What is Email Marketing? How Does it Work?

Digital communication is highly in trend when you wish to promote your brand and target more audiences. If you may ask what is email marketing? It is a strong backbone for the marketing campaigns of several companies. The number of global e-mail users reached four billion in 2020 and is expected to reach 4.6 billion by 2025. Thus, every day in 2020, around 306 billion e-mails will be sent and received globally. In 2025, this number is expected to rise to over 376 billion daily e-mails.

There are other ways of branding, but this has stayed a forever thing since the day it started. So it brings us to the history of what is Email marketing.

History of what is Email Marketing

In 1971, Ray Tomlinson sent the very first mail as he was a computer expert. The message he transmitted was nothing more than a series of numbers and letters, but it indicated the start of a new era in communication. Tomlinson is also credited with the invention of the “@” symbol in email addresses.

Gary Thuerk, a marketing manager at Digital Equipment Corp, sent out the first business email in 1978 to inform customers about a new product using this new mode of direct contact. His email list was merely 400 people, but the emails he sent generated $13 million in revenue.

The internet was enhanced to be commercially available to people only by the 1990s. As a result, people’s communication altered substantially, and the market efficiently learned to use email for advertising. However, the advent of marketing emails necessitated regulatory changes; the Data Protection Act in the United Kingdom, for example, was amended to mandate an “opt-out” option for all marketing emails.

Some Statistics to Remember

• Email usage is still increasing. There were an estimated 3.8 billion email accounts worldwide at the start of 2019, up 100 million from 2018. In 2024, a 3% annual growth rate is predicted, bringing the total number of users to approximately 4.5 billion. This makes it perfect for promoting your business.
• Email is used by half of the world’s population. Email yields an average of $38 for every $1 spent, a 3,800 percent return on investment.
• In recent years, smartphones and laptops have grown increasingly inexpensive to the middle and lower classes in the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
• Two-thirds of customers have purchased anything as a result of receiving an email marketing communication. Therefore, email marketing is the direct opportunity for your business to grow.
• Only 20% of prospects given directly to sales are qualified, which means they must be nurtured with email and unique content.

Benefits of Email Marketing

Thousands of businesses use it throughout the globe, which makes it reach out to broad audiences.

Low Cost

Email marketing is less expensive than traditional platforms, with no expenditures for printing or delivery and no fees for visibility on a billboard, magazine, or television channel. However, email marketers should consider investing in professional software to automate, track, and analyze their emails.

Brand Awareness

An Email is the epitome of one-on-one communication. Plus, people don’t just let anyone into their mailbox so that you can find your favorite brands and publications. It gives you the added benefit of contacting someone directly.

Your brand will stay top of mind if it appears in someone’s email inbox. In addition, a tailored marketing email has more impact than a social media post because you never know if your message was received.

One of the key advantages o email marketing is that it gives you exposure. This means that emails can be sent to a considerable number of recipients (compared to other marketing channels).

Matchless Return on Investment

Results are probably all that matters in the business world. With this in mind, most businesses invest in email marketing because of the excellent return on investment.

It is apparent that email is the most successful marketing channel available to all businesses. So perhaps it’s time for your company to start prioritizing email marketing.

In fact, the ROI for email marketing can be as high as 4400%. That’s $44 for every dollar spent on an email marketing campaign.

How does Email Marketing work?

It is not a complicated process to excel at email marketing, but that does not mean it does not require any further testing. Instead, it is a full-fledged process to determine your customers’ likes and how to increase your audience.

Register for an Email Marketing Service 

This process can be completely automated and quick; the only condition is to have email marketing tools. Now that we have discussed almost everything in this respect, it is time to clear certain things about email marketing.

An email service provider or ESP helps you manage your emails. What are the best free email service options for 2021? The best for 2021 is- Gmail, Outlook, ProtonMail, AOL, Zoho Mail, iCloud Mail, GUX, and Hey. You can choose per your requirements.

This is just one step towards building a base of your email. Now you will have to decide how to make a list of customers you will pitch. It is high time to shortlist your engaged and opt-in subscribers. Usually, almost all the ESPs give you a subscription form to emphasize. Remember that your customers are reading your email because they already know about your services, so do not try to be more precise about your brand. Instead, give them a clear vision of why they need to stay consistent with your brand.

Make an Email Marketing Plan

Like every other social media promotion, email marketing also demands a strategy building to increase your productivity. Having an idea of how to do an email marketing strategy before even starting up with your campaign will help you figure out what things need to be included in your email. Furthermore, letting you:-

• Determine how you are going to manage your campaign along with the other social media platforms.
• Figure out which email marketing platform to use to avail the maximum profit within the budget. If you are looking for the best email marketing course, check out the ‘Email marketing Mastery’ by Bizgurukul.
• Add more strategies to your already made strategy planning.
• Select what kind of automation to use and what sorts of texts to send, and when.
• It lets you have the right amount of reporting mechanisms to estimate the effectiveness of your email campaigns.

Develop and Improve your Email List

To develop an email list for the customers that might have a slight interest in your product, you need to update it as per your needs and customers’. This should be a quantitative list, including all the details of your latest subscribers. This should emphasize people who have manually registered for your brand never miss any update from you.

While it can be daunting to update this list every now and then, you can use different tools available in the market to keep track of your subscriber. An ideal approach can add more value to your business plan.

Ways to increase your customers

1. Research your audience. Take note of it and then accordingly place content on your social media. Learn, if the content you are uploading is not what people want, there is no use.
2. Another trick is to mention your customers and something that would woo them. If they find out that they are well respected, then the chances of increasing our email list are higher.
3. Try to bring them something they would relish, like free giveaways., interactive sessions with them on your social media platforms. Something that would benefit them is what you need to include in your list.

Design Automation Task

Email marketing strategy recognizes marketers send triggered or timed promotional emails to subscribers on their mailing list. It is done to make subscribers aware of knowing about the product. In addition, it enables the brand owners to send strategic and customized emails as and when is required.

It is more about making promotional campaigns in an automated process. If you may ask how it is helpful, the answer is that it saves the hassle of creating and sending fresh emails every time a new customer shows interest in your brand. Instead, they draft a mail to everyone when they enter their details on your website.

Aside from that, studies have shown that implementing marketing automation software increases lead generation by 80 percent and conversions by 77 percent.

Often Clean up Your Email lists 

Understand this

• Maybe a few of your subscribers are inactive
• Maybe some of your subscribers do not wish to be disturbed by your email
• Perhaps having an extensive list might cost you more and give you lesser returns

You need to consider cleaning up your email list for the above-stated reasons to ensure that you do not send emails to people who do not wish to receive your email anymore. As your email list keeps growing, you might keep adding subscribers that are not even active anymore.

Note- It is better to have a shorter list of active audiences.

Wrapping Up

We hope this guide has helped you make a list of things that need to be done for your email marketing strategy. This article has covered almost every aspect of email marketings and the things that you need to know. Bizgurukul aims to provide you with the best email marketing course online. While there are multiple ways to start your email marketing, the most important ones are already mentioned in this article.