Newsletters And Service Emails
Newsletters and emails containing news and information can be a service or business model themselves.
Alternatively, you can use this service to keep connected with audiences and keep them engaged with your brand, even if your business model isn’t newsletter-based.
Putting true informational value in people’s inboxes is difficult, and not all businesses are set up to do it effectively. These types of emails work best for companies that already invest in educational content or news.
If you don’t have an existing mechanism for content production, be aware that these emails are high-effort!
The tradeoff is that audiences are more likely to engage with emails regularly if they get genuine value from a newsletter.
You can build strong trust with audiences, and if the newsletter is successful, open a new revenue stream with in-email advertising.
Company Information And Update Emails
You can send emails with information about your company, although the audiences that respond well to them may be limited.
Investors are an example of an audience group that would be highly invested in company update emails.
Be careful with the cadence of these because they can get lost, just like promotional emails.
Welcome Emails
Welcome emails are important for setting expectations, gathering information, and beginning nurturing campaigns.
In a welcome email, you can give users information about the track they’re on, the cadence of emails, what information they can expect, etc.
You can also use welcome emails to guide users through the next steps and instruct them on how to customize their experience.
Nurturing Emails
Nurture emails take a slow and gradual approach to engagement and winning conversions.
They are critical to any email campaign because they create touchpoints with users and can help lead them to an eventual business goal like a conversion or sale.
These emails attempt to move users into consideration stages in a journey or assist them with their consideration and comparison activities.
They might include reminders, information about free services or information, or check-ins to ask users to update their communication preferences.
Re-Engagement Emails
Re-engagement is very similar to nurturing but occurs when a user is colder.
If they haven’t interacted with an email in a while, you can move them to a re-engagement campaign that presents them with specific reminders or offers to try and get them to become an engaged user again.
It’s important to keep email lists clean by removing users who haven’t engaged for a long time.
If you’re gathering data from your email list or selling advertising, this ensures that you don’t have inflated data. However, before you kick users off an email list, you should enter them into a re-engagement campaign to see if you can pull them back in.
Feedback, Survey, And Review Emails
Direct feedback is one of the best ways to get information about your audience.
Surveys can be used to create content with first-party data, and feedback surveys can help you further customize user experiences. Reviews can be used as social proof.
These types of emails can also be combined with sales and nurturing campaigns to increase retention and conversions. Offering people rewards for providing their feedback can lead to additional conversions.
Choosing Your Email Platform
Consider the functionality and your needs, and growth potential when you’re choosing an email platform.
Some of the core functions you should look for are:
Tagging and segmentation: You need to be able to work with the data you have about your list and separate users into groups. This helps you create customized campaigns.
Automated campaigns and timing: Email platforms should give you the ability to create a set of rules and emails and apply them to a group. This includes all of the emails to be sent, the timing of the emails, and tracking results.
Website event tagging: You may need a platform that allows you to connect website behavior with email accounts. This can be critical for understanding user behavior and creating effective nurturing and re-engagement campaigns.
Email behavior analysis: The platform should report metrics like open rates and in-email conversions and follow conversions from email onto the website to see what actions users take.
Testing capabilities: Your email marketing platform should enable you to test different campaigns, different messaging, subject lines, images, and offers within specific audience segments and report on the compared effectiveness.
Email Marketing Is A Powerful “Middle” Strategy
Between awareness and a sale, there’s often an email. Or two or three. Or more.
Email lists are so valuable because they’re a direct source of information about who your audience is, what they want, and what they respond to. It’s also a relationship that you have a lot of control over.
The right platform with the right capabilities combined with a strong content strategy can increase the rate at which you gain conversions from audiences that are already aware of your brand.
With automation, you can set these processes to occur automatically.
Email Marketing FAQ
What Is Email Marketing?
Email marketing involves encouraging users to sign up to receive emails, and then sending them specific, targeted emails to keep their attention, nurture their journey, and gain conversions.
Email marketing works by nurturing users to build a relationship and connection with your brand.
Journeys toward sales and conversions can take a long time, and the right email campaign can remind users to come back to you when they’ve made a decision to make a purchase.
Alternatively, email newsletters can themself be a business model, where you provide high-quality experiences in people’s inboxes and sell advertising. Advertisers get access to the audience of your email list.
What Are The Benefits Of Email Marketing?
No matter what your business model is, a well-curated email list is a valuable business asset.
Whether you’re selling advertising on your email list or nurturing users through purchasing journeys, email marketing is one of the best ways to gain insights about your audience, test your strategies, and re-engage with users who become disconnected.
More resources:
Featured Image: one photo/Shutterstock