What is email marketing?

Email marketing, as the title suggests is the process of marketing through the use of email. There are different types of email marketing that you may have come across, as a customer or the marketer. A lot of businesses use email marketing today to promote their products or services, as it's a cost effective way of reaching their clients.

Types of email marketing

The different types of email marketing are as follows:

  • Thank you - If a customer connects with you online such as filling out a form, the best practice is to reply with an automatic email saying 'Thank you'. Your information will be most likely kept in the customers inbox, as it will not only be a 'thank you' but a confirmation. They will be reminded how to contact you should they need to, and will have the impression that the company functions efficiently. Remember with these emails that the reader is not looking to be overloaded with information about your products/ services.
  • Newsletters - informs people of your current activities in the way of promotions and special offers, as well as new products or services available. Whilst being an obvious sales method, newsletter email marketing should ideally provide the readers with quality content. The best way to do this is to analyse your audience and think about what would appeal to them in terms of what to include in your content. Don't just try to push products/ services on top people. They will get annoyed and delete your email! Benefits of using newsletter emails include increasing your brands awareness and forming habits in your communication methods with your email subscribers.
  • Press Releases - You can decide to include press release information in your newsletter, but should you decide to send in seperately, that's completely acceptable too. Your press release will depend on your business, it could be announce upcoming events, important developments, a new member of staff - what ever it may be, it is a fantastic way of keeping your customers involved with the company without trying to sell them things all the time.
  • Catalog - If your company has a blog, you can take advantage of this and round up your top posts per month and send to all your email subscribers. Try to make them as visually enticing as possible, as this will undoubtably grab the attention of your audience.
  • Invitation - A very special type of email, making the customer feel valued and involved. If you offer an invitation for a  special event to a customer, you need to be straight to the point, state the benefits for them and don't ramble on!

There are many different forms of email marketing, but hopefully these give you a taster of the kind of methods that are out there.

How to avoid spam

Marketing through emails is all well and good, but there is a massive pit fall - being classed as spam! Spam issues can put a stop to your business ventures, and fast. So how can you avoid this?

  • One way is to allow customers to confirm their subscription to your emails. This way they don't feel like you've forced them to sign up to something that they don't want.
  • Update your list. Perhaps send an email to your list of contacts reminding them that they are subscribed and asking them if they want to continue or if they would prefer to unsubscribe. It's honest and it benefits you in the end as there won't be any nasty spam reports.
  • If someone buys a product or a service from you, don't automatically subscribe them, again give them the option. That way the people you are contacting are relevant!

Email marketing can be extremely beneficial to your business if you do it right, so if you have any questions don't hesitate to contact us. If you would like to know more about how email marketing can benefit your business, check out our email marketing service page.

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