What is email marketing?

If you’d like to communicate with your audience without relying on any algorithm or social media platform, email marketing is the best option for you. It has numerous advantages, but let’s start with the basics: what is email marketing? Email marketing can be defined as the practice of sending emails to a database of potential customers for our company or business.

Technological advancements have not only made email marketing possible, but also allowed for personalization using automation and artificial intelligence to achieve better results.

As has happened with some more traditional media channels, there have been attempts to predict the decline of email marketing. However, the truth is that this technique, despite having been around for years, remains more relevant than ever and continues to be one of the most effective and profitable actions for advertisers in terms of its return on investment.

It’s an excellent way to communicate directly with our potential customers. We reach their inboxes without relying on any algorithm or social media rule. In today’s world, where many people have their personal email set up on their phones or tablets, the conversation is direct. Statistics show that half of the emails are opened on smartphones, which is a crucial aspect to consider when crafting our email marketing strategies.

Why email marketing?

As mentioned earlier, email marketing is a communication tool based on sending emails to a database of potential customers. These emails can have personalized content for each recipient or be oriented towards various marketing objectives.

It’s essential to know that email marketing is not only used for selling. Within our client’s communication, it can fulfill different functions, making it adaptable to various brand or business situations.

Let’s explore some examples to make it clearer:

• Newsletters: Also known as newsletters, they allow us to stay in touch with our brand’s customers, informing them about news, discounts, product launches, etc.
• Emails to attract new customers to our brand.
• Administrative emails: In these cases, we could send downloadable content to users, communicate subscription success, provide follow-up steps, or express gratitude for joining our database.
• Customer retention. This is a crucial aspect because retaining customers means bringing them back. Acquiring a new customer can be eight times more expensive than maintaining an existing one. Hence, we can complement email marketing with other services that may serve them. For example, a brand could send discounts to users in their database as part of a customer retention email marketing campaign.

The numbers behind email marketing

We have already explained the relevance of email marketing and its benefits for your brand or your client’s brand. Now, it’s essential to translate these advantages into metrics and figures to see the true benefits.

Here are some numbers related to email marketing:

• The majority of people have continuous internet access. As early as 2015, surveys showed that 100% of respondents connected daily. Today, with smartphones, we are connected all day.
• It is estimated that by 2023, there will be over 4 billion functioning emails.
• Most companies use email marketing to organically distribute their content.
• Emails with personalized subjects produce up to 50% more open rates.
• Emails that include videos in their content are more viewed.
• Almost everyone checks their emails several times a day on their phones.
• Gmail has become the most used provider worldwide, surpassing competitors like Hotmail or Yahoo.
• Most users perceive it positively to receive information in their emails from their favorite brands (as long as it is from their favorite brands!).
• Consumers consider receiving one email per week as an ideal frequency. This is an advantage as it does not require excessive content production, unlike social media.
• Using words like “offer” or “promotion” increases email open rates.
• Email marketing is the technique that provides the highest return on investment: it is estimated that $42 is received for every dollar invested.
• The majority of email openings happen on mobile phones.

Fundamentals of email marketing that you should know

Having SMART objectives and a content strategy.

We have seen the significant advantages of email marketing and how it can be useful for your clients or your business. It’s crucial to understand that email marketing is not a technique to be used only when we encounter problems like declining sales or a similar situation.

That said, it is essential to develop an email marketing content strategy that establishes SMART objectives. What does this mean?

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Realistic
• Timed

Starting email marketing campaigns will always be more manageable when we have clear objectives that we can measure and know where we are heading. What frequency will we send content? What do we want to share with them? How will we obtain new subscribers? These are some questions that we need to address beforehand.

The 3 Vs to get subscribers

When starting with email marketing, it’s essential to know how we will grow our contact list, reaching more people, and gaining more customers. We must consider these three “V”s:

• Visibility: It’s essential to have the signup form in an easy-to-find location. On our website, on social media profiles, etc.
• Value: Why should someone subscribe? What benefits will they receive? These are essential questions we need to answer when designing our email marketing campaign.
• Velocity: It’s important to make the signup process simple and fast. The name and email address are all the information we need to stay in touch. Don’t make it too difficult; don’t ask for too much personal information or anything of the sort.

Identifying the right metrics

The abundance of numbers is an advantage of our time, but we need to know how to interpret them. In our email marketing campaign, once we start sending emails to our contact list, we will receive plenty of data about their engagement with our content. This is another great advantage of email marketing. It’s essential not to get overwhelmed with all the statistics and instead determine which ones are most important to us.