What is email marketing and how does it work?

0 380 9 minutes of reading

You have surely wondered what email marketing is and how it works ...

Or maybe you've wondered:

How do businesses and marketers send hundreds of emails on autopilot to all of their subscribers? ...

Is it worth using email to sell products and / or services? ...

Today we're going to answer these and other questions about email marketing. It is a branch of digital marketing that is definitely worth considering.

Email marketing has been established for years as one of the most popular and effective tools for selling products and / or services online!

Let's start!

What is email marketing?

Email marketing or email marketing is the use of email to promote products or services while developing relationships with potential customers.

Email marketing is essentially direct mail done electronically rather than through the postal service.

Anytime a business sends out an email, in addition to order confirmations and direct responses to customer questions, it can be considered a form of email marketing.

Marketing emails can also try to share a general message on behalf of the business.

At the best of times, email marketing allows businesses to keep their customers informed and tailor their marketing messages to their audience.

At worst, this type of marketing can turn customers away with persistent and annoying spam emails.

What is email marketing for?

Mainly, email marketing can help you achieve 3 types of goals:

Conversions (sale of your products and services or other desired action).
Consumer loyalty.
Brand awareness.

Email is a great channel because it has a certain degree of confidentiality. For many people, the inbox has become an organized space filled with messages from their favorite brands.

By communicating directly in a contact's mailbox, you have a unique opportunity to be present in their daily life. It's much more shocking than a social media post, where you can't be sure someone has seen the post.

Great, don't you think?

That's why:

Email marketing has the power to connect you with people in a personal way. It's a great way to cultivate a lasting relationship with your audience.

The important role of email marketing

Email plays a role at every stage of the buyer's cycle - at the information and prospecting stage, during conversion, and later in customer retention. Remember the following:

People usually don't buy the first time they interact with a product or service. On average, it takes between 7 and 10 interactions with the product for a person to decide to purchase the product.

Email marketing plays a very important role in generating sales for a business by constantly strengthening the relationship with customers and offering them more products.

Email Marketing and Sales Funnels

Email marketing is very important in all phases of the sales funnel. The sales funnel is a very broad concept to cover in this article. But don't worry, if you want to know more about this concept, I invite you to read our guide: What is a sales funnel.

One of the main advantages of email marketing is its " scalability ". This refers to the fact that emails can be deployed on a large scale to a large number of recipients ...

With email marketing, you can send hundreds of emails (literally) and generate clicks, subscriptions, sales, etc., while you sleep!

How does email marketing work?

An email marketing campaign is easy to set up and follow, making it accessible to small businesses ...

For example, you can add a newsletter subscription option to your website. As people sign up, you can send newsletters to a growing audience. You can also direct customers to the newsletter from your social media profiles.

A regular newsletter is a simple and effective way to send updates on your business, upcoming events and special offers.

Email marketing platforms also make it easy to schedule automated promotional emails for customers who have not recently purchased.

Email Marketing Works For All Businesses

Email marketing allows you to target particular groups of customers or even specific individuals. Giving individual customers special anniversary offers on products or services is one way to do this.

A restaurant, for example, might email customers on their birthday offering a 50% discount on a main course. This type of personalization helps a business develop and maintain a relationship with a customer, which can lead to increased sales and customer loyalty.

Why Should I Consider Email Marketing?

Email marketing consists of informing, persuading and retaining a base of contacts interested in your products and / or services.

Marketing emails contain a specific call to action aimed at generating sales or driving traffic to specific pages on your site. It is also a powerful tool for building community.

From order confirmations to newsletters, emails are an essential part of growing and running your business.

Most of the world's most successful businesses include email marketing in their digital marketing strategy.

Benefits of email marketing

Email has become such a popular marketing tool for businesses, in part because it compels the user to take action; An email will stay in the inbox until it's read, deleted, or archived.

But email is also one of the most cost effective tools available. In fact, a 2015 study by the UK-based Direct Marketing Association (DMA) found that for every $ 1 spent, email has an average return on investment (ROI) of $ 38.

Email marketing can help you build a relationship with your audience and at the same time drive traffic to your blog, social media, or any other place you want people to visit.

You can even segment your emails and target users by demographic groups so that you only send people the messages they want to see the most.

How to do email marketing?

Email marketing is incredibly versatile. With an email marketing program, you can personalize the emails with the names of the subscribers and you can send personalized emails for the birthdays of the people.

With an email marketing platform, you can manage separate mailing lists and send different offers or promotions to different groups of your audience.

To continue with our guide to email marketing, we need to talk about the automatic e-mail responder. It is the key tool for doing email marketing. His/her family name Autoresponder says it all: auto reply...

The Autoresponder is the key tool used by thousands of businesses and individuals to send emails automatically.

What is an auto responder?

Have you noticed that many companies send us promotional emails several times a week or even daily? ...

How do you send thousands of emails to thousands of people at the same time?

Well, all of this can be done through email marketing platforms like the ones we will mention below in this guide.

A few years ago, it was impossible to think that this could be done. But currently we can send emails on autopilot in a very easy way.

These sequences and automatic responses of emails are called Autoresponders.

What are automatic responders used for?

Answering machines automatic are of e-mail newsletters that are automatically sent to your subscribers on your broadcast list. They are activated according to the rules and time intervals that you define.

For example, you can design an auto responder program so that:

When someone signs up to your mailing list, they immediately receive a welcome message from your business.
Exactly a week later, they receive discount codes for some of your products.
Three weeks later, they receive an invitation to follow you on social media.

And so on… Here is a video from our channel that explains what an email autoresponder is and how you can get started using one:

Why is it important to use an auto responder?

When you use autoresponders, much of your email marketing is automated; If you set things up correctly, subscribers receive key messages from your business without having to worry about sending those messages manually.

The main benefit of autoresponders is clear: they save you a lot of time. Not only that, autoresponder emails can generate a lot of income for your business.

How do I send responses on autopilot?

To send replies on autopilot or autoresponders, you need to use an email marketing app. There are LOTS of autoresponder platforms out there for doing email marketing. There are options for all tastes and budgets.

Some of the most famous email marketing platforms are companies like GetResponse ou AWeber which have been on the market for many years.

Will I also send emails manually?

Yes, there will be plenty of times when it will be a good idea to send an email manually:

Messages marking holiday occasions, seasonal promotions, sale announcements, and general updates will often need to be addressed by sending an email manually.

But if used well, autoresponders will allow you to automate many “how-to” marketing activities and tailor your messages to particular segments of your mailing list. All while you're in bed or practicing your hobby!

Email marketing campaigns

The first step in starting an email marketing campaign is to build an email list. Before a potential subscriber provides you with their email address, there are a few questions you might want to consider.

If you'd rather learn with videos rather than reading, check out this video for beginners on how to create an email marketing campaign:

What do they gain from giving you their email address?

Are you going to send them special discounts or an incentive to buy?

Make all of this clear to potential subscribers who will benefit from subscribing to your mailing list, and that they will not be spammed or give their email addresses to anyone else.

There are countless ways to build your mailing list, but a good place to start is to embed an email signup form on your website ...

This way, you can take advantage of your existing website visitors and offer them special information or discounts in exchange for their email address.

To better understand what an email registration form is, I leave you the following explanatory video of our channel:

You can also use their social media accounts to collect emails as mentioned above.

What should be the content of the email?

Once you've got a solid mailing list, it's time to start planning your emails ...

There is a wide range of content you can include in your emails and unique formatting options to choose from. Email marketing is much more customizable than other forms of advertising, so the sky's the limit.

Examples of content to include in your emails

Here are some examples of content you can include in your emails: links to articles on your website, loyalty rewards for subscribers, customer testimonials, information about new promotions, and announcements about new items or services.

When they finally join your mailing list, don't forget to send them a compelling welcome message.

And if you do your job well, they will become your brand ambassadors too, for free. You just have to impress them and this welcome message is the first chance you will have.

Make it worth it!

A very important statistic in email marketing

64% of American Internet users have printed a coupon from an email.

Email coupons can be used to drive in-store and online sales, making them extremely valuable tools that can be easily integrated into your marketing strategy by e - mail.

The email coupon promise is also a great way to get people to subscribe to your email list!

The type of content depends on the type of business

The content you include in your emails really depends on the type of business you run. However, there are some techniques that work best for most businesses.

For example, a study by the Relevance Group found that marketers who add videos to their email campaigns see an increase in revenue of around 40%.

Infographics, lists and promotions / discounts also generate very attractive emails.

Some examples of content that can add value to your emails are answers to popular FAQs, blog clips on your website, and polls.