After reading the last chapter, we’re confident you understand that we live in a social world. Your own experience probably backs that up.
Every day, you chat in real-time with people all over the world. Does that spell the end of email marketing?
As social media has grown in importance, many so-called marketing experts have predicted the end of email.
Don’t believe them! Email marketing is alive and well.
And here’s why we say that with the utmost confidence:
• Traffic and Conversion Summit launched in 2009 with 258 attendees. Email marketing was a big part of the launch strategy.
• Using email marketing to promote the event, T&C grew to 4,500 attendees in just 8 years.
• In only one year, DigitalMarketer generated well over $20 million in revenue from email marketing alone.
Regardless of the rumors, email is nowhere near “dead”—and if you know how to use it, it will help you exponentially grow your business.
With that in mind, in this chapter, we’ll review the basics of email marketing, including the methods, the metrics, the lingo you need to know, and who on your team should own email marketing. But first, let’s look at the role email plays in a growing business.
Email marketing can be used for branding, engagement, acquisition, retention, direct sales, reactivation, generating traffic, and getting referrals, making it one of the most versatile tools any business can use to grow their business.
But it’s important to understand why we use email marketing. Interestingly, it’s not for profit or growth. The outcome of strategic email marketing is indeed profit and growth, but the purpose of email marketing is to move your customers from one stage of the “value journey” to the next.
The goal of email is to assist and expedite a customer’s movement from one stage of the value journey to the next. We talked about the “Customer Value Journey” in Chapter 1. But let’s review it again
This is your business. Think of it as a path your customers will travel as they get to know you. In the bottom left corner, they’re only just becoming aware of you, but by the time they reach the top right corner, not only do they know you, they promote you to everyone they know because you’ve transformed their life.
This journey, from awareness to conversion to promotion, is the customer journey.
As the customer travels this path, their lifetime value increases as well, adding profits and stability to your business. That’s why we also call this the value journey.
And it’s through email that you expedite the journey—if you understand the methods that work.
Email marketing is more than broadcasting an email every time you publish a new blog post.
And it’s more than sending email alerts when you have a promotion or sale. To master email marketing, you need to understand the types of emails you’ll use, their timing, and the different campaigns you’ll use to connect with your subscribers.
The Types of Emails
You’ll Use in Email Marketing There are three types of emails that you’ll rely on as an email marketer.
• Transactional – to provide customer service.
• Relational – to engage subscribers and nurture relationships with them.
• Promotional – for generating sales.
As you can see in the chart below, each type facilitates a different interaction with your subscribers.
Email Type 1: Transactional Emails
These are the emails that get sent out by your automated systems, confirming actions taken by your prospects and customers.
While most transactional emails are templates provided by the marketing systems we use, the average revenue per transactional email is 2x to 5x higher than standard bulk email.
Here are the 8 types of transactional emails you can use, along with some tips for raising their transactional value:
1. Order Confirmations
Order confirmation emails have a higher open rate than any other type of email. That makes sense if you think about it: the recipient has just given you money and wants to verify the details of their purchase. Most brands don’t do anything to optimize this email for growth. But look at what Amazon does.
2. Purchase Receipts
Receipt emails, like confirmation emails, have a high open rate, but they’re rarely leveraged for growth.
3.Shipping Notices
Another email that excites your customers is your shipping alert email, telling them their purchase has been shipped and when it will arrive.
4. Account Creation
This email goes out when you create an account for new purchases, providing customers their login information.
5. Return Confirmation
If you sell physical products and someone requests a return merchandise authorization (RMA), this is a fantastic time to make them an offer or give them a coupon. While they aren’t happy about the product they’re returning, they can get excited about your excellent customer service.
6. Support Tickets
As with Return Confirmation emails, support ticket follow-up emails give you an opportunity to add tons of value. If someone received great support, you can easily ask them to share their experience or extend their happiness by giving them a coupon.
7. Password Reminders
Most password reminder emails contain little more than a link.
8. Unsubscribe Confirmations
This email is a standard automated email. But what if you could figure out an offer that would be appropriate for these emails? How much growth would that add to your business? How much more movement would you get through that customer journey?
This is the thinking you need to develop to win at email marketing.
Email Type 2: Relational Emails
Companies that use email to nurture leads generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost.
Here are 8 types of relational emails you can use to get these results for your own business—whether it’s digital or brick-and-mortar.
1. New Subscriber Welcome
This email should be sent immediately to every new contact. It introduces them to your brand and tells them what to expect, including the benefits of being on your list and the value you intend to provide.
2. Gated Content Delivery
Gated content is valuable information that isn’t freely available online. To access the information, you must “pay” with either your email address or a social share. Typically, lead magnets and opt-in offers are free in exchange for the visitor’s email address.
3. Newsletters/Blog Articles
Whenever you create content, you should use email to distribute it to your subscribers. These emails can be short and simple, introducing your topic and providing a link to access it.
4. Webinar/Event Confirmation
This type of email is both relational and transactional. You’ve asked someone to block off some time to put you into their schedule. They’ve made a commitment to you. You need to confirm that commitment.
5. Survey/Review Surveys
can help you learn more about your customers’ interests. It can also help you segment them so your offers will be precisely targeted to their needs.
6. Social Update
Update your followers on changes in your company or your product. This can help you build excitement as well as preparing them for what’s coming up.
7. Contest Announcement
Contests build excitement and attract new subscribers. Your current email subscribers should be the first to hear the news, though. After all, they’re probably your most avid fans.
8. Referral Request
After any positive interaction with your subscribers, it makes sense to ask for a referral. Think new purchase, resolution of a problem, or just a friendly email with a kind word.
Email Type 3: Promotional Emails
According to the Direct Marketing Association, 66% of consumers have made a purchase online as a direct result of an email marketing message. Obviously, promotional emails are a powerful growth tool.
So let’s talk about the 8 types of promotional emails you should be sending, including examples from the DigitalMarketer archives.
1. Promotional Content
Promotional content is content that’s perceived as valuable to your audience while it generates sales for you. Chapter 05: Following Email Marketing Best Practices 153 This type of content shouldn’t be overused, but balanced with relational content, it’s a good way to engage your subscribers.
2. New Gated Content
Gated content aims to attract new subscribers, but existing subscribers are likely to want it as well. Why not send it to your email list to get them reengaged and move them along the customer journey?
This example has the subject line, “[CHECKLIST] Get up to 20% better email deliverability,” which is sure to get noticed. Make sure your subject line is just as compelling.
3. A Sale Announcement
Sale announcements get more engagement than any other type of email. Clearly, if you want to make a bunch of sales, have a sale. But you need to use a subject line that’s guaranteed to get noticed. Like this one: [Flash Sale] 7 PROVEN Blog Post Templates (85% off).
4. New Product Release
Your goal as an email marketer is to take new subscribers all the way through the value journey, transforming them into promoters. Why? Because promoters are hyper-responsive and typically want everything you produce. That being the case, you should always be producing new products to support these “hyper-buyers."
5. Webinar Announcements
6. Event Announcements
7. Trial Offers
8. Upgrade Offers
When to Send Each Type of Email (And to Whom)
Email service providers allow you to send emails in one of two ways:
• Broadcast emails are sent manually to your entire list or a segment of your list. They work well for promotions and content emails.
• Autoresponders are set up in advance to be delivered when someone performs a triggering action.
Most of your email marketing (barring promotions and content emails) should be automated.
Keep in mind, though: Just because you CAN trigger a message, doesn’t mean you SHOULD! By segmenting and automating your emails, you’re able to send messages that are highly relevant to your subscribers’ interests and priorities. That’s a win for you and your subscribers.
But just as you can under-automate, you can also over-automate, creating long, complex campaigns that keep your subscribers stuck in a particular phase of their value journey.
The goal, remember is to expedite people’s customer journey. And the more emails you create for each stage of their journey, the greater the odds that you’ll entrench them in that stage, slowing their overall journey.
Understanding Email Timing
You want your subscribers to be excited about getting your emails, and you want to train them open and engage with them.
There are two approaches you’ll need to take to make that happen: segmentation and timing emails to coincide with the customer journey. Segmentation allows you to send emails to the people who will be most likely to respond favorably.
No one sees a promotion they aren’t interested in, and people feel like their emails are tailor-made for them. Timing is about understanding where your subscribers are in their customer journey and only sending them emails that are appropriate for that phase.
The Metrics: How Email Marketing Is Measured
Sending the right emails to the right people at the right time is only one aspect of email marketing. To optimize your efforts, you also need to measure your results.
Here are the top performance metrics that will help you manage your email marketing.
List Growth
For this metric, you want to watch the number of new subscribes as compared to the number of unsubscribes. As you might expect, you want the ratio to be positive.
Delivery Rate
The percent of messages delivered to the recipient’s inbox relative to the number of emails sent. Aim for a delivery rate of 95+ percent.
Open Rate
The percent of messages opened by the recipient relative to the number of emails sent.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
The percent of email messages clicked relative to the number of emails sent or, in some cases, relative to the number of emails opened.
Unsubscribe Rate
The percent of emails that lead to an unsubscribe relative to the number of emails sent.
Complaint Rate
The percent of emails marked as Spam relative to the number of emails sent.
TIP: Your email delivery rate will go up if your open rate and click-through rates go up and unsubscribe rate goes down.
This is why we encourage segmented email campaigns that target people at their specific stage in the value journey. Our approach to email marketing is strategically designed to boost opens and click-through while minimizing unsubscribes.
Bottom Line
Email marketing consistently generates the highest ROI of any marketing activity, but sadly most businesses are doing it wrong (or ignoring it completely).
Email is most effective when you coordinate it with your content and advertising campaigns—to indoctrinate your new subscribers, nurture those relationships, and move them quickly through the Customer Journey. It may take you a while to master the tactics we discussed in this chapter, but the effort is well worth it. Email marketing will drive growth as no other strategy can. The next step in mastering digital marketing is search marketing, and we’ll cover that in the next chapter.