Most businesses today – large and small – are sending some sort of email marketing. Some may send a monthly newsletter or digest. Others may focus on their products and driving sales online and offline. Some may have automated messages in place, like a welcome email. What should "come standard" in email marketing?
What are the 4 basic types of email that every marketer should be sending?
- Newsletter – a regular email that tells your subscribers what you’re up to or shares expert advice or valuable content. Newsletters take all kinds of shapes and are the Business-to-Business email marketer’s bread and butter. Best practice says to send at least once a month, but some companies and brands may have enough news for weekly or even daily updates. The key is to be sure every newsletter relevant and meaningful to your audience.
- Promotion & Announcement – an email that goes to your list whenever marketing or sales has something to say. It could be your latest Register to Win promotion announcement. It could be to announce a new product. It could be your semi-annual sale or a bi-monthly coupon. For email marketers for consumer packaged goods, this is probably the bulk of what you send. But don’t let it turn into bulk mail, reaching irrelevant or uninterested recipients. Test sending product announcements only to certain targeted segments of your email list that are most likely to engage! You’ll probably find that targeting will send your email Return on Investment through the roof!
Welcome Email – an email that goes straight to a new subscriber’s email address to welcome them to your list. It’s best to send this immediately upon sign-up if you can, so your new subscriber sees it while she’s still at the computer. Your welcome email open rate will probably be your best of any of your campaigns, so go ahead and include a call to action in this first email! Your subscribers have asked you to connect; they may be interested in even more!
Hostess welcomes new subscribers in style. Strong branding, a call to connect in other ways (Facebook) & an immediate call to interact! (Click the thumbnail to see the welcome email I got.)
- Re-engagement or Nurture Campaign – a campaign, or series of emails, designed to reinvigorate your sleepy subscribers. If a contact hasn’t opened or clicked in over a year (and you also can’t prove that they’ve bought anything online or offline), it’s time to shake them up a bit. Reach out with an especially enticing offer or subject line, letting them know you want to see them come back. Re-engagement email campaigns are a very cost effective way to bring back lapsed customers and weed out the ones who are unlikely to ever come back.
As a reader of email marketing blogs, you probably knew about all 4 kinds of emails, but which are you actually doing? If you haven’t set up your welcome emails, poke around in your email service provider account: most make it pretty simple to execute an immediate welcome. If you haven’t thought about reactivating your inactives, start collecting some fun examples of re-engagement emails and think about launching your own. You’ll start to notice them more in your inbox now that you’re looking.
What are your favorite welcome or re-engagement campaigns?
