products and services to the users who have shown some interest.
Companies pay attention to while creating educational emails as these emails have the power to change the perspective of users towards their business. This type of email helps in building long-term relationships and customer loyalty.
- Promote less, educate more
- Provide useful and complete information about the company
6. Promotional Emails
The companies use promotional emails to entice users towards their products and services. The main objective of these types of emails is to promote and increase the sale of the company by start sending emails.
To create your emails for the promotion you first need to build your email list of users, who have some interest in your products and services.
- Create your email list of users to whom you want to provide the offer.
- Don’t forget to create a sense of urgency through your content and offers towards the product and services.
Email marketing for each phase of the customer lifecycle
For the marketers, it’s important to know what type of email content they should generate during each stage of the customer lifecycle to increase the ROI of the company.
The journey of customers include the following stages
Awareness
Convert
Close
Delight
Repeat
As you can see each phase of the buyer’s journey is totally different from the other. Therefore, it’s also important to generate content according to each stage of the customer.
Stage 1 (Awareness)- In this stage, the marketers build their brand awareness. The end-user becomes aware of brand products and services.
Here the task of marketers is to provide knowledge and to make the prospects(leads) aware of the products and services of their company.
To make them discover and evaluate so, the marketers make use of blogs, social media, website, emails, etc.
Marketing Tip- Remember in the first stage, they aren’t your customers, they have just started discovering your brand. Therefore, at this stage, it’s important to tell them about the benefits and features of your product and service to make them your customers.
To understand what type of email you should generate during the first stage look at the following image
Hi [first name]
Welcome to MakeWebBetter team, we are extremely happy to announce that you are now a part of our family.
To discover more things about our company you can refer to the blog Winners don’t do different things, they do things differently | Ranked#22 Deloitte Fast 50 2018 and the ABOUT US page.
Best Regards,
Team MakeWebBetter
Stage 2 (Convert)- In this stage, the prospect is well aware of the brand’s product and services. He/She has acquired the essential knowledge about the product and services they are interested in.
The prospect has gained adequate knowledge about the products. Therefore, the task of marketers is now, to influence the purchase of customers. And to convince them towards more and more purchases.
Marketing Tip- To influence the purchase of leads, include the following types of offers
- Free shipping
- Coupons
- Rewards
- Festive season discount
Hi [first name]
We are providing $10% OFF on HubSpot Integration Pro and $5% OFF on its add-ons so don’t miss this chance.
For any query or problem, you can either contact me or my team. We are available on call and Skype.
Best Regards
ABC
Stage 3 (Close)- After all the efforts in the close stage, the leads are converted into customers.
In digital marketing, whether it’s a big business or small business everyone contributes their level best to convert the prospect into customers. But what’s the point of all the efforts and work, if the customer purchase for once. As a marketer, we all want a long-term relationship with our customers.
Marketing Tip- To maintain the customer’s engagement with the products and services send newsletters at regular intervals of time. This newsletter can include information about a new blog post, the arrival of new products, changes in previous products, etc. This will surely help your business to gain customer loyalty.
Dear [Firstname]
Thank you (name) for purchasing our product (name of the product).
We will keep you updated about new offers, the arrival of new products and changes in old products through our blogs and newsletters.
Thank You
ABC
Stage 4 (Delight)- In the previous stage, we have gained the trust of customers. And now it’s time to nurture them towards more purchase.
Marketing Tip- In my previous blogs, I have already told you that to acquire a new customer it’s costs 5x more than to acquire an existing customer. Therefore, it’s more beneficial to increase customer retention for the business.
Dear [firstname],
You will be happy to hear that we are providing special offers on our products in the event of Black Friday to our loyal customers.
To know more about the offers stay tuned with us. For any query or problem, you can either contact me or my team.
Best Regards,
ABC
Stage 5 (Repeat)- By building strong customer relationships and refining it on a regular basis you have the possibility that your customers can convert into promoters.
Dear [firstname]
We know that you have an interest in email marketing campaigns and you want to make it for your business.
You will be on the top to hear that we have prepared a complete blog series on email marketing. For any query or problem, you can either contact me or my team.
Best Regards
ABC
8 Ways to do Branding with Email Marketing
Doing branding with email marketing is important but, it’s more important to do it in the right way. Therefore I am now going to discuss the different ways to do branding with email marketing.
1. You should know your Audience
To build your brand the first most important task of online marketers is to determine their target audience. Once you have identified your target customers you increase the chance to reach out to the right audience through your emails.
2. Use Correct Email Marketing Content
Email marketing can be proven as one of the most effective marketing techniques if the content used in it is powerful and memorable.
Tips for creating content for emails
- Include an enticing subject line
- Use a tool like Grammarly to avoid spelling mistakes
- Avoid using a constant sales pitch
- You don’t have to write a story. Keep it short and simple.
- You need to use the bold tag to highlight important words and links
- The formatting of content should be done accurately
- Create content that creates curiosity in the human mind
- Words and phrases that you should avoid while writing an email
- Hopefully
- Just
- Sorry
- Actually
- Kind of
- Obviously
- But
- Hey/Hi
- Okay/Noted
- Apparently
- Me/ I
- No
- Fine
- Respectfully
- Sincerely yours/ truly yours/very truly yours
- I thought I should reach out.
- Please do not hesitate to contact me.
3. Use Consistent Email Template
The email template is a pre-written email that a user can modify by his/her own content. The same template can be used multiple times with different content. For an effective email marketing strategy use consistent email templates.
Color- The first thing to which users’ eyes relate is colors. Therefore, use enticing colors for your logo and images to have a long-lasting effect on your customer’s mind.
Font – Using too many fonts for emails can make your email look messy and can distract the user from the main objective of email. Therefore, it’s always good to use the same fonts for emails as well as for blogs and websites. Depending on your business type, you may check different fonts as a reference, like tattoo fonts and stamp fonts.
Tip- Use one or two fonts for your emails and be consistent with them.
Platforms where you can create your own templates
- LLCServices
- Octanego
- Knowtify
- NewsLetter Creator
- Zurb
- Mosaico
- SendinBlue
- SharpSpring
- Movable INK
- BEE Free
- MailGet
4. Use your Brand Logo
Customers recognize your company through your brand logo. When users open an email they want proof that the emails are coming from your company. And the logos work as proof for your brand.
Tip- Use the logo at the top of the email so, that users can easily recognize that the email is from a trusted site.
5. Visible Call to Action
The call to action link can redirect the user to (website, registration page, shop now page, checkout page, blog page, etc). Include links according to the type of emails. Example
- If you desire that user should purchase from your website take him to the SHOP NOW page.
- Want to educate the user about the website take him to the website page.
- If you wish they should register on your site redirect them to the registration page.
Tip- Avoid including too many links, use only where it is required and relevant.
6. Optimize your Emails for Mobiles Devices
Optimization is one of the most important parts of any marketing strategy. Because by optimizing your website, blogs, and emails you have a chance to reach out to a wide audience. A mobile-optimized email has a more open rate than others.
- 88% of users open an email message on their smartphones.
- In 2016, more than 50 percent of email is opened on a mobile device.
Therefore, through the stats, it becomes clear that it’s important to optimize the emails for mobile devices.
6 Ways to optimize emails for mobile devices by
- Using responsive templates
- Keeping the size of images between 40 to 70 kb
- Resizing the images so that it can fit on a mobile screen
- Increasing the size of links and call to action buttons
- Using readable fonts
- Highlighting the subject line
7. Add Images & Landing Pages in Emails
Adding images and landing pages to the emails is one of the ways to make it more enticing and effective. And a call to an action landing page to give your users a better brand experience. The below image shows how to include the logo, links, and how to highlight the content.
Tips- Make sure that the call to action landing page redirects the user to the correct page.
8. Monitor Conversions through Email
To measure how much conversion your eCommerce business has earned through the email marketing strategy measure the following KPIs.
KPIs for Email Marketing
- Open Rate- On average how many users have opened your email
- Click-Through Rate- It shows the total number of unique clicks to the number of emails delivered and then multiplies the result to get CTR
- Conversions- It is the number of users who have completed their purchase by clicking one of the links in emails
- Bounce Rate- Shows the emails that have a high bounce rate
- Unsubscription Rate- It is the number of users who have unsubscribed from your emails
- Spam Rate- This shows the number of users who have spammed your emails.
- Refer to our blog to know how to avoid spam filters during emails Learn How To Avoid Spam Filters When Doing Email Marketing
- Cost Per Lead- On average how much does it cost to acquire a new customer through email
- Site Traffic- shows how many site visitors you have through emails
13 Benefits of Email Marketing for Brands
The marketers need to go through the benefits to understand why it’s important to have a brand awareness email marketing strategy for the eCommerce business.
- Easy to target audience
- Spreads brand awareness
- Generates new customers for the business
- Requires less investment
- Increases customer retention
- Drives more conversion rate
- Easy to include offers/discounts/rewards
- The results are measurable
- Easy to implement
- The probability to reach the right audience at the right time increases
- It saves time as the same mail can be sent to a number of users
- Increases the number of newsletter and blog subscribers
- It’s easy to share
Bonus Tips
- Segment your customer before making a brand awareness email marketing strategy
- To know how to segment your customers for your email marketing refer our blog How to Transform your Emails from basic to best with Email Marketing Segmentation?
- Include offers in your emails for more conversion
- Provide offers for holiday sale
- The users who have subscribed your emails
- Users who have shown interest in your brand by giving their email address
- The content you use for social media and for emails should be the same
- Use grammatical tools to avoid mistakes
- Send the email at regular interval of time
- To know how frequently you should send emails to your customers refer to our blog How frequently you should send emails to your subscribers?
- The subject line should be interesting and emphasizing
- Build your emails according to the customer interest it will be more beneficial for the eCommerce business
- Remember the email content for B2B and B2C they both are different so, make your content according to your business type
- Prepare your future emails in advance
- The type of emails you should avoid
- The emails that are against the law
- Emails that have misspelled words
- Emails that have poor content
- Include relevant links
- Use consistent email design
The Final Words
Email marketing strategy plays a vital role in inbound marketing strategies for bringing conversions. Therefore, in this blog, I have discussed the different ways through which brands can make their own position in the marketplace.
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