Email Marketing: How to Set Up and Use It
Email marketing is the strategic promotion of a company's products through electronic mails. An email marketer collects a subscriber base, creates and sends messages, and also tracks their effectiveness.
Example of an email from Starbucks
What functions does email marketing perform
Email marketing is used in various industries, including B2B, e-commerce, online platforms, and entertainment. According to experts, it has the highest return on investment.
Email campaigns influence customer behavior and build relationships with them. Here’s what email marketing is used for:
To engage. Attract new subscribers with informative and entertaining content, and tell them about your product.
To keep informed. Share company news, send links to new articles, and inform about promotions.
To increase repeat sales. Offer users other products based on what they have already purchased. Finding and acquiring new customers is always more expensive than retaining those you already have.
To retain customers. Send reminders about abandoned carts, as well as notifications about sales and coupons/promo codes to strengthen customer loyalty.
To generate leads. Encourage users to take specific actions by offering attractive discounts and coupons.
To advertise. Maintain brand visibility and develop trusting relationships with customers. Reach out to people directly — that’s how you become more than just a brand to them.
To automate. Reduce the load on the call center or support service by automating messages about registration or order statuses.
To assist in decision-making. Email campaigns persuade the user to make that cherished expensive purchase, subscribe to premium, or pay for a service. If you have a complex product, explain how it works and why it’s indispensable.
To reach a large audience. According to the latest data, there are about 4 billion email users worldwide.
How to set up email marketing
Here are the main steps to launching email marketing in your company:
Develop a strategic plan. Define your audience, the purpose of your emails, frequency, and content topics. Are you sending emails to increase engagement or loyalty, boost ROI, or build relationships with users? Create a concise strategy plan—detailed multi-page documents aren't necessary.
Expand your subscriber base. Without readers, nothing will work. Use forms on your website, events, or social media to grow your base. Choose only legal methods.
Choose your email platform. To build effective email marketing, select a service that ensures your emails reach inboxes and provides tools for efficient campaigns. For example, with Altcraft Platform, you'll have an undeniable advantage, making your emails highly targeted.
Familiarize yourself with the rules of email providers and your email platform. Understand what you are allowed to do and what you are not.
Work on the technical aspects. Create a corporate email address for effective communication, and add DNS records to your domain zone to improve email delivery. Read a simple guide here.
Create and send your campaign. Craft your first email in Altcraft Platform, this is so simple that even a beginner can do it. Decide whom you want to send the email to and send it.
Determine how effective the campaign was. How well was the email opened? What percentage clicked on the call to action? Did they perform the desired actions on the website? All these metrics need to be closely monitored.
Send campaigns regularly. Consistency is key to gaining benefits. Your marketing strategy will determine the optimal frequency of mailings.
How to improve your strategy
Below are examples of email campaigns and several ways to enhance your marketing strategies.
1. Develop a lead magnet
Use this tool to increase subscriptions and the likelihood of new users making a purchase. Offer valuable incentives such as free shipping on the first order, a discount coupon, or a brochure with useful information in exchange for the visitor's email address. Emphasize the urgency to get the gift now — before it expires.
2. Use segmentation
If your website offers products from different categories (e.g., clothing for men or women), avoid sending dress advertisements to men. Instead, try segmenting by gender to send users only relevant emails. Use appropriate fields in the subscription form for this purpose.
Additionally, apply micro-segmentation based on website activity, categories of purchased products, geolocation, and much more.
3. Send a welcome email
Make a positive first impression with a welcome email or a series of three messages. Greet the user, share a personal story related to your work, and provide information about your brand. Start building a trustful relationship.
4. Implement upselling and cross-selling methods
Retain customers and increase sales by encouraging additional purchases. Suggest complementary products, like a screen protector for a phone. Upselling involves offering a more expensive, higher-quality product. For example, if someone is looking at a graphics card, motivate them to buy a more advanced model.
5. Send personalized greetings
Pay attention to special dates in the customer's life cycle, such as the anniversary of their registration or their birthday. These emails are likely to have high open rates due to their personal touch.
Example of a personalized email greeting
6. Remind them of your presence with re-engagement emails
If a customer stops responding to your emails, they might have simply forgotten about you. Don’t rush to delete their address. Use a re-engagement email to find out why they stopped opening your messages—offer a link to a brief survey or provide a discount.
7. Reward loyal customers
Make sure to recognize subscribers who frequently make purchases. Send them special bonuses and gifts. Delight them with points for certain amounts spent in your store.
Who works on email marketing
Universal internet marketers handle email campaigns as well as various other tasks, such as creating ads in Yandex.Direct, developing landing pages, and maintaining social media activity.
For email campaigns, an email marketer enlists other experts, both within the company and through outsourcing. These experts include designers, writers, translators, developers, customer relationship management (CRM) specialists, and many others.
In small companies with limited budgets, the managers themselves often take on email marketing, though some prefer to hire freelancers.
In large brands, email promotion is the responsibility of the marketing or sales department. Resource allocation depends on the company’s budget and its unique characteristics.
Email marketers undergo specific training and are often proficient in copywriting, editing, design, and coding. These specialists know when to send emails and what content customers want
Important details
Here are some key features of email marketing that you should know:
Automation is often used in this field, offering various ways to conveniently send emails, create sequences, segment databases, and track user actions.
There are several types of email campaigns. Although some emails may not fall into these categories, they are exceptions. Typically, the following types are used in email marketing:
Transactional emails. Automatic responses to user actions, such as password recovery or purchase confirmations.
Informational emails. Provide valuable content to users, such as updates, educational, or entertaining materials.
Promotional emails (or advertising emails). Aimed at persuading users to make a purchase, including product information, special offers, bonuses, and promotions.
Trigger emails. Sent in response to specific events and used for both sales and content. For example, you might send a series of emails with financial tips or a bonus email that only arrives after a specific action on the site. Additionally, if a user has been inactive for a while (e.g., not purchasing items left in the cart), they receive a reminder.
With Altcraft Platform, you can easily set up triggers and campaigns, including abandoned cart reminders, discount notifications, and order confirmations. Incidentally, the open rate for trigger emails is 70% higher than for regular emails.
Regular analysis is essential for effective email marketing. Monitor metrics such as the percentage of people who opened the email, clicked on the call to action, or unsubscribed.
Segmentation improves the effectiveness of your campaigns. Divide subscribers into groups based on their interests and needs.
Relevance of email marketing
Some believe that email marketing is outdated and ineffective, but in practice, email is still frequently used.
Users have the stereotype that email is a channel for important information, such as notifications about requests to social services, so they regularly check their inbox.
While social networks and messengers are more convenient for communication and receiving fresh information, email has its advantages:
Emails naturally accommodate large amounts of information and are easy to read.
Email allows for searching messages by topic, date, and content. Emails also display tables and complex formatting, which are important for maintaining the context.
Advantages of email marketing
High ROI. Low cost and high returns make email marketing financially effective.
Generates traffic. Direct links in emails drive visitors to your website.
Strengthens customer relationships. Regular, targeted emails increase loyalty.
Increases brand awareness. Regular newsletters keep clients from forgetting about you.
Personalized content. You build closer relationships with subscribers.
Cost-effective. Cheaper compared to traditional marketing methods.
Disadvantages of email marketing
People sometimes perceive your emails as spam (quickly scrolling through, deleting, or even complaining).
Some subscribers find email marketing from brands annoying, especially if they did not expect it.
Most companies use email marketing. Standing out from competitors can be challenging.
Conclusion
Email marketing is a powerful and convenient tool that has become an important part of modern business strategies.
With it, companies better understand customer needs, use data for effective strategies, and maintain connections with audiences worldwide.
Email campaigns are used to promote new products, run promotions, and spread information about the brand.