E-mail Marketing: What is it and how does it work? See how to get started
From email collection to A/B testing and shooting. Understand more about the world of email marketing and how to use it to generate engagement and results
Email marketing, or email marketing, constitutes the set of necessary actions, whether strategic or day-to-day execution, to send quality emails to your list. We can classify as good emails those that are interesting to open, read and click on. The clicking action can be to send a message via WhatsApp, buy a product, or register for an event, in other words, it is a positive result.
🚨 It is important to highlight that email marketing requires responsibility; Therefore, read the following data carefully:
- The LGPD (General Data Protection Law) highlights that it is necessary to notify the user before collecting their email about which messages they will receive and whether they agree to this.
- Users' identities must be preserved and in no way shared without their consent.
- The user can request to stop receiving emails at any time, and messages to the user must stop immediately after the request.
👇🏻 Now that we’ve seen the responsibilities, let’s understand how it works:
🎯 1. You need a goal for sending email marketing
This is the first essential item for the success of your campaign, as it allows you to understand what needs to happen for it to be successful.
It depends on the segment. See examples:
Companies that have institutional websites can use email marketing to inform news.
An online store can use email marketing to send discount coupons to abandoned carts.
Industries that have institutional websites can use email marketing to announce new products in the catalog.
Once you know what needs to happen with email to help your business, you're ready for the next step.
🗂️ 2. Assembling your Contact List
We can consider your contact base as your main asset involved in email marketing, as they are the targets of emails. However, contacts cannot all be together in a generic way, that is, they need to be divided into segments, tags or folders. Even though each application uses a different name, the objective is the same: to separate and organize.
Contacts can be segmented in different ways, according to interests, involvement with your company or can receive special classifications according to the level of engagement with your shots.
The first step to having a contact base is to collect them responsibly, as we saw above. Its collection is normally done through a form on a page (at the foot of this page there is Eco Webdesign as an example), where there is user consent. We can consider the contacts in your ERP or system also valid, however, it is important that they know that you will use their email for messages.
Email blasts are sent to contact segments, this way you can communicate correctly with each audience. For example, a pet house company might send information about cats to customers segmented by "Customers with kittens" and information about dogs to customers segmented by "Customers with puppies." Segmented shooting has a greater chance of being effective according to the interests of your audience.
🖌️ 3. Editing the Layout and Message of Emails
As incredible as it may seem, the email layout is not as simple as it seems, as it needs to work correctly on the computer, tablet and cell phone. Additionally, each email service "interprets" it differently, so an email opened in Gmail on an Android phone may be displayed differently than the same email opened on a Macbook in the Mail app. Fortunately, you don't have to worry too much about this if you use a tool that helps you send well-formatted emails like SendiBlue, MailChimp or Interago, our tool.
The tool solves the issue of layout, sometimes it's not everything, as you need to design the email and this can also be complicated, after all, the email needs to be, in addition to being functional, beautiful. As much as the tools help, some design knowledge can be a differentiator for your email to attract attention. Here at Eco Webdesign we have a service where we take advantage of our experience in web design to create emails with better performance.
Thinking specifically about content, the main point to be resolved is that it needs to be interesting. The user seeing the content is already an achievement, which means your title was good; now he needs useful information with real benefit to continue his journey until he becomes a final result.
💬 4. Practically everything is about titles or subjects
We have reached the most important point that deserves a specific topic: the greatest responsibility for success falls on the title. If the title is not good, the email will not be opened and the content will not be used. When opening the email box or receiving a notification of a new email, the user can read the beginning of the title and it must be intriguing enough to provoke the action of opening it.
Due to its importance, it is necessary to carry out the necessary measures to be sure that the title is appropriate. To know this, there are two ways:
The first way is to carry out A/B Testing. In short, you will write two different titles or subjects for the same email. The first subject (A) will be delivered to a small portion of contacts, normally 10%, and the second (B) in turn, to another portion. After a few hours, the trigger tool will see which emails were opened the most, those with Subject A or B and will send the remaining 80% to the others, in our example. With A/B testing you ensure that the best title has a better chance of being sent to the majority of contacts.
Another way is to observe patterns according to the reports and for that, we move on to the next topic.
✉️ 5. Now just schedule the shots and start collecting data
Just like titles and content, the success of emails is also linked to other factors such as: day of the week sent and time. Companies typically open their emails less on weekends or at night, for example.
Each audience has a specific pattern, so the best way to understand and design the best strategies for your list is by observing the data, that is, which emails have the highest opening and click rates. These analyzes allow you to refine your strategy along the way.
And how does email marketing work for those who want to start?
What we've covered so far helps you better understand how the entire shooting process works and tips to avoid some basic mistakes, such as sending emails to contacts without consent or making the most of headlines by doing tests. However, to really get started, it is necessary to use professional tools that have the above features to carry out the shots.
The email marketing tool needs to manage and segment lists, carry out A/B tests, allow editing of templates, perform the shooting itself, allow the user to unsubscribe if they wish, collect data on sending problems and deal with spam , among others.
There are several tools available on the market, some even allow a certain quality of free shots to test or get started. Some of them are: Benchmark Mail, MailChimp, SendiBlue.
Here at Eco Webdesign we use Interago to make the shots, as it is the same panel that clients use to manage their website, that is, the CMS. Because it is native, the email's form and visual identity speak to the website's language. We currently only offer free trials to customers who have a website with us.
Did you like it and are you ready to get started? Remember to work responsibly and set real objectives for your shots as the chances of everything going well are extremely high! Great results and engagement.
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