Email Marketing

Email marketing refers to the use of emails as a marketing tool to promote a business. It involves directly emailing customers to promote existing products. inform them of new products, offers, and other events related to your business.

Email Marketing Metrics

• Open Rate – This metric tracks how many of your subscribers opened your email.
• Click-through Rate – Your click-through rate represents how many people clicked on any link or CTA in your email.
• Unsubscribe Rate – Unsubscribe rate shows you how many people have chosen to unsubscribe from your mailing list.
• Conversion Rate – This shows how many people completed the desired action after clicking on the link in your email. For example – if you sent an email with a link for a Christmas sale and someone clicked on that and then made a purchase.

Creating an Email Marketing Strategy

Step 1 – Collect email ids – before even thinking of anything else, you need to build a mailing list so that you actually have people to send emails to. A few effective tactics for collecting email addresses are – create a pop form on your website, offer an incentive in exchange for the ids (e.g. Free eBook, coupons, free shipping), use CTAs.

Step 2 – Establish your goals – The content you create for your emails has to be aligned with the overall goals and objectives of the campaign. So have a clearly defined outcome that you’re aiming to achieve, for example – increasing sales or building customer loyalty. And establish what are the smaller objectives you need to achieve that will help you reach your goal. For example – if your end goal is to increase engagement rate, your first objective might be to increase the number of people that open your emails, i.e. your open rates.

Step 3 – Segment your audience – dividing your mailing list into categories based on certain characteristics will ensure that all of your customers are getting emails with content that is relevant to them. This is especially important because most customers will unsubscribe if they get emails that aren’t relevant to them. A couple ways you can segment your mailing list are – by demographics, by the frequency (daily/weekly/monthly lists), established customers, and potential customers.

Step 4 – Deliver content – Start off with an introduction email and deliver on any promises made for getting their email. After that don’t immediately start by pushing deals and pitches for them to buy. Create content that engages customers and offers value to them. Be careful in how you promote your products or sales through email marketing, it should never feel pushy or like spam. Have a plan set in advance as to how you will roll out the promotional content.