Email marketing is the web marketing tool with the highest ROI (Return on Investment): 68% of US commercials have assessed the results obtained through their Email Marketing activity, placing the mailing activity on the first placed in the ranking of the channels with the most effective return on investment.
The market analysis carried out by the Econsultancy web agency leaves no room for doubt: Email marketing is an indispensable activity for all companies wishing to obtain significant profits through their communication campaigns.
What is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is a direct marketing strategy characterized essentially by sharing content via email with its customers with the aim of optimizing and increasing the efficiency of communications between a brand and its audience.
In the common imaginary, e-mail communications are only associated with promotional and advertising messages: the sending of periodic emails to their potential customers, on the contrary, is useful for building a stable relationship between brand and consumer and for retaining the user by increasing loyalty to the brand.
Email marketing: The main methods
The generic term “Email marketing” identifies an email communication strategy that includes three different modes of action …
1) Retention Email marketing: Form of Email marketing that acts above all on the idealization of the corporate audience, addressing then to customers already acquired previously and trying to establish with them an increasingly solid relationship. Messages addressed to users already subscribed to the service of a specific website are included in the newsletter mailing activity, that is, a frequent and scheduled communication that aims to make the customer perceive a stable and positive company presence.
2) Advertising Email marketing: Mailing activity characterized by the presence of banners and advertisements in the body of e-mail messages sent by third parties. The purpose of email advertising is to attract the attention of new potential customers with constantly original messages through the purchase of another advertising space.
3) Direct Email marketing (DEM): Direct communication via e-mail that includes the sharing of all commercial information aimed at specific and previously analyzed targets. Direct Email marketing is the most well-known and used activity of Email Marketing as it is one of the most effective tools to establish authentic relationships with its customers: the DEM is, in fact, characterized by an interactive component that allows users to purchase products to download contents directly from e-mail, thus giving rise to a strong interdependence between the company and the target audience. All Direct Email marketing strategies, if designed in an optimal way, are able to generate traffic, produce shares, reach new potential customers and retain existing users.
Email marketing: How do you do it?
A well-organized Email Marketing campaign is characterized by several fundamental steps …
1) Building mailing lists: To start correctly performing an effective Email Marketing activity, it is essential to create mailing lists of qualified contacts through the voluntary registration of the user with registration forms. In order to convince potential customers to release their e-mail address it is necessary to offer them in return interesting contents such as e-Books, discounts, audio guides or special promotions;
2) Choice of the Email marketing platform: To be able to obtain significant results through the mailing activity it is necessary to manage and organize your own contact list: there are specific newsletter services such as MailChimp or GetResponse able to support the creation of targeted messages and automate sharing with selected email addresses;
3) Creation and optimization of the campaign: In following the choice of Email marketing software, it is essential to carefully plan your campaign by identifying interesting and targeted content to be shared with the selected user target. The selected topics must be coherent and appealing as they constitute the main object of the campaign: the addition of images or video and audio content through the use of specific templates can be an indispensable tool to make the content more attractive. An additional key feature that e-mail messages must possess is multi-device accessibility, in other words a responsive layout: a Litmus study states, in fact,
4) Choice of sending times: Carefully selecting the times for sharing their contents is a necessary activity to obtain positive results: the delivery times must be constantly programmed based on previous analyzes concerning the behavior of the users themselves;
5) Monitoring results: To be able to optimize their communication via email, it is necessary to analyze the progress of their campaigns: know what the display rates are, identify the hours of activity of users and determine which content have been most appreciated are activities aimed at improvement of their strategy and therefore essential to optimize their profits.
Email marketing: Why is it important for your business?
Email marketing is one of the most profitable direct marketing strategies: from the results of the research carried out by MagNews, CRIBIS and AISM, it emerges that Email Marketing is used effectively by companies to find new potential customers, to increase sales opportunities and to retain its customers.
So let’s see why Email marketing is a tool that your business can not do without …
Ensures optimal results in terms of ROI
As previously demonstrated, various market researches affirm that Email marketing is the direct marketing tool able to guarantee the most positive results in terms of Return on Investment.
Improve corporate web reputation
The sharing of well-structured e-mails makes the company trademark more professional and reliable: a promotional message with a special and convenient offer can be forwarded by the users of the newsletter to other contacts, thus increasing the knowledge of the brand itself.
The costs of an email marketing campaign are very low as they do not require particular investments: the expense required for the purchase of software to automate the sending of promotional messages is, in fact, minimal when compared to the investment that require other methodologies advertising such as press or calls.
It allows to segment the target
Email marketing allows a targeted and individual communication with its customers: the mailing software offers, in fact, the possibility to segment the target by creating different groups based on pre-established characteristics such as gender, location or age.
Reaches a large number of users at the same time
The use of an Email marketing software allows the company to communicate within a few seconds with a very large number of customers or potential customers.
Email marketing: 5 tips to succeed
- In the text of your e-mails, contact the customer in an informal way: calling users with their name gives the proposed offer uniqueness and personalization;
- Write short messages and insert the essential contents in the first bars: users read the emails quickly and must have clear the message immediately;
- Insert icons consistent with the promotional message in the email subject as they help the recipient to intuitively recognize the content;
- Use a clear and easily recognizable font, divide the text into paragraphs and insert obvious links and Call To Action graphically attractive: all these activities allow the user to have a positive perception of the promotional message;
- Design catchy and intuitive previews: in the preview of a newsletter are contained several elements such as sender, message preview and object, it is therefore essential that the preview is attractive and clear to convince the user to open the message.
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