So what exactly are marketing emails? Well, basically, a marketing email is an email that includes a commercial message or piece of content as its primary purpose. These emails are usually sent to whole contact lists or groups of prospects or customers and must follow local laws.
These can include promotional emails to make your customers aware of new products or discounts, re-engagement emails to keep them engaged between purchases, or informational emails like newsletters and announcements. In short, anything to build a sense of community around your brand.
In all cases, your email marketing content serves to promote your business, drive sales, increase brand awareness, and incentivize customer loyalty.
One of the major benefits of email marketing is its scalability. This means that emails can be sent to many recipients while remaining cost-effective (compared to other marketing channels).
It’s important to remember you must first receive expressed consent from all contacts on your mailing list (or “opt in”) before sending any emails. Otherwise, your marketing content may be flagged as spam.
The principal advantage of email marketing – as opposed to other forms of digital marketing – is that it allows you to personalize the messages you send. Addressing your customers individually will always have more impact than more generalized promotional content. Many businesses segment their email marketing content according to different target demographics or run A/B tests of varying subject lines and calls to action (CTAs) to pinpoint the best content and ensure maximum engagement.
Besides these basic advantages, email marketing can also help you improve your business in three specific areas:
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Conversions
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Brand awareness
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Customer loyalty
One of the main uses of email marketing is to generate leads and drive sales. Coupons, special offers, welcome emails, re-engagement emails, and abandoned cart emails all contribute to better conversion rates.
Another common use for email marketing is to help build and maintain brand awareness with your audience. By driving traffic to your website, blog, or social media, you can ensure your company stays at the front of your customers’ minds.
Email marketing is central to any successful customer relationship management (CRM) system. Whether you’re looking to assist in lead-nurturing, conversion, onboarding, or retention, marketing emails help make sure your customers keep coming back for more.
Not all industries benefit equally from email marketing. That’s because different target audiences respond to marketing emails in different ways.
Below you’ll find a brief rundown of how email marketing helps businesses in different industries.
Both ecommerce and traditional retailers are among those that benefit the most from email marketing. Unlike some other industries, retailers can easily link conversion rates to marketing activity, allowing them to directly track their returns on investment.
Retailers can also collect considerable amounts of data from their email subscribers for marketing use. For example, tracking previous purchases allows companies to send promotional emails to targeted customer groups. This is particularly true for large retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Target, which have more data that allows them to send hyper-targeted, relevant email updates.