Emails have been around the user since the 1980s and till date, it is considered to be the most effective way of communication. People get emails every day, and it can be about official messages, newsletters, promo codes of the product, signup form, welcome message, new product arrival info, etc.

If you go in-depth on how email came into the picture. Then you will come across these two popular names in the world of email “ Ray Tomlinson and Shiva Ayyadurai”. In 1972, Ray Tomlinson was credited for inventing email. During that time, emails were used to send messages to various users of the same computer. Later in 1978, Siva Ayyadurai began his work on the email system and in 182, he copyrighted his software, called “Email”.

Emails have always been the most effective and productive way of marketing. A study says that emails are 40 times more effective in acquiring new leads than any other marketing technique. There are various agencies that provide email marketing services. But most of them fail to create an effective set of strategies that can make your users to remember your product and brand for a long time. SFWP Experts, a marketing agency in Los Angeles has succeeded in creating unconventional marketing strategies that can make a long-lasting effect on the user’s memory about your brand and product.

In the succeeding series of Inbound marketing, we have discussed different types of SEO and strategies of content marketing. In this article, we will be covering one of the well-known inbound channels called “Email Marketing”. There are numbers and stats mentioned in the article that may surprise you and make your marketing strategies to divert more on using email marketing.

So, let us give you in-depth knowledge of Email marketing.

Table of Content

What is Email Marketing?
Email Marketing Checklist
Different Types of Email Marketing
8 Important Metrics of Email Marketing
Difference between Deliverability and Delivery Rate
How to Increase Email Open Rate?
Advantages & Disadvantages of Email Marketing
Why Most Small And Big Brands Rely on Email Marketing?
How to Grow a companies Email List?
Email Marketing Examples

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is all about sending enticing emails to your potential customer. To promote a brand/product and build a strong relationship with them. It helps in keeping a buyer informed about the newly launched product and updates made in the brand. As a buyer, you might have observed these types of emails in day to day life. Like an email related to the announcement of the new product launched by the same brand that you have used in your earlier days. .

Marketing a product or brand through email is one of the oldest but most effective techniques in today’s world. Emails are used to educate and gain the trust of new as well as existing customers. Brand send ebook, promo code, welcome template, and informative content to gain the trust of their customers.

There are free as well as paid software available to send bulk emails like constant contact, Mailchimp, SendINBlue, Ontraport, Aweber, etc. MailChimp is one of the most widely used free email marketing platforms where you can send free emails to your user. There is a limitation in the number of emails, but you can upgrade to send bulk emails.

Most of the people around has one of the biggest misconceptions that social media contains more user than email. But, If you go through the stats then you will get a clear idea that the total number of email users in 2019 is 3.9 Billion whereas social media has a total of 3.48 Billion worldwide users.

Email marketing is also used as a medium in building good relationships with customers. People around the globe use more email than any platform and research says that email gets more visibility than social media platforms like Tumblr, facebook, twitter, etc.

Email Marketing Checklist

There are few things that marketers should review before sending an email to their existing as well as new customers like:

Getting familiar with the Spam rules
Using headlines and fonts to make it easy to read
Optimizing your email subject line
Checking for links in buttons (Where is it redirecting your customer?)
Using short sentences with no jargons
Checking the length of your email (preferred word limit is under 200 words)
Make your Call-To-action clear (Adding abundance of link can confuse your audience)
Checking for campaign scheduled time & Date (email is scheduled strategically or not)

Different Types of Emails

If you own a business and planning create an email marketing campaign then you should be aware of the type of email you should send to your customer. There are different types of emails that you can use like

Welcome Email
Brand Stories
Lead Nurturing Emails
Survey/feedback Email
Offer Related Email
Newsletter Email
Product Update email
Event Invitation
New Product email
Announcement Email
Re-engagement Email

8 Important Metrics of Email Marketing

In email marketing, there are six major metrics & KPI that will help you in determining your campaign results.

1. Email Open Rate

Email open-rate helps in analyzing the percentage of emails opened by your existing and new subscribers. Breaking it even simpler, an email open rate tells you about how many people viewed or opened the email you sent. Email open rate may differ depending on emails Subject matter and email subject relevance for subscribers. Email open rate can be calculated by dividing the number of unique opens by the number of emails sent.

2. Click-Through Rate

CTR (Click Through Rate) is one of the important email marketing metrics in determining the clicks and action taken on your email campaign. It helps in determining the percentage of people who clicked on a link in your email. It can be calculated by using the formula Unique Clicks/ delivered number x 100.

3. Spam Rate

In email marketing spam rate tell you about users who reported your email as spam. You can calculate your spam rate by dividing the total number of emails marked as spam by the total number of emails sent by you x 100.

4. List growth rate

List growth rate helps in determining the rate at which your email list is growing. It is considered to be the best metric in tracking the growth of emails in your email list. Growth rate can be calculated by using the formula:

([(Number of new subscribers) minus (Number of unsubscribes + email/spam complaints)] / total number of email addresses on your list]) * 100. For example if you have (1000 new subscribers – 800 lost subscribers and spam complaints) / 10,000 email addresses on the list * 100 = 2% list growth rate.

5. Conversion rate

Conversion rate helps in determining the percentage of subscribers who got converted into customers by completing the desired action, depending on the goal of your email. You can calculate it by dividing the number of signups or purchase by the total number of successful email delivery X 100.

6. Bounce rate

The bounce rate tells you about the percentage of email that was not received by your subscriber because it was returned by the recipient mail server. To calculate the email bounce rate you need to divide the total bounce email by the total number of email x 100. There are two types of email bounce

– Hard bounce

It indicates that the email address of the recipient was invalid that’s why the email bounced back to the sender. Sometimes due to strict email security filter email gets bounced back.

– Soft bounce

If emails get soft bounce that means the recipient email inbox was full or there was some problem with the recipient server.

7. Unsubscribe Rate

In email marketing unsubscribe rate tell you about the percentage of subscribers that opted out of your mailing list after an email marketing campaign. After completion of an email marketing campaign if you are getting a rate below 0.2% then that is considered to be working fine. If your percentage exceeds 0.5% then you should look into it and identify why it was happening. It can be calculated by dividing total unsubscribed number by the total number of emails delivered x 100.

8. Delivery Rate

It tells about the percentage of emails delivered to your subscribers without any soft and hard bounce. Delivery Rate Can be calculated by dividing the number of emails sent – the number of emails bounced by the total number of email X 100.

What are the Difference Between Deliverability and Delivery rates?

It is good to know the difference between deliverability and delivery rate because of email marketers spend so much of their time on planning the campaign, crafting the perfect newsletter or copy, and perfecting the fonts, colors, and spacing in an email. So, after planning out so many things marketers should know what is happening with the email they send to their subscribers.

Delivery Rate tells you about the percentage of emails received by your recipient’s gateway server and delivered to their inbox without any hard bounce and soft bounce. Whereas, Deliverability indicated where your email lands once it is received by your subscribers. i.e in their inbox, spam folder or any other folder. It depends on the recipient domain setup, authentication, and reputation.

How to increase email open rate?

Email open rate plays an important role in giving you the results of your email marketing campaign. Every email campaign aims to achieve a higher email open rate but sometimes marketers fail to achieve maximum open rate. Due to inactive email subscribers, unappealing subject line, failed delivery, sending emails to the disinterested recipients, poor timing, etc.

So, now the question is how to increase email open rate? There are a few factors that can help you in achieving a higher email open rate:

Update and Clean your mailing list
Segment your mailing list
Create enticing email subject line
Generate mobile & user-friendly emails
Don’t make your email too lengthy
Avoid spam filters
Include Sender name in your email
Send emails at the appropriate time
Insert humor in your email

What are the Advantages & Disadvantages Of Email marketing?

There are various advantages and disadvantages of email marketing. We will be listing the main pros & cons that will help you in deciding whether email marketing is good for your business or not.

Advantage-:

Email marketing is considered to be one of the cheapest and affordable marketing strategies. Compared to other online marketing strategies as it requires low investment and can generate good ROI.
Compared to other online marketing methods, emails will help in staying connected with the new and existing customers. It helps in building brand authenticity and awareness among customers.
Emails help you to reach more potential audiences within a fraction of seconds. By using emails you can showcase your products in front of millions of people.
For small business learning and creating an email marketing campaign is very simple and straight-forward.
By using the right tools you can track your efforts in email marketing campaigns. Open rate, CTR, bounce rate, etc are among the top metrics that will help you in determining the success & failure of your email marketing campaign.
By segmenting your email list you

Disadvantage-:

One of the biggest disadvantages of email marketing Is getting an email into spam box. This scenario occurs when you start sending irrelevant content to your audience. Nowadays if your content is not the relevant audience will simply move your email into the trash. The number of spam reports will mark your email as spam.
It is hard to discover potential leads that will get converted to customers from the list of your companies emails. So, segment your email list to make your email marketing campaign successful.
Most of the time MNC’s get into legal problems because they break the law. Due to spammers countries have rules and regulations for sending an email. Figure out the rule and regulation before sending an email to your subscribers.
Online marketing strategies are created with lots of creative ideas. But it is not the same as email marketing ads or campaign. Email marketing lacks in creating creative marketing ideas. You can make strategies in reaching your audience.
In another online marketing channels, you can stand out among your competitors. But in email marketing, it’s hard to showcase your brand better than your competitor. People get an abundance of emails every day. To make your email sound better than your competitor starts creating an attractive subject line.

Why Most Brands & Small Businesses Rely on Email Marketing?

Email marketing is one of the most trusted marketing channels among larger and smaller businesses to achieve higher CTR (click-through rate). If an email campaign is structured properly with enticing subject line and templet that

Emails have a larger reach
Emails can boot sales
Better Brand Recognition
Emails deliver your message
Email marketing is Cost-effective
Easy To get started
Easy To measure
Chances of getting

Calculating LTV/month of your subscribers

Getting A good ROI through email marketing is every marketer’s dream. There is a Company Called Exit Intelligence that helps you in calculating your ROI and LTV(lifetime value) of your email subscribers on their website. You need a few details like the total number of monthly visitors on your website, total annual income, % of sales from email marketing and the total number of the active subscriber in your email list. By providing these details you can get the lifetime value of each email subscriber. Below we have provided some images that will help you in understanding the concept.

How to Grow a Companies Email List?

Every company wants to grow its email list by adding new emails. And That’s the reason they use the opt-in form on their website to get visitor’s details. But in today’s online marketing world, it’s hard to expect visitors to fill your opt-in form. Sadly, this strategy has become outdated.

In order to get rid of this problem, you need to give compelling offers (opt-in bribe) to your potential buyers to get their details. You need a lead magnet to get its details.

A Lead Magnet is something informative that companies provide to their potential buyers in exchange for their details like name, number, email address, etc. You might have come across these incentives on different websites. It can be in the form of an ebook, a cheat sheet, free trials or samples, coupons and many more. Check out some interesting lead magnet idea.

The lead magnet always provides value for free. And it uses digital formats like PDF, MP3 audio filo or videos that can be created without putting in any money. To have an effective and enticing lead magnet you need to know a few steps like:

Knowing about your Buyers persona
Identify your value proposition
Give your lead magnet a persuasive name
Decide your lead magnet type that you are going to offer
Start creating your lead magnet

What are the different types of lead magnet?

An Ebook (mini-ebook preferred)
Toolkit/Resource List
Coupons
The Ultimate Guide
The Bonus Pack
Case Study
Webinar
The Cheat-sheet
Quiz/ survey
Assessment/Test

Examples of Email marketing-:

UBER Email Marketing Example

LOFT Email Marketing Campaign (Humorous email)

Brooks SPORT Email marketing campaign – Desiree Linden’s Boston Marathon Victory

Buzzfeed Email Marketing Campaign

Starbucks Email marketing campaign example

Headspace Email marketing campaign example

The Skimm Email Marketing Campaign: Subscription anniversary

Flock (Reminder emails)

The Limited Email Marketing Campaign

Conclusion:-

After reading this blog you might be very much familiar with email marketing. And confident in creating an enticing email marketing campaign that can help your brand in reaching more audience. Once you start creating an email campaign you will come to know, why email marketing is cost-effective and how it can create a good impact on your new as well as existing customers.

Email marketing has helped many brands in achieving their online goals and helped them in outperforming their competitors. So, if you own a company and want to stay at top of your competitor then include email marketing in your online marketing strategy and you can automatically see the growth.

SFWP Experts is one of the reputed & award-winning company in Los Angeles that has helped many brands and companies in creating an enticing marketing strategy. Contact us If you are looking to generate a good ROI from your business. We have got SEO, PPC, and Email marketing experts that can assist you in generating an unconventional marketing strategy for your business.