Email marketing is the most profitable direct marketing channel, generating an average return on investment of $42 for every $1 spent
For this reason, email should be a key pillar of your digital marketing strategy.
Email is a vast discipline. It’s easy for beginners to get lost in a sea of tools, techniques, and terminology.
So here are ways of how email marketing works.
What Is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is sending commercial emails to a list of contacts who have given their express permission to receive email communications from you.
You can use email marketing to inform your contacts, drive sales, and build a community around your brand, like with a newsletter.
Modern email marketing has moved away from one-size-fits-all mass mailings and instead focuses on consent, segmentation, and personalization.
Choose The Right Email Marketing Software
The first step is finding an ESP to send and manage your email campaigns and email subscribers.
Popular email tools include Sendinblue, Mailchimp, and HubSpot.
With hundreds of ESPs on the market, it’s hard to know which one is right for your business.
Evaluate your needs properly, including your future needs.
Build Your Email List
You can’t send email campaigns without anyone to send them to, so build a list of engaged, opt-in subscribers.
Most ESPs let you create subscription forms to embed on your website.
When creating a subscription form, be clear about your signup promise such as, what kind of email content will subscribers receive and how often?
If you start sending unrelated promotional content, expect people to unsubscribe, or mark your emails as spam.
Set Up Welcome Emails
When someone signs up to your email list, you’ve gotten their attention. Now it’s time to engage them even further with a welcome email.
A welcome email is an automated message sent to new customers and subscribers. The idea is to introduce your brand and any content that’ll establish your relationship with the subscriber.
In a welcome email, you can include discount links to the latest articles, useful information, etc.
Optimize Email Conversions
The first thing your customer would do before opening an email is seeing who it is from.
The best way to reinforce trustworthiness and brand recognition is to incorporate your brand name into the sender name.
To be easily recognized in the inbox, use the same sender name and address for all campaigns.
Avoid no-reply email addresses, as these diminish trust in your brand and prevent subscribers from reaching out with questions.
Test Before Sending
Always send a test email before officially hitting send. Small mistakes can easily slip through the cracks and may harm your brand image.
Be sure to look out for typos, forgotten or incorrect links, and text formatting errors.
Have some team members proofread and check the test email on both desktop and mobile devices.
Schedule Your Campaign
Email marketing campaigns tend to perform better when sent on Tuesdays or Thursdays in the mornings around 10:00 AM or in the afternoons around 2:00 PM.
It makes sense: Many people check their emails in the morning when they get to work, as well as after returning from lunch.
However, it may not work the same way for you. Therefore, it is important to test different times to see where is the correct timing with your audience.