Email Marketing in layman’s Terms

Brief Intro

If you are someone from who has lived in the 2000’s, then you must have come across letters which were mostly promotions, invitations, sales and offers. Email marketing is pretty much the same, however just as everything which is getting on the internet is flexible, so is Email Marketing.

With the year 2016, a lot has changed with how users interact with products & services, and so has the marketing techniques, but one thing remained, the use of letters. Email marketing is just that while being the fastest, affordable and most convenient way to reach your users and keep the interaction going which also translates to increase in sales.

In this small article I am going to explain the who, what, why, when and how of email marketing to the beginners.

Who should do Email Marketing?

Every business or individual whose goal is to reach out to customers and engage with them.

The number of users that would want to interact with your email would differ quite a bit depending on what you want to sell or talk to about to them.

So this is not for you if you think the amount of time and money invested is not worth the returns, which is rarely the case.

What do I need to know, before I get started?

As with everything new that you learn there comes a few terms that might seem like a foreign language. But fret not as I am here to explain the most common phrases that you might come across.

Subscribers - List of Users who want to receive your emails.

Campaigns - Each newsletter you send to your subscribers is counted as a campaign.

Opt-in - Users who have opted to receive your email.

Double Opt-in - Users who have opted to receive your email and confirmed their email using an email verification system.

Reports - These are your campaign reports of how it has done, how many users have interacted, how and from where.

Email Testing - Email Testing is a process where you calculate how your email would look like on different devices, If it will reach the inbox and various other details. My Favorite of all is https://litmus.com/

Recipients - List of users whom the emails were sent to.

Delivered - List of users where the emails got delivered.

Open Rate - How many opened your email.

Click Rate - How many clicked on any links you provided.

Bounced - How many emails didn’t get delivered and came back.

Abuse/Complaint - How many users marked it as spam or complained about the email.

The above, while mostly relatable are some basics that you would need to know when running your own campaign and understanding the yield of the same.

Do note that the above is not a complete list, but are some of the most basic terms that you would find where applicable. However, If you think there can be an improvement, then comment away!

While this is all good, there is one crucial thing that every email marketer should know. The truth! which is that spam is increasing in a user’s inbox every day because of which cold-emailing is forbidden.

Marketing emails are intended for users who willingly want to get your email also called as your “subscribers”, and it is your responsibility as an email marketer that you send emails only to people who subscribe to your list. This is to maintain the integrity of the emails which also results in better click rate making your campaigns more successful.

Why email marketing?

Email marketing has proven to be a very effective way to promote and increase sales. An Average business receives over 30% increase in revenue using email marketing, depending on how well the business interacts with its customers. There have also been cases where companies and individuals have achieved revenues solely based on the email marketing done by them.

But that is not all it is limited to. This is something that can become your tool for customer retention, Conducting surveys about a product or service, know what users want and even get a good base before a product launch by asking for feedback on an early build are just a few examples. The possibilities are limitless.

When to use email marketing?

Now that you know about email marketing and why you should do it the next question must be when is the right time to send them? Once you get subscribers, you cannot go on a rampage and start sending an email about multiple products of yours every single hour.

The frequency of emails sent should be just enough. Neither more nor less depending upon the type of business you run and the type of customers you wish to deal with.

For example, of let’s say an e-commerce store where you update your products every day and want to let your users know of it as well. Then two emails a week on days with the most probability of your users reading it is decent.

While personally I have seen good responses to emails sent on the evening of weekends and mornings of weekdays, it would, however, defer a lot for based on what you deal with and the best way to know is by doing some experiment and using some common sense.

Sometimes, you can simply ask as well. Check the reports of email opens and clicks, listen to the feedback and Sometimes just directly ask the users when they want the emails or if they want some changes. Depending on what you send, this can work out in a tremendously positive way.

How do I do all of this?

The first step is to get subscribers. This can be done using a lot of ways which includes, asking users to signup on your website to receive emails about offers or bonuses, google or Facebook ads, landing pages doing a barter system and much more. Best recommended method for this, however, is double opt-in.

Now once you have the subscribers, the next step is to send them an email using email services which offer high deliver-ability to a user’s inbox or, at least, the promotion box of Gmail. Because without that, your email is pretty much worthless.

This is something that many are confused about achieving, but the best way to achieve this is using tools which help you do all these and are provided by reputed brands. I will list out a few below, and rest is very straight forward on their platform.

http://mailchimp.com
http://www.aweber.com
http://www.getresponse.com/
http://myemma.com/
http://www.constantcontact.com/index.jsp
https://www.icontact.com/
https://madmimi.com/
http://www.activecampaign.com/
http://freshmail.com/
https://www.mailerlite.com/

These companies not only help you send emails but also help you build them, so they are pretty much the best thing you need.

However, these services get pretty costly as the no. of subscribers in your list increase. The best way to deal with that? Get your own email server or contact a professional SMTP service. While it is good that you setup one from the start, it is not a necessity as it does cost a lot of money and you are most likely to end up burning time and money if you don’t know what you are doing.

Final Thoughts.

Email marketing is highly essential to every business which has something to do with digital marketing and just as any marketing one needs to get creative from time to time to get the most out of it.

You can also connect with me at vizoomer.com or Facebook for any kind of digital consulting or if you just wish to say hi.