Email marketing may have lost some credibility in the age of spam that we live in; however, when practiced correctly it can enhance relationships with existing and potential clients, promote your content and encourage loyalty. 

Despite social media being the preferred subscription of communication, email is still widely used. Email marketing subscription also has a more specific purpose and is often used by more serious users. The main objective of email marketing is to promote your quality content. This is done by planning, creating and distributing newsletters and emails to your database of subscribers. There are numerous types of emails, each with different purposes and strategies.

Methods of Email Marketing

•    Content Newsletters:  Include links to your generated content, they act as a reminder of your latest content and provide subscribers with the latest news about your company. These should be scheduled regularly. To enhance your newsletters try to include relevant multimedia links.

•    Transactional: Provides a follow up to user actions, for example: an email confirming a user’s subscription to the content newsletter. Transactional emails should be automated and prompt.

•    Digest/Curation: Provide recipients with a summary of recent content. For example:  a list of the month’s top SEO articles and eBooks. Digests and newsletters may have overlapping content so it is important to plan content carefully.

•    Personal: Personal email is one of the most powerful channels of communication, and is a highly effective lead nurturing tool.  Personal emails should be distributed through a marketing automation system, whereby each email follows a set template.

•    Dedicated:  Is a once-off message, usually of a promotional nature. For example: An email providing a link to your latest eBook. Dedicated emails build up hype for your call-to-actions by providing a focused single offer.

•    Sponsorship: Refers to a service whereby your email is distributed to another company's database for a fee. This is a great method of acquiring new leads, provided the company's database includes your target market.

Building Up Your Database

For an email marketing campaign to be successful you need a database of recipients. The best way of acquiring email addresses for your database is with a subscription service through the company website and social media. This method ensures that your recipients are interested and willing.

Beware:  A database can also be purchased; however, buying a database has many repercussions. Purchased databases are littered with broken addresses, and uninterested recipients. Additionally the likelihood of having your company email added to the recipients spam filter is significantly higher, which also reduces your chances of ever communicating with them again. This whole exercise is riddled with risk and is most likely to waste your time and money, and put your brand name to shame. In the age of mass media no-one likes a spammer.

Database Segmentation

Once your database starts growing it is time to segment it. This is done to ensure that the most relevant content is shared with subscribers. Segmentation also plays an important role in establishing the type of newsletters and emails to send as well as the frequency of distribution.

For example: Weekly newsletters might be desirable for customers but might be considered too frequent for new subscribers. Segmentation is vital in ensuring subscribers receive the most relevant content at an appropriate rate.  Providing users with different subscription methods is a great way of attracting new subscribers as well as maintaining current ones, for example: weekly, monthly and quarterly subscriptions.

Distribution Schedule

The next crucial step is establishing a distribution schedule. In order for your newsletter to attract new subscribers and keep current ones happy you need to create a consistent distribution schedule. This not only maintains a high level of professionalism, but gives users something to look forward to. Ensure that the publishing frequency is planned according to the type of newsletter being sent, for example: Promotional emails should be sent less frequently, and do not need to be scheduled as strictly as content newsletters.

Measurement

Tracking and monitoring results is the most attractive element of email marketing and most of the metric measurement tools are provided by your email service provider. It is important to follow each user individually to fully understand the experience provided by your email marketing campaign. For example: measuring bounce rate, which is the percentage of emails that are not received by recipients, helps to trim broken addresses from your database.

Email may seem like a dated means of communication, but implementing a well-planned email marketing strategy will often yield a stronger response than any form of social media could. The variety of methods makes this medium incredibly flexible and of course the entire process is measurable.

Previous article in the series: An Introduction to LinkedIn; Next article in the series: Landing Pages

Julian Karstel is a Digital Marketing Consultant for Sound Idea Digital | @JulianKarstel | Julian@soundidea.co.za

Sound Idea Digital is a full service digital agency | www.soundidea.co.za

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