What is email marketing and how to do it
If you are responsible for the marketing for your business, nowadays it’s quite a demanding role. Usually the budget is always stretched and it’s really important to get a decent return on the money that you are investing in marketing.
There are so many different ways to carry out your marketing, with a whole host of activities, all claiming to offer the best return for your budget.
With such a wide choice, it’s tough to know whether to look at traditional methods such as; newspaper adverts, flyers, trade publications, printed mailouts, trade shows or modern mediums such as: social media & email marketing. So what do you do, all of them? Some of them? or none of the above?
Well, it’s worth trying all of them at various times, to see which one works for your business. Out of all of the different types of marketing that we’ve listed though, there is one that really stands out - and that is email marketing, known for delivering the great return on investment.
In this video, we are going to look at what email marketing is, how to make it work - and why it’s something you should definitely be looking at for your business.
What is email marketing?
Email marketing is sending an electronic message to lots of people at the same time. Typically it’s done with online software, using email marketing software to do this makes the whole process very easy.
Email marketing software will normally have lots of inbuilt features that make the whole thing very easy. If you are new to email marketing and find the whole concept a bit daunting - decent software will take the mystery out of it.
Nowadays you don’t need to be an experienced digital marketing person or an expert with databases or web coding to do it. Decent software makes creating and sending email marketing really easy for all of us.
If you have a list of email contacts, such as a list of your customers - save these into a spreadsheet, then drag and drop inside your chosen email marketing software. You can then create your emailer using a drag and drop builder - drag and drop means you can simply drop in your company logo, pictures and type your text. A decent design editor will make it a real breeze to quickly create something really professional looking.
The great thing about email marketing is that you can send lots of different types of messages, you can try different approaches to see what works for your business. This could be anything from a formal letter, news, information or a glossy sales offer.
What are the main advantages with email marketing?
The great thing about email marketing is that with the aid of decent software it’s so easy to do, it offers lots of really great advantages over traditional methods. So, let’s take a look at why you should try it for your business:
- It’s incredibly cost effective to do
Most of us nowadays need to keep the marketing spend down as much as possible - and therefore our spending needs to be cost effect. Well, with email marketing it typically costs under fifteen pounds to send an email broadcast to 2,000 people. If you compare that to the cost of sending a printed mailshot out to the same number, it’s a real no brainer.
- The results are trackable
Pretty much all email marketing software will include analytics. In the same way that you can view details of people who visited your website in google analytics, email marketing offers the same thing.
With analytics, you can see how your email broadcast was received, you’ll be able to see; who received it, who read it and who chose to unsubscribe. Also if your broadcast contained links to your website, you can see who clicked on these.
This makes it really easy to see what works and what doesn’t work. Based on these results, you can tweak further sends accordingly.
- Segmenting your data
If you send out a broadcast and it has links to your products in it - your email marketing software will tell you who clicked on product ‘A’ and who clicked on product ‘B’. You can then segment your data based on what your viewers are interested in, so, all the people who selected product ‘A’ will get emailers focusing on product ‘A’ and the same applies for the people who clicked on product ‘B’.
Segmenting your data in this way really helps to generate more sales as you can really focus on sending people exactly what they want to receive. Hubspot say that 77% of email marketers say they received much better results by segmenting their data.
- Web based software means you can do it from anywhere
Your email marketing software will typically be cloud based, this means that you can access your account from anywhere with an internet connection by using your favourite web browser, such as Google Chrome. There are no downloads or installs, this flexibility is really great, it means that if you are working from home on a Friday, then you can still design and send that campaign that your promised to have done by the end of the week.
As well as sending, you can also track the results when you are out of the office. So if you can’t wait until the morning to see how that all important campaign was received, you can do it from the sofa in the evening.
- It fits in really well alongside other marketing
Email marketing works well with pretty much everything, it can really increase those sales from your printed media, face to face and social media.
It’s all about collecting email addresses from leads that you get from other sources, you can then add these people to your list of email contacts. Regular contact with them means that they are much more likely to buy from you as you remain on their radar.
Email marketing really works well in either a supporting or leading role as part of your complete marketing strategy.
What to look for in a new supplier?
Ok, so we’ve looked at what it is, how to do it and why it works so well. Now let’s take a look at what you should bear in mind when looking for new email marketing software.
There are lots of different companies all over the world offering a diverse range of software packages to send your email marketing, so it’s a tough choice.
The first area to consider is where are they storing your private data?
If you are a UK company then you need to be aware of GDPR. This is an EU law that was launched recently, it governs how securely you store your contacts private information - such as their email address for example.
So, if you are uploading your subscribers into your email marketing software, then they will be stored by the owner of the software. It’s really important to check that your software supplier is storing this data inside the E.U. If they are not, then this is outside of the protection of GDPR.
- Do they offer telephone support?
If you are new to email marketing, then sometimes it’s really handy to have someone that you can telephone to ask for a bit of guidance. It’s reassuring to know that good support is there when you need it. If your email marketing software supplier is based in another country, this can be really frustrating when you need a quick response.
Sometimes, it’s just nice to pick up the phone and talk to a real person instead of exchanging emails backwards and forwards with a one day time lag in between.
- Does the software have all of the features that you need?
When trying email marketing, it’s worthwhile having a list of what features you need included. For example, you may want people that fill out a form on your website to be automatically sent an email - or series of emails when they join.
You may want to schedule sends automatically for a time when you aren’t in the office to manually push the send button.
As a quick guide, here’s a quick list of the key features that any decent software should have:
- Tracking statistics
- Drag and drop design builder
- Library of free design templates
- Web sign up forms
- Unsubscribe and failed delivery auto deletion
- Send time scheduling
- Social media integration
Does the pricing model suit your requirements?
Lots of companies will try to get you to sign a 12 month contract, it’s not really a good idea to commit for a long time period as your requirements may change, or you may not like their software and/or support.
Some companies may try to charge hidden costs such as set up or admin fees. Always ask for a full breakdown of the costs before signing anything.
Summary
Email is a really great form of marketing, it works well on it’s own and with your other forms of marketing. The features such as results tracking make it an incredibly powerful marketing tool to have at your disposal.
Modern software makes it really quick and easy to do for all of us, either at home or in the office.