E-MAIL MARKETING 5

UNIT-3

Introduction to Email Marketing

Promoting a business by sending emails and newsletters is what we call email marketing. Today’s marketers need to do more with less.

They need to connect with their audience in a highly personalized way, while staying on budget.

Marketers who are good at email marketing can connect with their customers in a highly targeted way.

They will be successful in delivering ROI and revenue back to the business.

No marketing category has the longevity of email marketing. While some marketing trends come and go, email remains the most powerful channel available to the modern marketer.

Need of Email Marketing

Email is a tool that nearly everyone uses today, and it continues to grow and be more prevalent in the lives of people around the world. (prevalent -most common)

There are three times more email accounts than there are Facebook & Twitter accounts combined.

Many of the top marketers from some of the most successful companies across the world believe email is the #1 channel for growing your business.

As a marketer, you have many channels available to reach your audience, but with limited time and resources, you need to prioritize your efforts.

Email Marketing is by far the most effective channel to attract, engage and connect with an audience to drive sales and revenue for your business.

Advantages and disadvantages of email marketing

Marketing your products or services by email can be a fast, flexible and cost-effective way of reaching new customers and retaining existing customers by encouraging repeat website visits.

It is important not to overuse email marketing. Receiving marketing emails can irritate people if it is irrelevant, too frequent or unwanted.

Advantages/ Benefits of email marketing

Cost-effective

The costs of email marketing can be much lower than many other forms of marketing. There are no advertising fees, printing or media space costs.

Permission-based

Your marketing list will be made up of people who have actively chosen to receive email communications from you. Customers who are genuinely interested in your products and/or services are more likely to engage with your business.

Flexible design

You can send plain text, graphics or attach files - whichever suits your message best. A choice of design options gives you scope to convey your business branding and make your email visually appealing.

Scalable

Email marketing can be used to reach large audiences or smaller targeted lists.

Personalisation and segmentation (dividing)

You can integrate your email marketing with your customer relationship management (CRM) system to help you personalise messages. You can include your customer's name or past purchases to build meaningful relationships. You can also segment your marketing list so that your customers receive messages from you that they are interested in to help boost their engagement with you.

Shareable

It's easy for people to forward and share your email content, building your reputation by word-of-mouth or viral marketing. This may help influence new customers to become followers of your brand.

Conversions and increased sales

If you have a new promotion people can click on links and follow your call-to-action immediately. Email marketing is also effective at every stage of the buying process. For example, you can influence someone to choose your product, nurture the customer relationship post-transaction and also encourage future purchases.

Measurable

You can evaluate the success of a campaign by tracking bounced emails, open rates, and click-through-rates. You can easily test different copy, subject lines and designs to see which is most effective. This allows you to optimise future campaigns.

Benchmark

You can compare your results against others in your industry. There are many free email marketing benchmarking reports available - you will find these by searching online. Benchmarking data can help you to evaluate and prioritise improvement opportunities.

Test before you send

A/B testing of subject lines, calls-to-action, personalisation, email copy, images or messages ensure your email content is as effective as it can be before you send it. A/B testing in marketing is a strategy where marketers compare two versions of a variable (such as a web page, email, or ad) to determine which one performs better

Less intrusive

Unlike telephone marketing, recipients can read your message at a time that suits them. Customers can also update their preferences if they would like to receive different messages from you or unsubscribe if they feel they no longer want to receive your email communications.

Environmentally-friendly

Email marketing is better for the environment than direct marketing by postal mail because nothing is printed.

Time-saving

Through automation you can trigger emails to be sent to customers based on an action they have performed on your website - e.g. send a welcome email when a user signs up to your website, or issue an email offering a discount incentive if the user abandons an online shopping cart. Once you have developed a template you can reuse it for numerous email campaigns.

Real-time marketing

Through email marketing you can connect with customers in real time. Using automated triggers, such as website activity, recent purchases or shopping cart abandonment, you can reach the right audience, at the right time, in the right place and with the right offer.

Disadvantages of email marketing

Spam

Commercial email or 'spam' irritates consumers. If your messages aren't targeted to the right people, the recipient may delete your email or unsubscribe. You need to make sure that your email marketing complies with privacy and data protection rules, and that it is properly targeted at people who want to receive it. The 'click through rate' for untargeted emails is likely to be very low.

Spam email, also known as junk email, is a type of unsolicited (not asked for) email that is sent in bulk to a large number of recipients. 

Undelivered emails

Poorly designed emails may not get delivered. Emails that use certain spam keywords or characters in the subject heading or content of the email are likely to be filtered out by email software and internet service providers. If you don't keep your marketing lists up to date, you will find incorrect email addresses mean your messages won't reach the right person.

Design problems

Your email must be designed so that it appears as it should across multiple devices and email providers. You may encounter a trade-off between design and functionality. Some people opt to receive text-only emails, consider how your message will look if this is the case.

Size issues

Files need to be small enough to download quickly. Emails containing many images may take too long to load, frustrating your audience and losing their interest.

Resources and skills

For a successful email campaign you must ensure that you have the right copy, design and marketing list. If you don't have the time or skills in-house, consider outsourcing some of these elements.

Here are some terms that you need to know when it comes to email marketing:

Ø  Subscribers – these are the people that sign up to receive emails from you.

Ø  Email list – this is a list of all your subscribers.

Ø  Email service providers (ESPs) – these are platforms that you can use to send your marketing emails. Some website platforms have built in email tools, or you may choose to use an external ESP such as

Mailchimp.

Ø     Opt-in and permission-based marketing – opting-in is when a subscriber gives you permission to send them emails, permission-based marketing is simply marketing to those who have given you permission to do so.

Ø     Email campaigns – email campaigns are the term used to describe sending several related marketing emails to your email list or a segment of your list

Ø     Automation – email automation is when your email campaigns are set up to send automatically based on a particular trigger (such as a new subscriber).

Email Marketing Strategies

While email marketing is simple to launch and administer, developing a goal-cantered strategy creates results.

Define KPIs

What is your clickthrough rate, the percentage of recipients who clicked on a link in your email?

Or the conversion rate, the percentage of recipients who proceeded to purchase a product or complete a form requesting more information?

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are quantifiable or qualitative measures that help organizations understand how they are performing in specific areas of their business.

Your open rate?

Even the unsubscribe rate and the list growth rate provide insights into your email effectiveness.

Segment Audiences

Different subscribers and customers need approaches designed for their unique needs. Segmenting your email marketing by recipient type at a minimum. Likely customers, new customers, and ongoing customers all need a different message and touch. Beyond segmentation, message personalization increases relevance, driving mail opens and engagement with your brand.

Use Your CRM

An integrated CRM can manage contacts, distribution lists, and campaigns, making it easier to segment, personalize, and measure.

If you have an existing Marketing Automation system or even a CRM with automation features, use the email marketing engine to automate your initiatives.

Expanding Your Content Marketing Strategy

Regardless of a business’s size and industry, emails can present several business opportunities from lead generation to customer engagement.

Of course, email marketing is flexible and scalable enough to achieve complex marketing goals depending on your needs, your infrastructure, and the organization's capability. Often a first step in a marketing mix, email marketing allows brands to begin to grow capability as their technology and organizational maturity continue to evolve.

E-Mail Marketing Platforms

E-Mail marketing platforms are comprehensive software solutions that facilitate the planning, execution and analysis of email marketing campaigns. These platforms serve as central hubs where businesses can manage their email lists, design visually appealing emails, automate workflows and measure the effectiveness of their campaigns.

The main difference between email marketing platforms (EMPs) and email service providers (ESPs) is that ESPs are designed for basic email communication, while EMPs are designed for businesses and organizations to manage email marketing campaigns:

ESPs

Designed for basic email communication, with limited marketing features. 

Email service provider examples

Gmail

Outlook

iCLoud Mail

Proton Mail

Zoho Mail

Neo Mail

EMPs

Designed for businesses and organizations to manage and send targeted email campaigns to their subscribers. EMPs offer advanced features like automation, segmentation, analytics, and AI-driven personalization. They also help businesses track open rates, click-through rates, and other important metrics to evaluate campaign performance.

Email marketing platforms examples

Mailchimp

Constant Contact

HubSpot

ActiveCampaign

GetResponse

Features of E-Mail Marketing Platforms

1. Easy-To-Use Interface

The goal of email marketing platforms should be to simplify the job of email marketers. To guarantee that you can use all the functions you require quickly and simply, look for an email marketing platform with an intuitive UI and a minimal learning curve. An email editor with drag-and-drop functionality is a fantastic addition. Furthermore, if you employ email designers, you should pick a platform that supports HTML email templates. Make sure the email marketing platform you select includes a library of templates you can alter to produce emails that showcase your brand if you don't have any designers on staff.

2. Email Segmentation

The ROI of email campaigns increases significantly by email segmentation. Based on demographics, location, behavior, and other factors, you may design customized marketing campaigns and promotional emails for the particular audiences who will be most interested in them. Some email marketing platforms even utilize artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to analyze user behavior in real time and adjust your email messages as you go.

3. Email Personalization

If you want to personalize your email marketing campaigns, segmentation is crucial. Additionally, it is imperative that you customize your email marketing efforts. Find an email marketing platform that supports merge tags to make it simple to customize both the email copy and the email subject lines. In some email marketing platforms, you can even produce and send a single email that automatically incorporates specific content based on the segment it is being sent to. These platforms use dynamic content.

4. Email Automation

There are many moving components in email marketing, many of which are labor-intensive, repetitive manual operations. Fortunately, many of the top email marketing platforms have automation tools that can save you a tonne of work. Email automation covers a range of features, including email scheduling, delivery confirmations, engagement tracking, text analytics, role-based account access for your marketing team, and even intelligent segmentation/re-segmentation based on the results of your email marketing campaigns.

5. Testing

Testing is one of the most crucial things you can take to make sure your email marketing initiatives are getting the optimum ROI. A/B and split testing features are found in many of the top email marketing platforms, allowing you to compare various aspects of your marketing emails to make sure you have the most effective possible set of subject lines, copy, calls to action, email design, and format.

6. Analytics and Reports

To make sure your email marketing is accomplishing your objectives, you should monitor a number of benchmarks. However, manually keeping track of this data might be a full-time job. To track open rates, click-through rates, bounce rates, and other metrics pick an email marketing platform that offers reporting and analytics.

7.Integration Capabilities

Many email marketing platforms offer integrations with other tools and systems, such as CRM software, e-commerce platforms, and analytics tools. These integrations enhance the functionality of the email marketing platform by enabling seamless data exchange and streamlining marketing efforts.

E-mail list

An email list is a record of email addresses that organizations or individuals have gathered from prospects and potential customers with their permission. They are people who would like to get announcements, updates, bargains, and other attributes about your organization mailed to their email inbox.

Why should you have an email list?

There are several reasons why having an email list will always be beneficial to your organization. Here they are:

• You can use emails to help you with your narrative, promote your brand, and show off your product or services.

• With an email list you can send your subscribers emails to nurture your leads and convert them into paying clients.

• You will always have the subscriber’s information when you build your email list. Unlike in social media, where it can shut down or your account can get deleted anytime, in which case you lose all your potential prospects.

• You can ensure that every one of your subscribers will receive the emails, unlike other forms of digital marketing where the platform decides who to show your content.

How to build an email list in 3 steps

Here we have broken it down into actionable steps that you can take to start building an email list right now:

Step 1: Create incentives or content that people would want

For people to join your email list, you need to provide something enticing they would not want to miss. Such content or incentives, known as lead magnets, can be accessed by people once they sign up with their email ids.

We have listed down some ideas for lead magnets to get you started:

• Free content or lead magnet

Offer content that people in your niche will be interested in. It should be something that provides them value. The type of content depends on your industry and target audience’s needs and interests.

The free content works like a lead magnet that entices people to join your email list to receive the free content.

Here are some of the most popular lead magnets that you can create and send out.

Lead magnet	What is it?	Examples
Email Newsletters	News report with information about the activities of an organization.	Email marketing best practices, latest updates, etc. from Mailmodo
Guides	What or How-to articles that help people figure out a process or pain point.	Guide to improve hashtag strategy
Whitepapers	An in-depth report on a topic’s problem while providing a solution.	Google Cloud's AI Adoption Framework by Google
E-books	Digital book publication with text and images to read on electronic devices.	Email Design for Newbies
Courses	Short education programs	Email Marketing Free Course
Checklists	List of things to do to achieve something	The Ultimate Email Campaign QA Checklist
Reports	Document with organized and detailed information about a topic for specific audiences.	Lead generation and management report
Toolkits	Set of guidelines or suggestions to do something	Marketing tools for every business and budget
Webinars	Live or recorded online seminar	The AI marketing show
Cheatsheets	Like a checklist, but it also contains hacks to help people.	Hacks to write a viral blog post

• Early access or insider benefits with exclusive content

You can offer people early access to content available to the general public only weeks later. Exclusive content makes the people feel special and like they are a part of something special. You can provide them with something that'll help provide value, like improving their skills, process, increase growth, etc. For example, Inktober gives people who sign up for their newsletter access to their challenge details one week before the general release. As a result, their audience wants to sign up because they get early access to the challenge.

• Offers and discounts

Discounts or coupons are great incentives that usually get people to sign up. If you are an e-commerce or B2C brand, these incentives will attract customers to your product or content.

• Service or product-based incentives and free trials

1. Many product and services companies offer complimentary trials for a limited time or limited features to their audiences. The free product requires people to sign up with an email id to access a small part of the product or service. For example, Mailmodo offers a 21 day free trial to try out their product.

Step 2: Create an email signup form linked with the incentive

Now that you have something to offer, you need a sign-up form to collect the email address of people. A sign-up form is used to collect email addresses from people who want the incentive you are offering.

There are many ways to incorporate a signup page into your website. Here are a few:

• Create a unique landing page

The landing page is where your audience lands when they click on your incentive. It has a signup bar to capture email addresses from people before providing them the freebie.

• Add it to your blog or newsletters page

Include a signup area on your blog as the people who read the blogs are already interested in your content.

• Include it in the checkout process

If you sell online, then you can make people sign up before they checkout by providing them with a coupon if they sign up.

• Contact form

On the contact or about page on your website, you can set up a contact form for people to sign up through it if they want to contact you.

• Pop up

Greet people who visit your website with a pop-up. The pop-up can inform the people about incentives like seasonal sales, holiday offers, etc.

Step 3: Distribute the form and market your incentives

Now that you have set up the process and the backend systems, it's time to drive traffic towards your signup forms. You can tell your audience about the incentive to create exposure for your brand and increase your email list subscribers.

You can use the following ways to distribute the incentives:

•   Social media

You can use social media channels to tell people what valuable incentive you are offering them for free. Make sure to direct them to your signup bar when you advertise on social media.

You can use the following media to inform the audience about your email list:

• Facebook

Facebook posts, stories, shares in relevant groups, etc.

• YouTube

Promotional videos, video descriptions, etc.

• Instagram

Instagram stories, bio, posts, IGTV, Reels, etc.

• Advertisements

You can create ads on Google or social media about your free product or service. The ads will direct people to your landing page, where they'll signup to receive the freebie.

• Events or conferences (virtual or in-person)

If your organization is going to organize meetups, set up stalls, or present at trade shows, then you can inform people of the free benefits you are providing when they sign up online. You can also collect their contact information during the event. And later on, you can add it to your email list.

• Email signature

In the signature of all your personal and professional emails, provide a link to your opt-in form. Then, the people who receive your emails can sign up if they are interested.

• Email co-marketing

Email co-marketing is when two brands collaborate to develop an email marketing campaign. They are not creating something new. They are only marketing what they already have. For example, affiliate marketing, where brands collaborate with popular influencers to access and engage with new audiences.

E-mail marketing campaign

An email marketing campaign is a series of emails sent to nurture leads and current customers to increase engagement and sales. Each email directs users to a specific call-to- action, such as signing up, scheduling a call, continuing reading, or adding a product to their cart.

According to Hubspot, 77% of marketers have noticed a rise in email engagement in the past year. This just proves that to run a successful online business; you have to create an email marketing campaign.

Why is Email marketing important?

Email marketing is an effective marketing channel for connecting with leads, nurturing them, and converting them into customers.

It is vital for marketing strategies like inbound, content, and account-based marketing.

Prospects and customers may get customized communications to help them engage with your brand. Email marketing is an excellent approach to capturing and maintaining your customers’ attention.

Let’s look at the benefits of email marketing in a glimpse;

• It’s one of the cost-effective digital marketing strategies with the highest ROI.

• It lets you stay connected with your customers regularly.

• Email lets you combine your marketing channels, creating a more cohesive and fluid buyer’s journey.

• Email gives more personalized and customized experiences.

• Creating email marketing campaigns keeps the customers up-to-date about the latest products and promo.

• Email helps to Increase customer engagement and helps retain customers.

• Email is an excellent way to collect customer information for more targeted customer touch points.

• Creating email marketing campaigns is affordable and sends timely emails to customers.

How to create an email marketing campaign?

If you are new to creating an email marketing campaign, the first step of defining goals can be overwhelming. As long as you understand your email campaign goals and use a systematic procedure to compose your emails, it doesn’t have to be that tough.

We’ll show you in 10 steps how to create an email marketing campaign yourself.

1. Define your email marketing goals

Before creating an email marketing campaign, you must have a clear idea of what action your recipient should take. The goals of each email marketing campaign can be different.

Sometimes you may create an email marketing campaign for brand awareness, and sometimes it may be for website traffic. Revenue generation, lead generation, feedback, surveys, and marketing channel promotion are some other goals.

You can only proceed by understanding the aim. Then we can jump into the next step.

2. Build a targeted email list

A perfect email list is the core of Creating a successful email marketing campaign. An email list is the collection of the email addresses of potential customers.

The email campaign list must be clean. You don’t want to send content targeted to local people to customers abroad, and you don’t have to send English content to Spanish. Try to include only opt-in people.

Spam alert...! If you keep your email list clean and send only the right content to the right people. The chances of your email being marketed as spam is zero.

3. Segment your email list

Segmentation and micro-segmentation are compelling marketing tactics to increase open and click rates, which are two crucial email marketing metrics.

People only consume what they want; that is a fundamental sales principle. That’s why relevancy is essential, and segmentation help to make more targeted and relevant content to recipients.

According to Hubspot, the most powerful strategy for an email marketing campaign is segmenting your subscribers.

We can segment customers based on many criteria: demographic criteria like age, location, gender, time zone, etc., and psychological criteria like purchase behavior. There are technical criteria, too—website behavior like website activity, opt-in frequency, open rate, etc.

When you have an email automation tool, it is an easy task. There will be multiple interests, and you can’t define a person entirely, and by A/B tests, you can make a buyer persona.

The email automation program makes it easy and effective. It is a tremendous task manually, and results cannot be guaranteed.

4. Research your audience

It is all about your audience. Thorough research is the only way to achieve an email marketing campaign’s effectiveness.

What does your audience need?

What should our email offer them?

Which type of campaign do you need here?

What is the perfect time to hit? Or how we can perfectly implement it.

You must have an answer to all the above questions by research. Then only you can precede—a critical step.

Selecting the email marketing campaign type usually carries along this step. Through the research, you will know what kind of email marketing campaign suits your customer. Some types of email marketing campaigns usually used for ecommerce businesses are;

Newsletters:

Including newsletters in email marketing campaigns are the most intelligent way to connect with people. It is not completely sales mail because people are already tired of sales emails.

Newsletters engage people and educate them about a product, service, or program.

Newsletters are effective in building loyalty as customers are made aware of the new service or program in a timely manner.

Welcome email campaigns

A welcome email is the first email when creating an email marketing campaign. It is a transactional mail that shows gratitude for signing up for a newsletter or accepting a product offer. It provides further information on a product or service.

Abandoned cart recovery email campaigns

Abandoned cart recovery campaigns are action-triggered emails that work when the customer moves the product to the cart and doesn’t follow it. There is a lot of automated email marketing software for the effective abandoned cart recovery program. It is one of the best email marketing campaign practices because it recovers your lost sales.

Winback email Campaigns

People will change with time. People will change their mail IDs, or they don’t keep interested in your product but will never lose a customer without trying to reengage them.

Winback or re-engagement campaigns are email marketing processes to bring subscribers back to the store. It works well if you have automated email marketing software.

Promotional email Campaigns

It is the most common email marketing campaign process and a bit old school. We are all familiar with this email campaign.

It is a direct hit. Usually, it doesn’t work well. But evolution affected promotional campaigns too. Humourous, emotional, curious, and innovative quality content are getting more attention in promotional campaigns.

Event Email Campaign

You have to create an email marketing campaign if you are planning specific events for your brand. Find the perfect time to send an email and the optimum time that would increase open rates. According to a study by Adobe, emails have higher open rates when sent around 8 am and had higher click-through rates. This can vary based on different industries.

As most inboxes are wrestling space for attention, if you don’t send it at the correct time, it will be buried among many emails.

5. Design your email template

A high-quality email template can ensure success for your email marketing campaign. People are flush with many email marketing campaigns so they can reach an impression in seconds.

Using an unprofessional, non-industry-standard template will negatively impact the campaign. An automated email marketing automation plugin is handy in this situation.

There is a lot of automated email marketing campaign that offers updated industry-paced templates, and it makes the job easy and effective.

6. Write impressive content

Email marketing is a personalized channel. So, the content in the emails must be personalized. It does not matter if you plan content for a segment of thousands of people, and the recipient must feel it’s personal.

Personal means not just calling by their name.

It would help if you addressed the customer persona: their desires, attitudes, and likes. And for god’s sake, if you are not planning for a small group, try the email automation program.

Because content connects, try to inject humor because it is the best way to form a personal connection and lead to customer loyalty.

Ensure content is simple and easy to understand.

No one will invest time in complex content.

Provide simple language and easy-to-understand vocabulary in your content. Simple is more effective.

7. Make a perfect Subject line

A perfect subject line takes all. It is the first impression—a gatekeeper.

It’s a call, and by this call, the recipient has to decide whether they want to open it or not.

So it is a vital part of an effective email. There are many factors to obtaining a perfect subject line. But first, look at the customer persona; it depends on the person.

Generally, it must be short, personalized, and inspiring to click. And never include sales language because it’s the favourite of spam filters, and your campaign will lead to the spam folder.

And if your subject line is short, never ignore the preview text. It is not necessary as the subject line. But it also helps to gain attention.

8. Test your Email marketing campaign

Now you can test your Email marketing campaign. May some people say its time consuming, but don’t miss the chance to find mistakes and repair them. The test compares and distinguishes elements of your marketing campaigns and how they impact customers’ reactions to them.

You can optimise the campaign with simple changes in segmentation and subject line. The subject line can test under its length, long or short, which one works.

By adding two completely different topics, you can test the topic.

You can test the subject line by changing its personalization method and offer. Test your preheader, too, with its inclusion and content.

We have discussed the importance of the optimum time for sending an email. Take some tests, and find the best time to reach your customer.

Don’t forget to test how your call-to-action is getting received. Change and try your call to action copy and check which one works well. Maybe your “buy it copy” will be underperforming than “here your dream cream jeans”.

People differ from person to person, so test the colours too, and you will find out what colour impresses your customer.

You can test that content works well when it is long or short. Or you can try your personalized content or generic content worked. Or check if your motivating content worked well over humourous content.

9. Launch your Campaign

Well researched, chose the design, made content, tested and proofed. Then you can launch the campaign. Make it live..!

Don’t forget to add your mail address to the list. Don’t you want to see what it looks like for the recipient?

10. Track, measure, and improve

Tracking, measuring, analyzing, and improving are the final steps you must follow for a successful email marketing campaign.

Suppose you have an effective automated email marketing software; tracking and measuring is easy, and you can also use the help of google analytics and shop hosting platform analytics.

Data is important.

Please remember to collect the following metrics to check out:

• Click rate

• Email open rate

• Unsubscribe rate/Opt-out rate

• Bounce rate

• Subscriber interactions

• Email deliverability

• And more

 

E-mail marketing automation

Email automation is a way to create emails that reach the right people with the right message at the right moment—without doing the work every time, sending automated messages leveraging a marketing automation tool.

A successful email marketing automation strategy can help you improve the overall engagement along the customer journey, improve marketing efficiency and increase your

ROI (return on investment).

Email marketing automation is basically a simple way for you to create timely, relevant, and personalized emails to be sent to individual contacts as they take specific actions on your platform. For instance, when people can’t remember their login details and decide to click the password reset button. That action will trigger the system to assist the customer to recover their login details, usually via email.

Email campaigns are, therefore, automatically based on triggers you predefined.

You can invest your time into other productive engagements since you no longer have to type and send out several emails every day manually. You can have different sets of messages and schedule who should receive them and when.

Every business that wants to stay relevant needs an email automation strategy and a perfect one too.

Email Segmentation

Segmentation is the process of dividing a target market in such a way that potential customers are grouped based on set criteria. This way, targeted and personalized content can be tailored towards their needs.

With email segmentation, you can improve email open and click-through rates, increase revenue and deliverability, as well as reduce unsubscribe rate and spam complaints.

Commonly, segmentation is used to deliver more personalized email marketing to subscribers based on their interests, and other metrics, such as purchase history, location, etc.

Email Marketing Engagement

Email marketing engagement is essentially a measure of how subscribers interact with the emails they receive from you. Their open and clickthrough rates are compared with how long they’ve been on your mailing list. Your engagement gives you an overview of how well, or otherwise, your campaign is going.

Email automation and segmentation combined will deliver the best engagement for your campaigns. Already, email marketing is one of the most effective strategies when you want to drive direct engagement with your customers because it opens a direct line of communication between brands and users.

How does email marketing automation work?

Email marketing automation uses specialized platforms to create and send emails automatically.

Marketers first integrate their email list and customer data into the software.

Next, they design a series of emails and specify the triggers and conditions that determine when each one sends.

These automations allow marketers to create complex branching scenarios to deliver personalized, timely messages without repetitive manual sending.

Once designed, email marketing automation workflows run on their own according to the configured triggers and conditions.

Here’s a standard action plan when you’re setting up your own email marketing automation:

1. Choose a preset automation workflow (or create a custom one from scratch)

2. Edit and set up triggers based on customer behaviour

3. Customize your workflow based on audience filters or exit conditions

4. Edit your email’s content (e.g. the discount offer, if any) and preheader

5. Determine appropriate flow actions, such as a delay, split, or A/B testing

6. Add an alternative message channel (SMS or push notification), if you prefer

7. Now, wait for your customers to trigger an event, e.g. abandoning a cart

8. Your email app sends the preset message

Email marketing automation examples

In this part of our comprehensive guide to email marketing automation, we’ll show you the most profitable email marketing automation combinations you need to be using in order to see some great results.

These email marketing workflow combinations are:

• Welcome series

• Birthday series

• Cart recovery series

• Re-engagement series

• Abandoned product series

You’ll notice that all of these are a series of emails, not just a single email. That’s because based on our data, a series of emails can bring in 69% more sales. And that’s why you need to be using them in your workflows if you really want to improve your sales.

Advantages of Email Automation and Segmentation

– Send Relevant Content

Content that is irrelevant, unhelpful, and not tailored to a subscriber is pretty annoying.

Two things are most likely going to happen when subscribers get this type of email:

They will either use the unsubscribe button or flush it down the spam drain (you might be more familiar with “spam folder”).

You do not want your emails ending up in the spam folder, and you do not want to keep losing potential customers.

Your content, therefore, must be tailored and useful to the recipient.

– Branding

Branding largely deals with the very core of how a company, product, or person is perceived. You do not want to be perceived as unprofessional and inconsistent. All the heavy lifting of staying hyper-relevant, consistent and professional can be done via automation and segmentation. If it is automated in the first place, then consistency can easily be achieved. And staying consistent is staying professional – your tone of voice and mode of communication must remain consistent.

– Nurture Leads

One of the powerful features of timetoreply’s product is that it helps sales teams to nurture leads quickly and relevantly. Nurturing leads at the right time can make a lot of difference in your campaign. Marketers agree that leads are more receptive when well nurtured. That is, they are followed up with helpful resources and relevant content.

– Save Time, Reduce Error

Avoid all the everyday mistakes associated with sending emails manually. An integrated system also takes care of sending non-targeted emails to your mailing list. With email workflows, you can spend more time nurturing your leads while the system works independently.

– Data, data, data

Data helps you make the right decisions for ongoing and future campaigns.

Maropost already provides robust reporting for email campaigns, but this is taken steps further with the readily available email marketing analytics pushed to our platform from timetoreply.

E-Marketing metrics and Analytics

Email marketing analytics is the process of using data analysis to track and measure the performance of email marketing campaigns. Metrics are numbers or percentages that indicate the success of an email marketing campaign.

Here are some email marketing metrics:

• Email deliverability rate

• Email open rate

• Click-through rate

• Conversion rate

• Spam complaints

• Email bounce rate

• Unsubscribe rate

• Revenue per email

• Overall ROI

The metrics that you deem important to determine the success of your campaigns are known as key performance indicators (KPIs).

Here are some ways to measure email marketing effectiveness:

• Check the bounce rate on your email campaign landing pages

• Measure website traffic

• Track your email list growth rate

• Check the forward/share rate for each email campaign

• Track your spam complaints

You can gather and analyze data for each email campaign with the help of bulk email providers and Google Analytics.

Importance of E-Marketing Metrics and analytics

The importance of email marketing analytics lies in its ability to help you make data- driven decisions.

Rather than relying on guesswork or assumptions, you can use real data to optimize your email campaigns and improve their effectiveness.

By understanding what types of content, subject lines, and calls-to-action are most effective, you can create more personalized and targeted campaigns that are more likely to drive engagement and conversions.

Additionally, email marketing analytics allows you to measure the ROI of your campaigns, giving you a clear understanding of the impact they have on your bottom line.

In short, email marketing analytics is a powerful tool that can help you improve your email campaigns and achieve your marketing goals.

By leveraging data to gain insights into your audience and measure the success of your campaigns, you can create more effective, engaging, and profitable email marketing strategies.

Types of data that can be analyzed in email marketing

In email marketing, there are various types of data that can be analyzed to gain insights into the performance of your campaigns. Here are some of the most common types of data that can be analyzed in email marketing:

1. Open Rates: This is the percentage of subscribers who opened your email. Analyzing open rates can help you understand how well your subject lines and preview text are resonating with your audience.

2. Click-Through Rates (CTR): This is the percentage of subscribers who clicked on a link in your email. Analyzing CTR can help you understand how well your content, design, and calls-to-action are engaging your audience.

3. Conversion Rates: This is the percentage of subscribers who completed a desired action, such as making a purchase or filling out a form. Analyzing conversion rates can help you understand how effective your email campaigns are at driving action.

4. Bounce Rates: This is the percentage of emails that were undeliverable and bounced back to you. Analyzing bounce rates can help you identify potential issues with your email list, such as invalid or inactive email addresses.

5. Subscriber Behavior: This includes data on how your subscribers interact with your emails, such as the types of content they engage with, the frequency of their engagement, and the devices they use to open your emails. Analyzing subscriber behavior can help you understand your audience's preferences and tailor your campaigns to better resonate with them.

6. Geographic Data: This includes information on where your subscribers are located.

Analyzing geographic data can help you create more targeted campaigns that are tailored to specific regions or time zones.

By analyzing these types of data and others, you can gain valuable insights into the effectiveness of your email campaigns and make data-driven decisions to optimize their performance.

How to collect and use data for email marketing

To collect and use data for email marketing, you need to follow a few key steps. Here's a general overview of the process:

1. Define your goals: Before you start collecting data, it's important to define your goals for your email marketing campaign. What are you hoping to achieve? Are you looking to increase sales, drive traffic to your website, or build brand awareness? Having clear goals will help you focus your data collection efforts and make better use of the data you collect.

2. Choose an email marketing platform: To collect data, you'll need to use an email marketing platform that provides analytics and reporting features. There are many different platforms available, such as Mailchimp, Campaign Monitor, and Constant Contact. Choose a platform that fits your budget and provides the data you need to achieve your goals.

3. Set up tracking and analytics: Once you've chosen a platform, you'll need to set up tracking and analytics features. This usually involves adding a tracking code to your website or email templates, which allows you to track subscriber behavior and measure the performance of your campaigns.

4. Collect data: With your tracking and analytics set up, you can start collecting data on your email campaigns. This includes data on open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and other metrics.

5. Analyze and interpret data: Once you've collected data, it's important to analyze and interpret it. This means looking for patterns, trends, and insights that can help you optimize your campaigns and achieve your goals. For example, if you notice that a certain type of content is generating more engagement, you can use that insight to create more targeted campaigns that are more likely to resonate with your audience.

6. Use data to optimize your campaigns: Finally, use the insights you gain from your data analysis to optimize your email campaigns. This may involve testing different subject lines, calls-to-action, or content formats to see what works best for your audience. By continuously monitoring and optimizing your campaigns based on data, you can achieve better results and maximize the ROI of your email marketing efforts.

The benefits of using email marketing analytics

There are many benefits to using email marketing analytics to measure and analyze the performance of your email campaigns. Here are a few key benefits:

1. Improved targeting and personalization: By analyzing data on subscriber behavior and preferences, you can better understand your audience and tailor your campaigns to their interests and needs. This can lead to higher engagement and better response rates.

2. Higher ROI: By analyzing data on conversion rates and other metrics, you can identify areas of your campaigns that are underperforming and make changes to improve their effectiveness. This can lead to higher ROI and greater revenue for your business.

3. Better decision making: Email marketing analytics can provide you with valuable insights into the effectiveness of your campaigns and help you make data-driven decisions about how to optimize and improve them. This can help you avoid guesswork and make decisions based on solid data.

4. Continuous improvement: By regularly analyzing data and making changes to your campaigns, you can continuously improve the effectiveness of your email marketing efforts. This can help you stay ahead of the competition and achieve your marketing goals more quickly.

5. Better understanding of your audience: By analyzing data on subscriber behavior, demographics, and other factors, you can gain a better understanding of your audience and what motivates them to engage with your brand. This can help you create more targeted and effective campaigns that resonate with your audience on a deeper level.

In short, email marketing analytics can provide you with a wealth of insights and data that can help you optimize your campaigns, achieve your marketing goals, and drive higher ROI for your business.

By leveraging data to make better decisions and continuously improve your email marketing efforts, you can stay ahead of the competition and achieve long-term success.

Common email marketing analytics tools and platforms

There are a variety of email marketing analytics tools and platforms available to help you measure the performance of your campaigns and make informed decisions about how to optimize them.

Here are a few of the most common tools and platforms used in email marketing analytics:

1. Email service providers (ESPs): Many email service providers offer built-in analytics tools that allow you to track key metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. ESPs may also provide tools for creating A/B tests and segmenting your audience.

2. Google Analytics: Google Analytics is a free web analytics platform that can be used to track email campaign performance. By setting up custom tracking links and tags, you can track how subscribers interact with your website after clicking on a link in your email. Due to the tool’s versatility, linking Google Analytics to CRM can help