What is Email Marketing? Importance, Types, Tips, Tools

What is email marketing?

Email marketing is a powerful communication medium used for marketing to promote services or products, inform customer’s order details or new account information, and build customer loyalty. It gives a higher return on investment which is why it is one of the most critical aspects of the inbound marketing strategy.

Email marketing can generate $36 of ROI by spending $1. Hence email marketing is considered the safest marketing bet. It can be referred to as a type of digital marketing strategy that generally makes use of connecting with customers, building customer loyalty, improving brand awareness, and promoting products or services by the use of email.

However, in the modern email marketing strategy, there have been several changes.

Undoubtedly, no more one-size-fits-all is applicable for people, which is why it requires creating a proper strategy upon analysis. The constant advancement has increased the need for video email marketing.

Now you must be wondering what video email marketing is. Well, everything remains the same, except for the fact that it includes videos that you send to customers through emails.

Since video is considered one of the most popular marketing mediums with huge growth, including it in your email marketing strategy would improve conversion and subscribers.

In a survey, it has been seen that 80% of businesses have started using video for their marketing efforts as it has improved outcomes. However, it always requires you to personalize emails according to the customer’s requirements to improve branding.

Importance of email marketing

Email is important for any business. However, it is nothing new. It is probably one of the ancient discoveries of digital communication chosen by businesses. It was established in 1971, and since then, email marketing has been considered one of the best marketing approaches.

It’s been 50 years now, but emails are still one of the most vital aspects of any business.

If you wonder whether people still use Email in the era of social media, you are wrong. Email is still the most professional way and a reliable choice.

Social media channels have indeed gained immense popularity and control over any other digital platform, but emails have not lost their advantages. Email communication is still considered professional and one of the initial approaches for businesses.

If you are still not convinced, check out these numbers.

• There were more than 4 billion Email users globally in 2020.
• Over 306 .4 billion emails were sent daily in 2020.
• It has been estimated that the number of daily emails will increase to 376 .4 billion by 2025.
• 99% of the total users check emails at least once a day.
• 59% of marketers have mentioned that email marketing influences the buying decision.
• 62% of consumers prefer email over any other communication channel with businesses.
• 2021 Study shows that every spend of $1 on email marketing, generated an average of $36.

As marketers have the freedom to personalize email marketing campaigns according to their requirements, compared to social media sites, it becomes the most obvious choice.

Apart from this, compared to the improved conversion rate and reach that one can enjoy from email marketing campaigns, the cost required is much lower.

Therefore, you will find most of the top Black Friday sellers sends emails to their prospective customers. These are some of the most convincing reasons for using email marketing by most businesses.

Benefits of email marketing

Businesses use email for several purposes. Every business requires to have its professional email chosen according to the business type.

It is required in several aspects, from email newsletter sending to order confirmation. The reasons for improved demand for email marketing are due to the many benefits.

Improved brand awareness: One of the best things about choosing email marketing is that it helps you to connect directly to your customer. It is more like a one-on-one conversation where you can personally let your customer know a specific thing about your brand.

Keeping in mind their recent purchases and activities on your website, you need to create an impactful email campaign that will help them to know more about your brand. When you create such emails that talk about your specific brand, it gradually improves brand awareness.

Improves content visibility: Whether it is about upgrading your store or a specific coupon that you want to share with your loyal customers, email marketing has improved content visibility. However, you have to make sure that you use compelling visual items like images, words, and videos to maximize the content reach.

Increase customer trust: Email makes loyal customers. It helps to increase customer loyalty in different buying journeys. It can be a helpful choice for conversion, retention, and lead nurturing. Emails are considered a genuine way to make your community and build relationships with your customers. When your customers find you approachable, they become loyal to your brand and thereby increase engagement.

Influence buying decisions: Using great visual elements in your email campaign and creating a proper email marketing strategy can increase buying decisions among your customers. When you can properly explain by highlighting the major offering, it can have an impact on their buying decisions.

Improves CTR: Sending emails to your specific customers with appealing images and launches can improve the click-through rate of the campaign. When you have amazing email content, including product demos, and customer testimonials, it adds to the reliability, which has improved chances of clicking.

Additionally, it can be a great choice for upgrading or up-selling packages. You can choose video email marketing to increase the CTR faster. You can send abandoned cart emails to trigger buying decisions or personalized coupons depending on their special days to help them re-engage with your brand.

But you always have to make sure that you choose the right email marketing campaign to enjoy its maximum benefits. 

Types of email you can use in email marketing

The consistent impact of email marketing has led to making it one of the most professional marketing approaches by businesses. However, to enjoy the many benefits, you must choose the correct way.

So, here, we will take a look at the different kinds of email marketing to choose from.

Newsletter emails: Email Newsletters are again popular as it is mostly used by companies and sent within a schedule. The prime content of this email includes promotional announcements, blog content, company updates, or other events.

Apart from this, newsletters are chosen by companies to share some knowledgeable content regarding the services or products or running promotions.

Promotional emails: Promotional emails are one of the most common types that primarily focus on showcasing your services or products to potential customers. The prime content of these emails includes discounts or coupons, upcoming events, and other content that encourages customers to click on the email.

These are extremely compelling offers provided to potential customers.

Lead nurturing emails: Lead nurturing emails are mostly used by companies to nurture potential customers to get them to make a purchase. It is mostly automated as it reduces the time invested. Such emails are mostly sent to potential customers while they look for options or final choices.

Lead nurturing can be a great choice to increase revenue and drive more conversions.

Milestone emails: Milestone emails provide a chance to connect with customers by highlighting personal milestones. It typically includes appreciation for the customer contribution that helped you to achieve success on some extraordinary day like a holiday, anniversary, or birthday.

Survey emails: Survey emails are more like the data collection method chosen by many companies. The primary intention of these emails is to connect with new customers and collect qualitative data.

These survey emails can help to gather feedback and any other sort of information that you want to get directly from your customers.

Welcome emails: Welcome emails are typically sent to customers as the very first communication with current or potential customers. When a customer joins your store or makes a purchase for the first time, sending welcome emails within the first 24 hours can help to build a great relationship with them.

Video emails: Video emails are another type of email where you send videos to your customer. You can send promotional videos or informational information through a video as it has great chances to improve your conversion.

As video marketing has tremendous capabilities, it can be a great inclusion.

Abandoned cart emails: If you have an e-commerce store or a simple website from where customers can purchase products, Abandoned cart email is very common.

For any customer who has not completed their checkout process but has added products to their cart, these emails encourage them to complete their purchase.

Transactional emails: Transaction emails typically helps to increase the chances of transaction or give information to your customer regarding their existing purchase or order. It can be a refund confirmation, shipping update, confirmation email, and any other sort of transactional email.

Dedicated emails: Dedicated emails are also known as standalone emails, which are sent to customers in specific orders. These emails are typically sent depending on the offers or events.

Re-engagement emails: Re-engagement emails are most commonly designed to connect with subscribers who have suddenly stopped engagement. If initially, you have found them opening your emails or getting engaged, but they have suddenly stopped due to any reason, re-engagement emails can encourage them.

These emails are typically a form that reminds them how important they are for your business. You can share company announcements, promotions, newsletters content, or any other sort of email.

Can I buy email lists?

When it comes to email marketing, you certainly require a proper email list to shoot your emails. However, many companies have recently started up, and think of buying emails from others.

However, it is certainly not recommended to buy an email list. Even when it is a slow process to build a proper email list, especially when you have just started, creating an email list on your own helps to reach relevant and potential prospects, customers, or clients.

Buying an email list is strongly not suggested as it is an illegal practice. You might send emails to people who are not even looking for products or services you sell.

Therefore, they are likely to mark you as Spam, which will damage your reputation and result in ending up on the block list. So, straight to the point, take time to organically build an email list and enjoy its ultimate advantages.

Tips for building your email list

Since buying an email list is not recommendable, you require work to create your email list. It is indeed impossible to successfully run an email campaign when you don’t have the email IDs of potential customers. So, you initially require creating an email list of opt-in subscribers.

Now, you must be thinking, what do opt-in subscribers mean?

You must know that everyone who is on the email list might not be looking forward to getting emails from you. So, it requires taking explicit permission from them.

Therefore, an opt-in subscriber means that they have thoroughly agreed to receive emails from a brand or you while entering that email address present on the landing page, website, social media, blog, or anywhere else that you have provided.

This is more like consent from the subscribers.

There are single and double opt-in forms. Generally, single opt-in means a form where the subscriber gets added once they fill in their email and send signup forms.

However, double opt-in forms are more like a confirmation that is sent to the new subscribers whether they are willing to receive emails from the company.

It is crucial to take permission as this method ensures safeguarding and protecting the data, thereby maintaining your brand integrity. This is important and after creating double opt-in signup forms using lead magnets you will notice your subscriber list organically increasing.

So here we will find out the best tips to improve your email list.

Adding signup forms: One of the most commonly chosen approaches is creating an email signup form. This makes subscriptions easy for people. You can place the subscription form in the most visual parts of your website so that viewers can see it.

Some of the typical spots include a contact page, homepage, and blog post. You can also create pop-ups if you want. However, make sure that it is not disrupting user experience.

Using Lead Magnets: There is no denying the fact that a list grows faster when you add premium content. Some of the most common examples of premium content include e-books, infographics, checklists, and reports are considered the best way to grow your contact list.

This is more like an exchange journey. Visitors require joining the newsletter to get access to valuable content. Also, you can provide special discounts or offers to increase your list.

Can I use Gmail or Outlook to send mass emails? 

Most beginners have a question about whether they can use Outlook or Gmail to send Mass emails.

However, it is mostly recommended not to use these platforms. Especially when it comes to a business, where you require sending mass emails for your email marketing campaign, Outlook or Gmail is commonly not preferred. Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook are mostly designed for personal use, but not for email blasts.

Here, you require choosing the right email service provider where you can seamlessly send mass emails. Because email service providers have the proper infrastructure that you look forward to when sending mass emails. They make sure to have a great delivery rate.

However, as there are several choices in the market, it requires you to choose a reliable and efficient email marketing software.

How to choose an email service provider?

Email service providers are greatly different from internet service providers. As brands have started understanding the huge importance of choosing a proper email marketing platform, there are multiple choices in the market.

However, it can become confusing for all start-ups to choose while deciding on the best email marketing tools.

If you have already checked the market, you will find some of the most common options, including Constant Contact, Mailchimp, GetResponse, HubSpot, Mailjet, etc. These are the names of the most popular ones in the market.

However, the question is, can you choose anyone you wish? The answer is no. You have to make a thorough check of all the below-listed aspects while deciding on the best email marketing software.

The number of contacts: If you already have got several opt-in contacts, make sure to take it into account while choosing an email service provider. Ensure you check how many opt-in contacts are there on the list.

Email sending volume: You must decide the type of emails you’re planning to send and the frequency of sending emails. Depending on your answers, you have to choose a provider that will fulfill your email-sending volume. First, check your necessity as well as the software features.

Pricing: It is always important to take the budget into account while deciding on an email service provider. If you have a limited or restricted budget, it is better to choose a reasonable email marketing service as the starting point.

Design capability: The next valuable thing you require to keep in an account is email designing skills. If you are a beginner, you certainly would not have a pro skill, and in such a case, it is better to choose a simple drag-and-drop editor with multiple email templates.

However, if you know coding, you can also choose to create from scratch.

Segmentation and target audience: If you are a business that communicates with different kinds of a buyer persona, it is important to pay attention to segmentation or targeted audience.

So you have to make sure that you check the capabilities of contact list segmentation provided by the email service provider.

Email automation: If you have to work on emails regularly and you’re planning to use automated email workflow, it is again important you check the email automation features included in the ESP.

Transactional emails: If your business is associated with sending transactional emails like password reset, order confirmation, and several other orders-related emails, it is important to have an idea of the features that you can leverage from the email service provider.

Taking all of these important attributes into consideration while deciding on an email service provider is always a better choice to enjoy the efficacies.

If you want to expand your business and shoot multiple emails to diverse customers, you require the right features. Choosing the right email tool will help you to fulfill your journey.

Best email marketing tools in September 2023

If you are not yet sure, which email marketing software you should use, here are some of the best tools that we will talk about. Taking into account all the major attributes that a brand requires, here I have included the 8 best email marketing tools that you can use in September 2023.

AWeber

AWeber is one of the top email marketing tools that is mostly used by business owners looking forward to an advanced solution. It can be the right choice for e-commerce brands as you get direct integration with third-party platforms. Apart from this, it is integrated with Canva, which makes it a great email editor, so you can create your design.

AWeber prime features are: 

• AI Email template builder for creating stunning emails for the brand. 
• Enjoying direct campaigns using dynamic and tagging content. 
• Web push notifications.
• Automate the creation of email content. 
• Easy landing page builder. 

Active Campaign

Active Campaign is the next affordable choice for businesses looking for a great email marketing platform. It’s a good choice for creators and small teams. It includes some of the most amazing features that make it a valuable inclusion for businesses. The advanced geo-tracking features provide complete detail of the buyer’s location. With advanced personalization and integration, it aims to maximize email performance. 

Active Campaign prime features are: 

• A/B testing to get knowledge on the best-converting emails.
• Personalise emails depending on contact information.
• Inbuilt landing page builder.
• Geotracking feature to provide more knowledge of your subscriber.
• Advanced personalization and split testing to get more information.
• It has dynamic and content segmentation which makes it simple for businesses to customize messages and shoot targeted emails.

SendX

SendX is known for being an intuitive and affordable email marketing tool that can be used for designing, tracking, and scheduling email campaigns. It can drive sales from emails. With this tool, you can also upload the opt-in email list and automate different marketing activities. With the several features included in this email marketing tool, businesses can leverage the maximum benefit and acquire comprehensive reports.

SendX prime features are: 

• Design, track, and schedule email campaigns.
• Easy to upload an opt-in email list.
• It helps to create reports that can show opens, clicks, conversions, and a lot more.
• It helps to send broadcast email campaigns.
• It can help you simply create landing pages to enjoy lead generation.
• It is a simple drag-and-drop editor that you can use to create professional-looking emails.

Brevo

Brevo is an all-rounder software suite that covers several aspects of business communications. It includes CRM, SMS, Facebook, email, chat, and a lot more communication type. The primary mission of this email service provider is to cater to the diverse requirements of businesses. They primarily focus on all the essential tasks and use email automation software for the rest. It helps to create professional emails by using an email builder in no time.

Brevo’s prime features are: 

• It has more than 60 responsive email templates.
• You get a shared inbox so that you keep track of the customer’s email history.
• Inbuilt chat and SMS.
• Inbuilt CRM.
• You can easily make a Contacts segmentation and target small groups with personalized messages.
• It has been integrated with an email builder to create personalized emails.
• It helps to automate the regular tasks.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact is a known email marketing tool that stands out from the rest. It can act as an email marketing tool along with a social media scheduler. You can easily make, schedule and analyze the performance of social media and customize emails with a smart email editor. Other best things that make this tool better for small businesses are that it includes lead generation, email automation, and building landing pages.

Constant Contact’s prime features are:

• It is an intelligent email editor which creates aesthetically pleasing and compelling emails.
• Email automation tool, which includes sending welcome emails, recent emails, contact segmentation, and several other tools.
• It is integrated with a powerful landing page and website builder
• It helps to easily float contact lists from Excel, salesforce, and Outlook.
• It includes social media marketing for content, scheduling, tracking, performance, and posting ads.

GetResponse

GetResponse is a renowned email marketing platform widely used in different industries. It has several features that make it a great choice. As it is included with the auto final feature for email marketing campaigns, it becomes easier for marketers to improve conversion. Overall, it is packed with features that help businesses to improve their brand growth.

GetResponse prime features are: 

• Tracking website visitors to provide relevant communication, depending on the page visits.
• Easy integration to run retargeting campaigns by using the Facebook pixel.
• It helps to automate different aspects like sending follow-up emails, welcome emails, and automatically nurturing leads.
• It helps you to build compelling landing pages for sales and lead generation.
• You can create ads for social media platforms.

HubSpot

HubSpot is indeed a known email marketing tool that does not require you to have any previous designing skills. You can create high-quality professional emails with the use of this tool. Several templates can be customized to improve conversion. It probably has all the B2B features that you need.

HubSpot prime features are: 

• It has a great customer relationship management feature to get customer data.
• It is included with a landing page builder
• It has a simple drag-and-drop template editor.
• It includes A/B testing to create the right campaign.
• It supports live chat features.

Moosend

Moonsend can be a great budget-friendly option with amazing email marketing features. It has great spam testing, countdown timers, custom reports, and a lot of features that become helpful for businesses.

Moonsend prime features are: 

• Split and A/B testing.
• It is included with the advanced landing page builder.
• It helps to create customized reports.
• You can track it with Google Analytics.

Get started with email marketing

So, these are some of the most important things that you need to know before you start email marketing. While email marketing is known to be still in use and one of the most powerful forms of marketing, it also requires using email marketing best practices.

You need to invest time and effort into building an email list and create strategies that will have the most click and open rates.

Building an email list, personalizing emails, and choosing the best time to send an email with the use of advanced email automation tools make the entire journey a successful one. 

Even when it is time-consuming, it is worth the effort. When you have more clicks and open rates, it has more chances of conversion. Creating a list of potential and relevant customers will help you get improved visibility and traffic.

Email marketing glossary

Additionally, you need to know the different terms used in the email marketing process. So here, I will mention some of the major terms that you must know when you start email marketing.

Bounce rate – It is the percentage of people who have not received the email.

Acceptance rate – It is a percentage of the recipients who have received the messages.

Open rate – It is the percentage of recipients who have opened the email. It is a major metric that determines success.

CTA or call to action – It is a button or link used in an email that connects with a website or download.

Conversion rate – It is the total number of people who have clicked a link or made a purchase.

Opt-in/opt-out – Opt-in means to subscribe, and opt-out means to unsubscribe from the email list.