Planting the Seed of Email Marketing to Grow Your Business

It is not easy to take care of plants. From the moment you plant the seed in a pot, a whole ecosystem around it starts developing. Something similar happens to the strategies we apply to our business. But it is easier to monitor the performance of the latter — and even check if it’s working right. Vigilance, care and, mostly, respecting personal space are fundamental aspects.

In recent years, a technique called email marketing has become all the rage and, even if it may seem like a strategy that’s been around for a long time, it’s a more sophisticated method and with many more sides to it than a simple email subscription.

What Is Email Marketing and How Can It Help You?

Spam and emails have been linked to each other since their inception. A person receives around 121 emails per day, according to the most recent study by The Radicati Group. In contrast, they send way less than they receive: around 40. Experts are warning that the number of emails we receive will increase exponentially in coming years due the increased use of email platforms both for work and for advertising.

As new brand strategies have developed, email sending has refined. Email marketing is the use of specialised tools —MailChimp, for example— to communicate with a specific client portfolio.

There are big success cases in the use of email marketing campaigns. One of the most famous ones is the advertising campaign and the emailing of offers by Uber Eats. They managed to get the subscription of thousands of users to their company thanks to the emphasis made when downloading the app and the multiple advantages you would get from it. Another great campaign is Duolingo’s, which encourages users to take back language lessons with a clear call to action and with visual elements that reinforce the message. The daily use of email platforms combined with the high ROI (return on investment) promise great success.

It’s a consumer direct communication channel that allows us to segment the audience more precisely. Its main goal is to send news and offers to those users interested in our brand. It will do no good to send unfiltered messages because the ROI would be minimal. It may seem like an invasive measure, but it isn’t; for the simple reason that users accept receiving these communications.

You should consider this strategy as one of the most economic and most profitable out there. With a minimum investment we can obtain a ROI of up to 4,300%, as Syndacast‘s study shows.

Apply the Best Email Marketing Strategy for Your Business

With all this information at hand, the next important step is to start designing a good email marketing strategy. Recipients have agreed to receive notifications whenever there’s some news they might be interested in — so we shouldn’t overuse these communications. We must always consider whether the subject is as important as to notify our users.

Before launching your campaign, you will have to consider a series of factors for the design of your strategy and plan the mailout schedule.

• Goals | It’s essential to know the purpose with which the campaign sets off. Establish whether you’re looking to offer a new service, to get feedback on a particular product or to send personalised content to a specific group of clients.
• Segmenting Criteria | Thanks to the great amount of tools at our disposal, we can study the consumption habits of our clients and decide the strategy we’ll follow in each case.

1. 1. If you use your own databases, you must pay attention to criteria such as demographics, age, elements they interact the most with, whether they are clients or just registered on your website. All this information can be obtained using the tools provided by a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) —like Microsoft Dynamics— and it will allow you to create different emails for each audience.
      
   2. When working with third-party databases, filtering becomes an almost impossible task to carry out. Generic content is thus created, looking to call the attention of users that don’t know you yet, using depersonalised content.

• Target and List of Contacts | Having a good contact list is essential for knowing who we’ll be reaching out. We must keep the user profile in mind when we send our emails. That will set our directives for content creation.
• Content | With the goal in mind, plan what you will be showing. You have to be creative. The intention is for your call to action to be effective, not for your email to end up in the dustbin.

• Frequency | Don’t overdo it. But don’t be a stranger either. Find a balance and study the time and day in which people check their emails the most.

Remember that, without the explicit authorisation of your users, you cannot make use of this email marketing strategy. Try to get it through pop-up messages, offering personalised content and offers in exchange of their information.