Email marketing

What is email marketing?

Email marketing is a form of digital marketing designed to make your customers aware of your product or service. It is a great tool to use when promoting new items. 

Why is email marketing important?

Email marketing can help you with multiple goals you might want to achieve. It can help you build relationships with your customers, drive traffic to your social media or website. 

Advantages of email marketing:

Email marketing is cost and time effective and can be customised to yours and your customers needs. You can easily monitor, measure and study your campaign. 

Best practices of email marketing:

Here is couple of examples of email marketing practices I have picked out for you:

1. A/B testing 

A/B testing, also called split testing, is a comparison of an email that works better for a chosen audience. It is important to focus on elements you are testing - subject lines, promotions, CTA (call to action), social media sharing etc. Who are you testing and how should a successful test look like? There are multiple providers (for example MailChimp - https://mailchimp.com/?currency=GBP)  which can  help you with your campaign and A/B testing but you can also do this manually. One way to check your campaign is to send an email to yourself. Don't forget to watch your metrics and record and analyse data that you've collected. 

2. Opt in / opt out 

Email marketing is a part of permission marketing, this means that your customer needs to give your permission to receive your content. It is important to include opt in on your website - customer signs to your newsletter and then they become subscribers. Great practise of opt in is double opt in, this means customers will verify their email address. This is important for your email reputation since any undelivered emails are considered as spams which will affect your reputation. Including verification could also increase your sales. It is important to include an opt out so the subscriber can unsubscribe if he is not satisfied with your content. Great practice for this is to include a form where the customer states why they've decided to opt out. You can then use this information for future campaigns. 

3. Data protection

It is important to follow laws and any legal requirements when handling personal information. It is your responsibility to know which laws apply to you since it's based on location. It is important to gather the information correctly and keep it safe and secure. All data you are collecting should be relevant to your campaign. 

4. Segmentation 

You should build your database by collecting all your subscribers' information, after that you can create an email campaign. Before sending your campaign to all of your subscribers it is important to create buyers' persona based on your subscribers and segment them. You can do this from demographics. Some information can include: age, gender, family circumstance, area they are living in etc. 

5. Writing emails + including images

When writing emails you want to include a persuasive and clear subject line which will encourage subscribers to take action on the email. It is important to include all of the information you want to inform your subscriber about. The company's name and logo should be clearly seen. How we have  established in point four it is important to segment your subscribers and base your email on their needs. Subscribers prefer personal greetings since it's more personal than the general one (for example “Dear Amanda”). For your email body you want to focus on your content and purpose of the email, follow structure for clear navigation. Don't forget to include CTAs - some of them could be “book now”, “contact us” or social media buttons, which can lead to  increasing  your social media presence. You can include images in your email but they must contribute with an overall message. It is not best to use large images, it is great to include images like a company's logo. Don't forget to follow copyright laws, you can use stock images without worrying about copyrighting. 

Mistakes to avoid in email marketing:

1. Spams 

In any email you send you want to avoid spam filters. You can do this by following simple rules. As we established before, email marketing is based on permission so there is no point in buying email lists, since no one on that list subscribed to your content so it will most likely go to spam. We also establish you want to collect correct information so your bounce rate is not high. If you have any emails bouncing back it is important to correct or remove the address. There are some websites which will show your spam score and your email reputation score (for example Senderscore - https://senderscore.org). You also want to avoid trigger words and misleading subject lines (for example “earn extra cash”). There are many other ways to avoid spam, usually email service providers will be able to help you with this. 

2. Images or videos forms 

Avoid video - since Flash and JavaScript is difficult to download it will slow down email loading and could lead to subscribers ignoring your email or falling into spam. While you can include approximately 20% of images in your email, make sure they fall into the email's body and are not big, since large images take time to load and it can, again, lead to falling into spam. 

There are many other mistakes to avoid, the most important is to remember to follow the law and data protection. 

Reference list:

Dimitriou, N. (2022). 26 tested email marketing best practices that drive results [online]. Available at: https://moosend.com/blog/email-marketing-best-practices/ [accessed 9th of February 2023].

European Commission (n.d.). What is personal data? [online] European Commission. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/reform/what-personal-data_en. [accessed on 9th of February 2023].

MailChimp (n.d.). Email marketing [online] MailChimp. Available at: https://mailchimp.com/en-gb/marketing-glossary/email-marketing/#Tips_for_building_your_email_marketing_list [accessed on 9th of February 2023].

Meyer, B. (2021). 10 tips to avoid email spam filters and reach your subscribers’ inbox [online] Content marketing institute. Available at: https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/articles/best-practices-avoid-email-spam-filters/ [accessed on 9th of February 2023].