Email marketing is growing more popular than before. Because every marketer has found a high ROI through these strategies. And let me make it clear that email marketing is going to stay and will stay even a decade further. When Email marketing has still managed to grow, marketers are always keen to know how does email marketing work.
It is important to know the process and functionality of email marketing. Because this is the only way where you can generate leads, nurture leads, build an audience, and create awareness. When you have multiple objectives, email marketing is one of the efficient ways to achieve these goals.
And when it comes to direct marketing, emails are the best way to reach your prospect. Because the audience is always active when it comes to using their email. This is where you get the opportunity for your business to reach out to them.
Depending upon the goals and objectives of your business. Email marketing is the process of reaching out to your target audience in converting them as your followers or a customer.
In this blog post, you will learn all about how does email marketing work.
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How does email marketing work?
The process that is involved in email marketing isn’t as complicated as it seems. Because to send an email, you need software. And there are multiple email service providers actively working for this objective to be achieved by businesses. These are also known as email marketing tools, email marketing software, and email marketing applications. Do not get confused with the names, as every name serves the same purpose.
The best part about email marketing is, you get advanced analytics and other tools to check the performance of your campaign. Through these objectives, you can easily optimize and upscale your growth of the campaign. Let us now understand the process involved in how does email marketing work.
1. Define your objectives and goals
Before starting any email marketing campaign, defining the objective and goals for email marketing would be a prominent way to start with. When you can define the objectives and goals, you will get clarity regarding the activities that you need to execute on the platform. And through these activities, you can clearly ascertain the requirements of the strategy.
When you define the objectives for your campaign, you can also allocate the respective budget for it. And in this way, you can easily pitch into your management regarding what kind of email application would be resourceful. Because you can’t use your regular emails to do email marketing. As there are high chances of your personal email id to get blocked. That’s the reason you need to rely on email Marketing software or an application.
2. Opt for an email marketing tool
As I earlier said, you can’t rely on your personal email id to send out emails. You need the support of email marketing software. Only through this, you will be able to start the email marketing process.
The email marketing process is one of its kind. Because you can automate every function of the email campaign based on your objectives and goals. This makes the tool much needed for your email marketing activities.
There are multiple benefits of choosing an email marketing software. You can completely customize each and every attribute of an email campaign. This makes room for a marketer to experiment with strategies that can drive out better conversions.
If we have to talk about some of the functions that you get through email marketing tools is that you can build an email list. You can also add your other fellow colleagues to the email marketing application. And both together send bulk messages to thousands of people at one shot.
And when it comes to analytics and insights, you can see the number of people who have opened your email, whether they have marked it as spam, a list of email ids that did not work, and other such metrics. Through this dashboard, you can easily analyze every part of your campaign so that you can optimize it further.
The best part of email marketing applications is that you can completely automate them. This can be whenever a user has subscribed to your newsletter or a person who has abandoned their cart while shopping for a product. There are many such instances where you can customize triggers for an email campaign and execute.
Suggested read: What is drip campaign?
3. Generate an email list
For any email marketing activity, you need an email list that you can use. The list can consist of the subscribers who have recently opted for your newsletters or it can be the prospective leads of your business.
If you do not have any existing email list, you can easily execute lead generation campaigns for your emails. This can be executed on social media platforms and search engine platforms as well. It is an ideal way to build an email list for your business. I agree that this incurs a cost, but if you look at the future prospect, this is one of the best ways to proceed with.
When you do not want to go through the paid methods of building an email list, you can do it organically as well. By publishing blog posts and hosting webinars or podcasts. It is one of the best ways to generate organic leads for your business. You do not need to spend any money on it. You can regularly publish content that is useful to your audience and through that, you can hook your audience to your email list.
The best way to go around with this strategy would be you offering some freebies. It can be the paid method or the organic method. When you offer something to your audience, only then will they get attracted and sign up for your email list. And when you are doing this, please create a section where it is convenient for them to subscribe to your business.
4. Create an email marketing strategy
When you have generated the email list, now it’s time for you to create a strategy for the campaign. You need to ascertain some actions that can be defined for this process. Whether the campaign that you are going to execute is for any brand awareness, lead generation, and other such marketing goals.
When you can clearly make a strategy that is what your email marketing campaign is going to be all about, only then you will be successful in getting better results.
Some of the strategies that can be mentioned for email marketing campaigns are:
A service or a product promotion
When you have newly entered into a market or a region that you are completely unaware of your product or service. Then email marketing is the best way to reach out to them and create brand awareness for your business. When you can tell people what product or service can influence their life, they will be eager to know more about your business.
Lead generation campaign
If you want to generate any followers for your business, you can easily do it by defining the goals for your email marketing campaigns. The campaign can revolve around creating any offers, discounts which they can benefit from by opting to your emails. This is one of the basic ways email marketing generates leads through this strategy.
Welcome emails
This is another popular strategy used by marketers when a new user has been registered on your portal. You can automatically send a welcome email. Also, include the benefits that they are going to get when they are associated with your platform.
5. Create content for email
This is the main part of an email marketing campaign. You have to draft the content for every mail which can be the body text and as well as the subject lines. You also need to clearly introduce a call to action button so that you can get conversions from your email marketing strategy.
Email subject line
Did you know that the email subject line is the only way that makes the audience open your email? Yes, you heard it right. The email subject line makes the audience interested to know what your email is all about. This is where you need to brainstorm for multiple ideas so that you can come up with the creative email subject line.
Email body content
When it comes to the body content of your email, it holds a prominent role in terms of conversion. This is where you need to facilitate the content with respect to the emails. Ensure that the content in the body part should be relevant to your business.
Call to action button
CTA buttons are the only way where you can track the performance of your campaign. When you can come up with the call to action button that is engaging and creative enough, the user who reads your email will sign up using the button.
6. Create a design for your email
The design of the email is crucial when it comes to audience engagement. Let us assume that you receive an email in your inbox which has a shabby appearance. What would you do? You would obviously ignore the email right? So this is where the email design comes into the picture.
When you can create a design for an email that is clean, engaging, and provides some value, only then your email campaign will be effective. You do not need to get a designer to design your emails. Because the email marketing tools that you select offer features such as drag and drop email design-builder. This helps on a larger scale when you are a non-designer.
The design plays a prominent role when it comes to the conversion of your audience part. Because when you can create a minimal and engaging design, you can easily influence your consumer’s perception.
The best thing about email marketing software would be the pre-existing templates. The Email software will have multiple email templates at your disposal. You can easily customize and redesign according to your needs. And some of these designs are so brilliant that they easily achieve the requirement for your email marketing campaigns.
Suggested read: What is email blasting?
7. Evaluate the performance of your campaign
An email marketer should regularly check the analytics and insights of their ongoing email campaign. Because this helps them to know the gaps and opportunities when it comes to delivering a successful email marketing campaign. As every business and product gets deferred, you need to know the market reaction to your business.
Login to the dashboard of the Email Marketing software. You will be getting multiple insights into your campaign. These insights will easily help you to know what are the metrics that your campaign is effective. And based on the understanding of the metrics, you can re-optimize the campaign.
The best way to evaluate the performance of your campaign would be to create an A/B testing method. Through this, you can compare the same type of campaigns based on changing the email subject headline, designs, and as well as the call to action button. These are some of the ways in which you can experiment with two types of email campaigns sent to a particular audience.
Some of the major metrics that you can easily evaluate from the email marketing dashboard are:
Bounce rate
This is one of the factors that helps you to determine the number of emails that have failed to be sent. The major factors that can be constituted in this attribute would be the wrong recipient email address or there is any typography error when it comes to the recipient’s email ID.
Conversion rate
Every email marketer uses this metric as their email success factor. The conversion rate can be people who have opened your emails and used the call to action button to sign up for your business. Through this method, you can easily track the conversion rate for your email marketing campaigns.
Unsubscribe rate
This is a metric where people have unsubscribed from your email list after receiving your email to their inbox. There can be several such factors where a user can unsubscribe. It can be the frequency of your emails sent to the user or it can be the content is not relevant to them.
Open rate
It is a metric that shows how many people have opened your email when they have received it. The formula is basically calculated based on the number of users who have opened your email and the number of emails that you have sent totally.
Click-through rate
By click-through rates, you will come to know the total users who have clicked on the link of your email content. These can be the people who have clicked any link or a button from your email. Or it can be the people who have re-opened your email multiple times.
Conclusion
Since you came to know the overview process of how email marketing works, now you need to take action as per the guide. When you are aware of the needs and expectations of your email marketing campaigns, then it is very easy to execute the campaign and achieve the goals.
If you look at the process of how does email marketing work, it is very simple. Thanks to the modern-day automation features, you can completely automate your email marketing activities. This helps to save you time and focus on things that matter for your company.
Do not worry about the results of your marketing campaigns, because the only way to grow and learn is by experience. When you can deliver the email marketing campaigns based on the goals and objectives, you can efficiently measure the performance of campaigns through an analytics dashboard. This is one of the important steps that every email marketer needs to watch out for.
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