What Exactly is Email Marketing & How it Works?

Emails are the new letters. In fact, they are much more than just letters. From big corporations to individual chats, emails are a new medium of conversation that is secure, fast, and reliable. Email marketing is the use of marketing tactics in the email to increase brand awareness and customer list so that you can promote your products, services, discounts, and all other services. Emails are also a great way to increase the engagement of users. It is the most popular and most effective tool for growing a brand and selling stuff among various other methods for digital marketing strategy.

Brief History

Emails have a rich history which starts with the year 1971 when a computer engineer Ray Tomlinson sent the very first email which was just a combination of numbers and letters. Ray Tomlinson is also the first person who used @ symbol in email addresses. Then comes 1978 and Gary Thuerk uses the direct mail for promoting the product of his work company Digital Equipment Corp. Records show that he only send 400 mails but the sales generated around $13 million.

When the 90s came, the internet was widely available to the public and commercial sector and email communication changed dramatically. Marketing managers using the immense power of email marketing started generated huge revenue and results in the market and the rest is history.

Advantages of Email Marketing

Do you know what the best thing about email is? It can forever reside in your inbox and when you will go to it, it will compel you to take action.  Emails won’t get deleted. It won’t get archived automatically. You need to look it up at least once and that does the thing. There is no cost mechanism in this method. Email marketing gives you wider engagement with your customers as well as potential leads. Building a relationship is so easy with email marketing where you are converse with your customer one to one. Modern email marketing tools allow you to target your audience on a custom basis where you can set locations and demographics and segment your emails.

Modern email marketing tools also allow you to automate email campaigns allowing you to reach your customers with just one click.

How Does Email Marketing Work?

Let’s delve into the mechanism of this amazing process and understand its ABC.

1. Signing Up for Email Marketing Tool

It’s 2021 and modern email marketing tools are providing you automated features for fully engaging your customers. Personal accounts can be used to set up your account on a modern email marketing tool. There are multiple email marketing tools to chose from. But what should you look for in it, let’s have a look? An email marketing tool should allow you to-

1. Create an email list
2. Add new users
3. Automatic and manual sending of emails
4. Detailed statistics
5. Interactive email creation
6. Retarget audience

The big names in Email marketing tools are – MailChimp, ConvertKit, Sendinblue, Aweber, Constant Contact, SendPulse, and more.

2. Creating a Marketing Strategy

Creating a strategy is of utmost necessity in email marketing. The strategy will allow you to-

1. How are you going to merge it with other marketing techniques
2. Cost of the overall campaign and which platform to use according to it
3. Decide the features you want to use
4. Deciding the automation feature timely and customizing messages
5. Have the right reporting analysis so that you can count the effectiveness of campaigns

3. Building a Great Email List

You need to filter your email subscribers on a timely basis to know which emails are active. Random customers don’t work effectively. You need to segment the users into categories of users and potential leads. There are various methods to grow your email list, such as-

1. Publishing good content on site
2. Incentive offers like freebies
3. Easy subscription module
4. Welcome emails
5. Feedback forms

4. Regular Cleaning of Email Lists

Three things are important here –

1. Email subscribers go inactive regularly. Having inactive users in the list will lead to crowding of the list
2. Having a large number of email subscribers doesn’t mean they all are going to revert back
3. The larger the number of subscribers, the higher the cost to maintain it

You need a crisp and healthy list of subscribers for getting the maximum output from your subscribers. The crisp and up-to-date list will allow you to be clear about the future strategy and how the results are showing. Active subscribers are far better than inactive subscribers.

In conclusion, we would say that email marketing can be a major fountainhead for you to turn maximum leads into potential customers and getting high returns on your promotional emails. It is high time to reap the benefits of this amazing tool which will increase your brand reach as well as your user base.