Email marketing is popular nowadays, and the reason for its wide adoption is getting increasingly obvious. Over the years, this marketing strategy has proven easy to set up, effective, and relatively cheap. Besides, any business can see results from a good email campaign, although small and medium-scale enterprises have particularly found it indispensable.

However, despite its increasing popularity, many businesses are yet to join in on the trend. In this article, we'll discuss all the essential aspects of email marketing so you can get more traffic, leads, sales, and revenue, even as a beginner.

Email marketing offers a simple and direct channel to connect with your target audience. Email marketing involves sending various emails, like newsletters and promotional emails, to educate, entertain, or persuade the recipients to buy your products. This allows you to:

● build relationships with customers

● generate leads

● increase sales and revenue

● strengthen brand awareness

● boost other marketing channels

● get valuable feedback and business data

As a business owner, you want to reach more customers and increase sales while spending as little as possible. There are several ways to do this, but only a few would save you money, like email marketing.

For example, if you make a Facebook or Google ad, you could reach a large audience. However, as a small business owner, there’s a limit to how much you can spend on ads. With email marketing, you only need to subscribe periodically to an email service. Different services have different subscription tiers, and finding a plan that suits your budget is not difficult.

Email marketing’s biggest flex, perhaps, is that there’s no limit to the number of messages you can send or people you can reach. Once you subscribe to an emailing service, you can add people to your mailing list and send messages to them as often as you like.

You can group the subscribers in your mailing list into categories based on different attributes. This classification will allow you to tailor your messaging to each group. Email platforms also provide analytics for several metrics. Keeping an eye on these metrics will let you know what you’re doing well or wrong and how to optimize for better results.

For these reasons, email marketing is an effective marketing channel, especially when implemented correctly. How do you use email marketing the right way? Simply learn the principles.

Sending emails to the subscribers in your mailing list isn’t quite the same as emailing your friend. Your friend will read your email because he knows you. On the contrary, your subscribers don’t know you personally, and they are not bound to read your emails.

The principles of email marketing listed here are tested techniques and methods that can get more people to read your emails. Indeed, not following these guidelines is at the heart of unsuccessful email campaigns.

Successful email marketing requires getting the recipient’s permission before adding them to your mailing list. You don’t want to send unsolicited messages to people who don't need them. People allowing you to send them emails is a confirmation of their interest in your messages and your business. Getting this right at this start is the first step to getting a high conversion rate.

Personalizing an email means you’re tailoring its content to a specific recipient or class of recipients. You can personalize a mail if you know the recipient’s relevant personal attributes. The email content can include the following:

● the recipient’s name

● products recommendation based on the recipient’s past purchases or browsing behavior

● relevant information about the recipient’s location or industry

Personalized emails tend to have higher open and click-through rates. Hence, such emails can help businesses build stronger relationships with their target audience.

Emails should contain content that is relevant and valuable to the recipient. Your recipients have specific reasons for receiving your emails. These subscribers will unsubscribe if the email content no longer serves these purposes. Besides, the content should be consistent with the general message of your brand.

Email content should be easy to read. When creating content for your mail, be brief. Long emails tend to have lower engagement rates. Avoid boring your customers; say what you need to say succinctly.

Promotional emails should include a clear call-to-action (CTA). A CTA prompts the recipient to take action after reading the mail. Some of the actions your email can ask recipients to take include the following:

● clicking on a link

● filling out a form

● buying a product

● signing up for a service

Remember to include a CTA in your commercial emails.

Most people check their emails on mobile devices. Hence, you want to optimize for mobile devices to improve engagement.
Optimizing emails for mobile involves:

● using responsive design

● optimizing images and text for smaller screens

● making CTAs conspicuous

Optimizing emails for mobile can help increase click-through rates.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Autem dolore, alias,numquam enim ab voluptate id quam harum ducimus cupiditate similique quisquam et deserunt,recusandae.A/B email testing involves sending two different versions of an email to a small segment of a subscriber list. A/B testing determines which version performs better. You can then send the better-performing version to the remaining subscribers. Some elements of the email you can tweak for A/B testing include:

● subject line

● CTA

● content

A/B testing allows businesses to optimize their email campaigns and improve their results.

You need to track and analyze your email campaigns to see their performance. Metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates are particularly important. These metrics can provide insights for improving your email marketing.

If you implement the principles above, email marketing will benefit your business in diverse ways, including:

Email marketing is one of the most affordable marketing techniques. You don’t spend money on printing, postage, or any form of ads. The email marketing expenses only relate to subscription and content creation. Moreover, you can scale the channel to reach a larger audience at little or no added cost.

Email marketing can increase brand awareness and visibility among subscribers. Each time you send a mail, you remind your subscribers about your business. Therefore, regular emails will keep your business fresh in the minds of your target audience, even if they don’t take any action immediately.

Email marketing has a high return on investment (ROI). A late 2021 report by the Financial Post shows that email marketing has an average ROI of $42 for every $1 spent. Talk of cost-effectiveness in marketing and email marketing comes top.

Email marketing allows you to target specific groups of subscribers based on attributes like:

● interests

● behavior

● location

● demographics

You can target the right audience for your product by filtering your mailing list based on these attributes.

With email marketing, you can personalize communication with subscribers. This is not so for other marketing methods, such as banners and search engine ads. Personalization can increase engagement and build stronger relationships with customers.

Email marketing platforms provide analytics for key metrics like conversion rates. This lets you know how to improve your email campaign strategies for better results.

Automation is one of the most significant advantages of email marketing. This feature lets you set up email flows based on specific actions or time intervals. This feature lets you provide relevant information to subscribers when they need it.

The following section discusses automation in greater detail.

Email automation, also known as email flow, is a way to send emails automatically based on specific triggers or actions. Instead of manually sending an email each time, a software does it for you. This process can save time and improve the effectiveness of your email campaigns.

Let’s say you have an e-commerce website with a few thousand monthly visitors. How do you know what message to send at any given time? How do you know it’s a customer’s birthday so you can send a mail?
An email automation platform does the magic for you. The platform collects personal information, such as gender and birthday, from subscribers when they join your mailing list. You can also link your website analytics to this platform for user information such as location and online behavior. The email platform then uses such information as triggering criteria to determine when and to whom to send what email flow.

This email is sent to new subscribers immediately after they sign up for your mailing list. A welcome email can include the following:

● a thank you message

● a brief introduction to your brand

● some helpful resources or offers

A welcome mail shows that you appreciate the gesture of your new subscribers.

Oftentimes, customers add items to their shopping cart and leave the website without making the purchase. An abandoned cart mail reminds the customer of the items left in the cart. The mail can also offer incentives, such as discounts or swag, to complete the purchase.

This is an automated email that customers get after making a purchase. A post-purchase email can include:

● a thank you message

● order confirmation

● a request for feedback or a review

Post-purchase emails should be simple and straight to the point.

This is an automated email sent to subscribers on their birthdays. You can get creative with your birthday message by including a special offer or discount as a birthday gift.

You can automate a message to subscribers who have yet to engage with your emails or website for a certain period. This type of mail seeks to know why a subscriber has not engaged with your posts. You can offer an incentive to encourage subscribers to engage with your brand again.

Drip campaigns are a series of automated emails you send to your subscribers based on specific triggers or actions. Drip campaigns serve several purposes. For example, you can use a drip campaign to educate subscribers about your products or services. You can also nurture leads through the sales funnel using a drip campaign.

To activate email automation, you need an email marketing service or software. Several online platforms offer email automation features. Some popular email automation service providers include:

● Mailchimp

● Campaign Monitor

● ActiveCampaign

● AWeber

● HubSpot

● ConvertKit

Once you have signed up for a service, you can automate your emails. Automating emails involve the following:

● creating workflows

● selecting email templates

● setting up segmentation or targeting criteria

● creating your email content

Here’s how to go about them.

Creating workflows is the first step to automating your emails after choosing a platform. Remember that automation is an action, or a series of actions, that your email service takes on its own after a subscriber performs a triggering action. Where you want the service to perform multiple actions, you have to specify those actions. It is also necessary to specify the order in which the actions should take place.

For example, when a subscriber signs up to your mailing list, you may want them to receive a mail thanking them for joining and informing them to look forward to informative and educative emails. You may also want to follow this up by sending a mail that provides information about your sphere of operation. This second mail may go out immediately after they open your welcome email or a few hours later.

What about subscribers who don't open your welcome mail? You could have a different type of follow-up mail for this set of people. In this case, if the welcome email remains unopened a week after sending it, you can send another email that will remind the recipient about your business.

A workflow allows you to design a visual representation of what happens after each action that a subscriber takes. The workflow ensures that each group of subscribers gets the right emails based on their actions (or inactions).

Setting up workflows isn't a tough task at all. All email marketing platforms provide simple-to-use tools that allow you to set up the workflow without any hassles. With the drag-and-drop interface of these platforms, you can choose the actions you want to take and the conditions that trigger those actions. You only need to follow the steps below, and you're set.

● Choose a trigger that will start the workflow. Triggers are specific actions that subscribers take.

● Define what happens when a subscriber activates a trigger.

On your email marketing platform, check out the available templates. Every platform has tons of email templates. To determine the right template for your emails, you will have to consider the following factors:

● purpose of your email campaign

● your brand message and style

● your target audience
You can further customize these templates to match your brand design and style. Customizing may include changing certain elements of the template, like image, text font and size, and color. Email platforms allow you to choose multiple templates for different types of emails. Alternatively, you can create a single trademark template for all your emails.

Segmentation helps you to group your target audience into different categories. This will make it easy for you to send personalized content for each group. Another advantage of email marketing platforms is that they have features that allow you to segment your subscribers into groups.

The simple step for segmenting your mailing list involves identifying specific groups based on different characteristics. These attributes serve as the targeting criteria. For example, you can group your subscribers based on the following:

● demographics (age, gender, location)

● behavior (purchase history, email engagement metrics)

● interests (hobbies and activities)

You need the personal data of these subscribers to group them. It’s important to seek their permission before taking and using their information.

You can go ahead to create your emails after creating workflows, choosing templates, and segmenting your audience, You will need to create different types of emails for the triggers. In the same vein, you may need different content for different groups.

Test and refine your emails from time to time. Ensure to follow the principles of emails above and optimize your email for maximum engagement. Use A/B testing for best results.