Email marketing or email marketing refers to designing and sending emails as a direct marketing channel. Long assimilated to mass mailing, it is now based on the consent of contacts and the personalization of messages.
Email marketing is a pillar of digital marketing strategy and the most important direct marketing channel with an estimated ROI of 3800%.
Impossible today to have an online business without using emails!
From the order confirmation email to the news newsletter, they are indeed essential for the management and growth of your business.
In this guide for beginners, we explain everything there is to know, in a simple way, about email marketing.
What are the main purposes it serves, where to start, the different types of emails to send and the various aspects to consider.
Why is email marketing essential?
Les objectifs de l’email marketing.
Email marketing consists of informing and retaining a base of contacts interested in your products or services and generating sales by encouraging them to visit specific pages of your site.
Email marketing can fulfill 3 types of objectives:
- notoriety (making you known),
- imagery (positioning yourself as an expert) and
- of action (selling your products & services
The communications you send are directly received in the email inbox of your recipients, which allows you to be present in the daily life of each of them.
Email thus intervenes at each stage of the customer relationship: at the information and prospecting stage, at the time of conversion, but also later for loyalty.
The interest of email marketing lies in its great scalability: it is possible to easily send emails on a large scale, while personalizing the exchanges as much as possible according to what you know of your recipient.
Email marketing in 2019
Email is not new. On the contrary, it is one of the first digital media that appeared. But far from being obsolete, email marketing is now more used than ever.
Due to its great accessibility, it makes it possible to reach various audiences who are not necessarily comfortable with the Internet – it is the most generalized marketing medium.
Using emails for your marketing allows you to establish a lasting relationship with your customers and prospects.
According to a study, 90% of Internet users consult their main address at least once a day.
Nearly half (45%) of them also manage their purchases from this same address.
Email is described as the most popular business lever for both professionals and people who check their emails from their mobile.
If you don't yet have an email marketing strategy in place, you are losing sales opportunities, and a great opportunity to build relationships with your customers to get to know them better!
It's time to fix it: we'll tell you how.
Where to start: the choice of software
The benefits of emailing software
The first step in setting up an effective emailing strategy is choosing your sending software.
It is indeed essential to use software to send your emails for several reasons.
The first is that email sending platforms (like Sendinblue) allow you to ensure that your emails are delivered to your recipients.
No point in sending emails if no one gets them, right?
Email sending software therefore allows you to manage subscriptions to your emails (a legal obligation that I will tell you about below) but also to design your emails easily.
With just a few clicks, you can design an enjoyable newsletter that meets your goals.
Email sending platforms also allow you to track the statistics of your sent emails: you can see which are your best performing emails and learn more about your audience thanks to the rate of opening, clicks and reactivity.
Finally - and most importantly - emailing software saves you time! Sending emails one by one via Outlook or Gmail is risky but also very time-consuming and produces few results.
Comparison of solutions.
There are several software for sending emails. To make an informed and relevant choice for your business, here are the questions to ask yourself:
- How many contacts do you have and do you expect to have in a year?
- How many emails do you plan to send in a year?
- What type of email do you want to send? (Automatic and/or marketing)
- Are you comfortable with English? (some software is only available in English)
These questions will help you determine your email platform based on your needs.
The different types of marketing emails
One-off emails
One-time emails are emails that are anchored in time. You design them and send them over the water. They keep pace with your business:
The newsletters present the news of your company (new milestone reached, new functionality or service) and/or highlight an example of use of your products. They help to stick in the minds of your recipients and inspire them.
Email campaigns are more focused on the marketing & sales aspect. A campaign can be composed of 3 – 10 emails over several days or even weeks. They correspond to a promotion / a strong marketing moment. For example: a Black Friday offer, holiday promotions, a new product launch, etc.
Automated emails
Automated emails save you time and money.
These emails are personalized based on the information you have, but don't require someone to hit the "send" button every time.
You define an email template which will then be sent directly, without human intervention, to your recipients according to the conditions you have pre-established.
There are two types of automated emails:
- Transactional emails: sent following a transaction. These are, for example, booking confirmation emails, welcome emails when someone subscribes to your newsletter or appointment reminders.
- Marketing automation emails: sent based on your relationship with your recipient. This is for example the emails sent after sending a white paper, or following a first visit to your site without purchase.
Email marketing best practices
Now that you know more about the different types of emails and their benefits for your business, it's time to move on to the main points of email marketing.
These are points to which I draw your attention because they will allow you to send effective emails legally.
Collect emails legally
To send emails, you need email addresses - logic. How you harvest these addresses is very important, however.
The GDPR is a European regulation that protects consumers' personal data, including their email addresses.
To harvest emails legally, you must go through a process called "opt in".
This procedure allows you to record the collection and processing authorizations given by your prospect or customer.
Segment your mailing list
The more your email list grows, the more likely it is to contain very different people.
Segmenting your list means cutting it into several small lists of similar people.
Segmentation can be done based on age, lead source, first product purchase… the possibilities are endless!
This allows you to continue to offer each of the people on your list relevant and personalized content.
Take care of your deliverability
Deliverability is a term derived from the English "deliverability". It's a concept that means that emails are indeed sent - and therefore received - by your recipients. Conversely, some emails are delivered directly to the SPAM (junk mail) folder, which means that they are rarely read.
The deliverability of your emails depends on technical but also behavioral factors. Concretely, this means that the quality of your emails influences their good reception - in every sense of the word. Paying attention to the subject line of your emails (avoiding certain words like "free"), keeping an up-to-date contact list and setting up an unsubscribe link are good practices that improve your deliverability.
Create a nice design
In marketing, form matters as much as substance.
Whatever your message and the value it has for your audience, no one will read it if the medium through which it is broadcast is not readable.
The trick to producing readable and consistent emails while saving time is to create email templates.
Choose a template for your emails that you customize with your company colors. You will only have to modify the text for your different emails.
You don't even need a designer: the drag-and-drop editor simply lets you personalize your emails while creating a clean look
Personalize your exchanges
We all like to feel a little special. Conversely, we also sense very quickly when someone does not listen to what we say and responds on the side.
This goes for email marketing too! The personalization of your emails is therefore essential in order to create a real relationship of trust with your prospects & customers.
This involves using her first name at the top of the email ("Hello, Chloe") but also more advanced features, such as dynamic personalization, which allows you to offer your recipients different products according to their preferences in a same email!
These anecdotal changes in appearance have a profound impact on your open, click and therefore conversion rates.
The sources for this information are theSendinbule website in French