Email Marketing: Definition, Examples, & Effectiveness

Email marketing is a strategy that many companies use to do marketing. So, do you know what email marketing is and how to implement it? Simply put, email marketing is email containing commercial content or messages sent to customers and potential customers, such as information about products, ongoing promotions or events, and others.

The main goal of email marketing is for you to be able to connect with customers and prospects on a more personal basis, then maintain these relationships properly, as well as “activate” passive customers again until they convert into sales.

Email Marketing Effectiveness

Maybe you are wondering, how effective is email marketing? Why is email marketing the most popular marketing technique? Let’s explore.

In the midst of the popularity of social media and the rapid development of marketing technology, such as social media marketing and Google ads, many predict that email marketing will not last because it is outdated. However, various statistics show that email marketing will still be effective, especially in 2021.

In 2020 yesterday, there were 3.9 billion daily active email users worldwide. Email marketing can generate an average of 40x ROI (4,000%!) with as many as 60% of customers making purchases from email marketing. Your business targets millennials? Don’t let you ignore email marketing, because 73% of millennials prefer to receive communications from businesses/companies via email.

Not inferior to social media, email marketing can also reach customers and potential customers quickly, because 21% of emails are opened in the first hour an email is sent. Huge opportunity, right?

How to Create Email Marketing

After exploring the various potentials of email marketing for your business, now is the time to explore several ways to create effective email marketing:

Gather an Email List

Before starting email marketing, do you already have an email contact list? If you haven’t already, there are various ways to start collecting them, such as:

  • Free Downloadable Content

There are many types of content that you can share for free, such as e-books, tips and tricks, whiteboards, recipes, and more to get your audience’s email addresses. Make sure your content provides great or significant value to your audience so they are willing to give up their email address to download your content for free.

  • Online Classes or Webinars

If you are an expert in your field, you can conduct online classes or webinars. To register, viewers need to provide their email address. In this way, you not only get an email list, but also position yourself as an expert in the market while building audience trust.

  • Free Trials/Samples

Providing a free sample or trial is an effective way to get your audience’s attention and get them to give away their email address easily. Again, who doesn’t love free stuff?

  • Offline Transactions

Set up an offline transaction scheme so that customers are willing to provide their email address. For example, when a customer is ordering or is about to pay at your offline store, you can ask the customer’s email to send an invoice, invite them to become members so they can get many benefits such as discounts, and so on.

Email Segmentation & Content Personalization

Email segmentation is a technique that can make your email marketing even more powerful! Segmentation allows you to personalize content according to existing segments. That way, your content can be more personal and relevant to your audience.

Research results show that segmented emails make the likelihood of the audience clicking on links in the email higher by as much as 50%. With more clicks, more visits to your website and online store, what does that mean for you? That’s right, more sales!

This email segmentation can be done based on the information of each email contact, from the general ones such as gender and city of residence, to the detailed ones such as interests and hobbies. If you want to hold a promotional event in a certain city or have content suitable for a certain hobby, automatic segmentation will prevent you from sending irrelevant emails to contacts who are not in a city or have a related hobby.

You can also segment based on audience engagement. For example, the “Highly Engaged” segment for contacts who always open your email and click on the CTA button, or “Low Engagement” for those who rarely (or never) open your email. With segmentation like this, you can create two different email content for each segment, one for audience retention, and one focused on increasing interest.

Pack Mobile-Friendly Content

When compared to desktop or webmail, email is opened more frequently via mobile devices, as evidenced by the highest email open rates on mobile devices, which is 81%. Therefore, packaging and optimizing email to be mobile-friendly or mobile-friendly is very important.

When composing an email, pay attention to the size and length of the text in the body of the email, the position of the ornament or product photo on the email banner, the location and size of the CTA button, and other components so that it is easy to see and read on mobile devices.

Campaign Strategy

For email marketing campaigns, you can choose to run them automated, nurturing, or both, depending on your marketing needs and goals.

An automated email will be sent automatically when a new email contact enters your email list. Generally, automated email campaigns contain a welcoming message or a thank you for a purchase.

Generally, these emails contain content related to your product or service, ongoing promotions or events, and so on. The concept of email nurturing is to send a series of emails on a regular basis, from providing something of value to your customers and potential customers to building trust and a relationship with them — such as educational information, tips and tricks, and more — to reminding them that you exist. that comes as a solution to their problem, and ultimately engages or directs them to convert into sales.

Example of Email Marketing

As a foreigner, I quite often return home by plane. However, since the pandemic, of course I can no longer travel like that. A few days ago, I received an email from a travel application that was my subscription pre-pandemic, but now I never use it anymore. The email subject was interesting enough that I finally opened the email.

Everybody believe the email subject was written in such a way as to convince me, who has not used the application since the pandemic. That they have a solution for traveling by plane that is comfortable and safe.

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