What is email marketing?
Email marketing is a direct marketing channel that lets businesses share new products, sales, and updates with customers on their contact lists. Because subscribers choose to sign up for emails, it’s more likely to convert than other channels. Its high return on investment (ROI) makes it crucial to most businesses’ overall inbound strategy. Modern email marketing has moved away from one-size-fits-all mass mailings and instead focuses on consent, segmentation, and personalization to engage target audiences more effectively. It’s about understanding your customer’s interests to develop long-term relationships. Making personalized campaigns may sound time-consuming, but marketing automation and software handle most of the heavy lifting for you. In the long run, a well-designed email marketing strategy drives sales and helps build a community around your brand.
Why email marketing is important
Email isn’t a new technology. It was one of the very first means of digital communication to arrive back in 1971. At 50+ years old, email marketing is used today more than ever before with 4.7 billion estimated users by 2026. You may be thinking, “Isn’t social media where it’s at for marketing today? What is email marketing going to add to my strategy?” While it’s true that social media is an important channel for any digital marketing strategy, email has several advantages: Brands can personalize email marketing campaigns to a greater extent than those on social media. email marketing is more cost-effective than other channels. Email marketing is the channel with the highest conversion rate. This is part of what makes email marketing so ideal for small businesses. Unlike social media, your emails aren’t public discussion boards. Emails give you direct, individual access to your audience’s inboxes and are not affected by constant algorithm updates. Your mail will make it to the inbox as long (as you follow security protocols and build email service provider-friendly campaigns — more on that later). Email marketing performance is easy to track and analyze. With the help of a CRM suite like Brevo, you can see how many people open, click on, and engage with each email campaign you send. Email marketing can improve conversions of social media content. When used with the same audience, one study found that email improved conversions from social media posts by 70%. Use email marketing to enhance all of your channels.
How to do email marketing
Businesses use what’s known as email service providers (ESPs) to send marketing emails. An email service provider is a software that sends and manages email marketing campaigns. It’s also referred to as an email marketing platform, email marketing tool, email marketing service, or email marketing software. These marketing tools often come as part of a larger customer relationship management (CRM) suite and work hand in hand to grow your business and make sales.Now you might be wondering, can’t I just send marketing emails with my regular inbox provider? Do I really need to pay for a product on top of that? Technically, it’s possible. (We even explain how in our guide on how to send mass email with Gmail.) Beware, though. You’re likely to run into problems with limited email bandwidth, design, and more importantly, email deliverability. Here’s why: Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, etc. are designed for personal use — not for email blasts. Although they’re free to use, they’re not free bulk email services. So when a mass email is sent from an ISP, it’s easily flagged by spam filters and your account can be disabled for suspicious activity. Starting in February 2024, Gmail and Yahoo! sender requirements will make sending marketing emails from a freemail account nearly impossible. Email service providers (ESPs), on the other hand, have the necessary infrastructure in place to ensure good email deliverability rates — i.e., the ability to avoid spam, and land emails in your subscribers’ inboxes. ESPs ensure that your sender domain satisfies security checks. Internet service providers like Gmail see your emails are being sent from a secure source and allow your campaigns to get through spam filters and into the inbox. You can see the benefit of working with software specialized in email marketing. If you want to set yourself up for email marketing success from day one, get yourself a dedicated email marketing service.
