What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is a form of digital marketing that uses emails to engage customers. It is a way for brands and businesses to create personalized interactions with their audiences. Through email marketing, brands can keep their customers up to date with their latest products, services, sales, offers, and promotions.

Email marketing is low-cost and has one of the highest returns on investment (ROI) among the forms of digital marketing. It is a great way for brands to generate leads, build brand awareness, and foster long-term relationships with their audiences.

Types of Marketing Emails

Marketing emails come in various formats.

1. Welcome emails

Brands use welcome emails are to usher new customers into their ecosystem. Welcome emails introduce new customers to a business and often contain helpful resources to help guide them through their journey. They may also include special bonuses or trial offers to help a business create the best first impression possible.

2. Promotional emails

These types of marketing emails are sent out to inform customers about special offers, discounts, and new products or services. Promotional emails usually read with a sense of urgency. They typically include a call-to-action (CTA) to encourage the recipient to take a particular action.

3. Newsletter emails

These emails are sent regularly to subscribers. They usually follow a schedule, which could be daily, weekly, or monthly. Newsletter emails are useful for sharing all kinds of information with an audience. These include tips, updates, news, and even promotional or educational content.

4. Transactional emails

Transactional emails are triggered by specific events or actions. They are automated emails for events like password resets, email confirmations, account updates, order confirmations, and so on.

5. Lead nurturing emails

Lead nurturing emails are also called 're-engagement emails'. They target a specific group of subscribers with an aim to build trust and convert. Lead nurturing emails are usually used to capture potential customers who have engaged with a brand but haven't made a purchase yet.

6. Confirmation emails

These emails are sent in response to an action carried out by a customer. Confirmation emails help inform customers that a particular action they carried out was successful. The types of actions that require confirmation emails are successful newsletter subscriptions, sign-ups, password resets, purchases, etc.

7. Seasonal marketing emails

Seasonal marketing emails are sent out during special times of the year. They typically include special promotions and discounts offered by virtue of the season they're being sent in. Examples include Christmas sales, special Valentine's Day packages, or Thanksgiving discounts.

What are the Pros of Email Marketing?

When done right, email marketing offers many benefits to businesses.

1. High return on investment

Email marketing has an average return of $36 for every $1 spent. This number goes even higher in industries like marketing and retail.

2. Customization

Email marketing offers a high level of customization. Brands can use segmentation to create customized emails to send to different types of audiences. This level of customization allows brands connect better with their contact list.

3. Easily measurable

Email marketing software contain useful analytics tools that make it possible to track important stats like click-through rates and open rates. The ability to track these stats makes it easier for businesses to asses the efficiency of their email marketing efforts.

4. High customer acquisition

Email marketing is 40 times better for customer acquisition than Facebook and X combined.

5. Personalization

Email marketing software make it possible to send highly personalized emails. These personalized emails give your audience the impression that they are being spoken to directly. Personalization does wonders for open rates and conversion rates.

What are the Cons of Email Marketing?

There are a few issues surrounding the use of email marketing.

1. Deliverability issues

There is sometimes no guarantee that your email will make it into the recipient's inbox. Most email service providers use a filtering mechanism that filters out emails that are considered as spam. These emails end up in the Spam or Junk folder and are sometimes completely missed by the recipient. Thankfully, many email deliverability software exist and they help reduce the odds that your emails end up in the Spam folder.

2. Compliance issues

Keeping up with legislations regarding email can be challenging. Different regions have different laws guiding the sending of emails for commercial purposes. Some of the most common email-related laws are the GDPR, CAN-SPAM, and CCPA.

3. Competition

Email marketing works, so a lot of brands and businesses are heavily invested in it. Standing out from among the endless streams of emails flooding people's inboxes daily can be challenging.

4. Little margin for error

Unlike social media posts or website content that can be edited or taken down, emails don't offer that level of flexibility. A badly worded email or an email riddled with grammatical errors cannot be taken back once sent out.