You must have already received a marketing email! You may even have made a purchase after reading yet another email. It's as if they read your mind... Amazing but not rocket science! Email marketing is one of theone of the pillars of the marketing and communication strategy. It is one of the most profitable direct marketing channels: email marketing has an estimated ROI of 3,800% depending on the sector! In this article you will understand the stakes of email marketing, the things to do and to avoid in order to wake up your sleeping customers ! The complete guide to avoid missing out on the most profitable marketing strategy as we approach 2023 !
What is email marketing?
Email marketing is the design andsending of emails as a direct marketing channel to your customers, in the sense that it directly reaches your target. Previously considered as mass mailing, it is now a legally regulated marketing practice. Email marketing is central to a company's strategy.
From order confirmations to weekly newsletters, email marketing isthe backbone of a company and a pillar for its growth. Email marketing can therefore take many forms that we can group into two categories: one-off emails and automated emails.
What are the main categories of email marketing?
One-time marketing emails
These are the emails that are anchored in time and follow the evolution and rhythm of your business. They can be for example :
Newsletters
They often present the news of your company and the latest news. They allow you to keep your users informed and to maintain your link with them. They serve to feed your business, without them your company will continue to function but with them, it will function even more!
Email campaigns
More focused on the marketing and sales aspect of your business, they allow you to run a sales campaign over several days with 3 to 10 emails over a predefined period.
This concerns the sending of promotional emails to a large list of contacts (customers, prospects...) for prospecting, loyalty or simply information purposes. This practice is common during promotions and exceptional sales such as Black Friday or the Christmas period.
In this regard, we recommend that you read our guide to preparing for Black Friday as an e-retailer. This practice allows you to arouse the curiosity of your customers and generate new sales.
Automated email marketing
These are more operational emails. They save you time and money for your business.
Generally personalized, these emails are sent automatically thanks to an email template and schema according to the action that generated its sending.
Transactional emails
These are emails generated following a transaction such as a reservation, an appointment confirmation or a reminder. They are functional, that is to say, essential to the proper functioning of your business. It allows you to inform your customer of the status of his transaction, notify him of an event and ensure follow-up throughout his user experience.
Marketing automation emails
This type of email sends automatic and targeted emails (one to one), triggered by specific actions of your contacts. This can be the case, if your customer does not complete his purchase, if an item of his wishlist is returned ... They can quickly improve the user experience and customer relationship of your brand.
Why is email marketing essential?
Email marketing can therefore fulfill three main objectives:
- Information (to inform and make yourself known)
- Notoriety (position yourself as an expert)
- Action (sell your services and products)
Email marketing belongs to the one-to-many category: you can easily send an email on a large scale, while personalizing it to the maximum for each recipient. Its great strength is therefore its scalability.
According to a study by the SNCD data marketing industry: Perceptions and attitudes of Internet users in relation to email in France (2018), 90% of Internet users consult their primary address at least once a day and 45% manage their purchases from their primary address. These statistics are a boon for your brand. Email is at 67% the most appreciated commercial lever for mobile users.
It is therefore the most actionable and scalable marketing medium for your company. It allows you to reach a diverse audience and for different subjects. Email marketing intervenes at each stage of the customer relationship: from information and prospecting, to purchase and confirmation, as well as to loyalty.
It is therefore essential to your business, but you must follow a few rules. Here is our expert advice on the subject.
Karmen's 10 tips for effective email marketing
Define your email marketing strategy
This is what will guide your operational choices, so this first step is essential. You must therefore define your business objectives, your targets, your sending frequency according to the type of email and your emailing software.
This will define the continuation of your email marketing campaigns, so do not neglect it and answer all these questions as precisely as possible.
Define your personas
Once you have developed your overall strategy, it is time to define your personas.
Establishing your company's personas consists in creating your typical targets. You need to create fictitious customers with all their key information and their typical day in order to send your emails as strategically as possible. You must be able to put yourself in their shoes and understand them.
Collect your emails legally
Once your personas have been created, you can move on to collecting your emails. Be careful, this step is crucial and must respect legal constraints. Collecting qualified contacts is a long-term process.
In order to set up a relevant email collection, you need to think about your website in general. For that you must ask yourself some questions like :
- Do you have a blog on your site?
- Do you offer resources for download?
- Do you have call to actions and forms on your pages?
- Do you have a clear strategy?
Once these questions are answered, you will be able to collect emails and design a relevant contact base.
Respecting your subscribers is a key practice in email marketing. Inform them of the use you will make of their contact and the frequency at which you will contact them. Don't forget to add the "unsubscribe" mention at the end of your emails in order to stay within the legal limits.
Segment your mailing list
Once your contact base is set up, split your lists according to your needs in order to achieve the most customized communication possible.
Not all your contacts expect the same level of communication, by making this segmentation, you will be able to meet their expectations as much as possible. Moreover, this will allow you to optimize and automate tasks in your marketing communication scheme.
Connect your lists to your CRM tool
This is the basis of your automation. Each completed form will automatically create a contact in your database and categorize it. Choose your tool according to your needs, there are many on the market.
Take care of your deliverability
Once the strategic part is over, let's move on to the concrete and more operational part. In order to increase your deliverability, you must respect certain golden rules:
- Define your subject line to make it attractive and increase your open rate: If the subject line is not interesting, your email will never be opened. To find the best subject line, test 5 to 6 different email subject lines. Each subject line should contain between 6 and 10 words. Long enough to get your message across but short enough to attract interest and not be cut off.
- Don't neglect the pre-header: Include an introductory text in the pre-header to make your message all the more attractive.
- Make your message consistent with your subject line: Otherwise, you will simply create frustration in your subscriber who will not open your emails anymore.
- Avoid spam words: These are words that are too generic in the email subject line and will send your message directly to spam.
Personalize your exchanges
Personalize your emails: This implies that you have the first and last names of your contacts. A personalized email gives opening rates of around +10% according to a study conducted by MailChimp.
Create attractive designs
A well presented, clear and pleasant to read email will be more attractive than a compact and unreadable email.
There are many sites today to create great email marketing campaigns without the need for technical skills.
Add call to action
Since your marketing campaigns must have a purpose, it is necessary to add call to actions in your emails. The CTAs must lead your target to click to go to a specific landing page. To do this, your CTAs must :
- Be easily identifiable by your readers.
- Choose important keywords that stand out on the rest of the design.
- Respect the effort of personalization: Prefer "I subscribe" to "subscribe".
- Send your target to a precise and relevant landing page.
Track your performance
In order to optimize the impact of your email marketing, it is essential to regularly monitor your campaigns with KPIs and to put them in perspective by comparing yourself to the averages of other players in your sector.
For this you can follow some key indicators like :
- The coverage rate: coverage rate = number of email opens / number of emails delivered *100. It allows you to calculate the ratio of emails opened by your contacts compared to the number of emails delivered. This allows you to have an idea of the relevance of your email objects and the quality and commitment of your contact list.
- Click-through rate: Click-through rate (%) = number of clicks on a link in an email / number of emails sent *100. It allows you to calculate the ratio of emails in which a contact clicked on a link compared to the number of emails sent. This gives you an idea of the relevance and interest of your offers and the effectiveness of your call to action.
- Reactivity rate: Reactivity rate (%) = number of clicks on a link in an email / number of opened emails *100. It corresponds to the ratio of emails in which the user clicked on a link, but this time compared to the number of opened emails only. It allows you to refine your analysis of the reactivity of your most engaged customers.
- Return rate: Return rate (%) = number of undelivered messages (DNS or SMTP error) / number of emails sent *100. This corresponds to the ratio of emails that return to the sender with an error message because it could not be delivered, compared to the total number of emails sent. It allows you to evaluate the quality of your contact base and to optimize your deliverability. This ratio should always be at 0%. There are two types of returns: soft bound (the recipient address is temporarily unavailable) and hardbound (the recipient address does not exist or no longer exists).
- Spam rate: Spam rate (%) = number of spam complaints / number of emails sent *100. This is the percentage of complaints (reported as spam) that your campaign has generated. This is what impacts your deliverability the most.
An example of bad email marketing
Here are the common mistakes not to make:
- Confusing the name and purpose of the campaign
- Do not personalize the sender's name
- Confusing the name and email of the sender
- Forgetting to insert a promotional code
- Missing your customization
- Do not adapt it to reading on a phone
- Do not ventilate your text and forget the images
- Do not do A/B testing
How to finance your mailing strategy?
Karmen is here to help you finance your mailing strategy, simply and quickly, all with less cash flow.
Indeed, Karmen allows digital companies to finance their growth in a non-dilutive way and very quickly.
At Karmen, the investor has no direct ownership in the business and does not require fixed payments. Payments will be based on the recurring revenue of the business. Karmen uses a tool to anticipate the future revenues of a company.
In concrete terms, if your income decreases during a month, the royalties to Karmen will be reduced proportionally . Conversely, if the company's revenues increase drastically during a month, the royalties will increase simultaneously.
Karmen offers an alternative to fundraising that allows more companies to finance themselves.
Indeed, Karmen does not have any particular requirement on a business sector or an ultra-tech product as a venture capital fund may have.
Getting a quick loan is the essence of Karmen's offer, as a business can receive cash in less than 48 hours.
Now that you have all the keys in hand, it's up to you! If you need financing to launch your email marketing campaigns, you can use the RBF, revenue based financing solution to finance your growth and your communication and marketing campaigns.
Do not hesitate to contact one of our consultants. At Karmenfinancing is non-dilutive, transparent and fast. In less than 48 hours, you will receive an answer as to your possible financing.
