Email Marketing: Definition, Types, Examples & Strategies

Email marketing is a marketing strategy that connects businesses with their audience through personalized and relevant messages.

This strategy is not just aimed at sending messages but also at building relationships, promoting products or services, and enhancing customer loyalty. 

With a proper strategy, you can target customer groups accurately, provide relevant content, and create a captivating customer experience.

Moreover, implementing relevant types of email marketing allows you to measure the success of campaigns by analyzing open, click, and conversion rates.

To fully understand the concept of what is email marketing, its types, and strategies, make sure to follow the discussion below until the very end!

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is a communication concept in the digital marketing world first applied in 1978. Since then, this strategy has proven effective in capturing customer attention and significantly converting interest into purchase actions. 

According to Forbes, the success rate of acquiring new consumers through mailing platforms (email especially) is massive, reaching the number of 81%. 

This figure is considered significant compared to social media marketing, which only achieves 51%.

So, what is email marketing exactly?

From the perspective of digital business, it is a powerful marketing strategy carried out by sending emails to customers or consumers.

Generally, the goals of the strategy may differ between businesses. Some companies use it to convey marketing campaigns, bonuses, and discounts, while others use it as a strategy solely to provide product-related education to increase brand awareness.

Email Marketing Benefits

Now that you understand the basic concept of this marketing strategy, it's time to review the benefits of this digital marketing strategy. Some of the email marketing benefits strategies are:

• Increasing Brand Awareness: You can enhance brand awareness by providing information about products, brand values, and the latest initiatives.
• Acquiring New Customers: It applies measurable email campaigns to achieve a significant level of consumer acquisition.
• Improving Customer Retention: Offering special deals, product updates, and exclusive content, helps prevent customers from switching to your competitors.
• Increasing Engagement Rate: Especially by encouraging customers to participate in surveys, contests, or provide feedback on products or services.
• Promoting Products and Services: One of the core goals of such a mailing strategy is to promote products and services by offering special deals, discounts, or information about the latest products.
• Increasing Conversions: It is an effective strategy to increase the conversion rate by providing direct links to product pages.

Types of Email Marketing

Now that you have learned about what is email marketing, you also need to know the common types of it used by businesses in various niches. Some of them are:

1. Welcome/Onboarding Emails

Welcome emails are generally designed to greet new customers and introduce them to the products or services you offer.

When designing a welcome email, you need to pay attention to key aspects to ensure a positive impression and significant added value, such as a friendly greeting and a persona by including the customer's name.

2. Email Newsletters

Email newsletters are essential instruments in digital marketing strategies to introduce new products and services to the audience in an informative and engaging manner.

More than just a promotional tool, newsletters become an effective medium for building relationships with customers, enhancing brand awareness, and providing added value through quality content.

3. Triggered Emails

Triggered emails are instruments that allow specific targeting of specific audience segments.

With this approach, you can direct messages according to the needs and unique characteristics of each customer group. 

For example, for new customers, triggered emails can be designed to provide as much information as possible about the product or service. 

Meanwhile, for long-term customers who tend to be inactive, the message can focus on special offers to rekindle their interest.

4. Invitation Emails

Invitation emails are suitable for announcing special events such as product launches, seminars, or other important events.

In this campaign, the main focus is to attract the audience's attention and build a high level of enthusiasm by including visually appealing design elements with relevant information about the event.

5. Survey Emails

Conducting survey through mailing platform is a strategy that indicates your brand actively values and listens to the opinions of the audience.

Sending surveys via email means giving customers the opportunity to participate in product development, services, or the overall customer experience.

6. Seasonal Email Marketing

This type is an approach aimed at reaching the audience during special moments such as holidays or specific celebrations.

During holidays or celebrations, customers tend to be more open to specific information or promotions that match their mood. 

Therefore, businesses can take advantage of this by including special offers, discounts, or creatively designed content according to the seasonal theme.

Example of Email Marketing Strategy

After understanding what is email marketing, you might also be curious about examples of using this strategy in everyday life, as it has become the most frequently applied strategy by businesses in various niches.

Here are some comprehensive examples of email marketing strategies for marketing purposes:

1. Credit Card Offers by A Bank

In these emails, the bank typically highlights various benefits that credit cardholders can enjoy, such as cashback, discounts at specific merchants, and long-term reward points.

The goal is not only to increase customer engagement with the bank's products but also to enhance the bank's reputation, increase loyalty, and improve the customer journey for those bank customers.

2. Flight Ticket Promotion from a Travel Platform

The next example is when a travel platform sends emails to customers to announce a special promotion if the customer purchases a flight ticket on a specified date. 

This strategy not only provides information about the offer but also creates a sense of urgency by emphasizing the limited time of the promotion.

3. E-Commerce Event

This email strategy is commonly used by e-commerce to inform customers about special events that are ongoing or upcoming. 

Through these email messages, e-commerce companies can convey information about exclusive offers, and additional discounts for specific purchases, and introduce new products on their platform.

Guide on How to Implement Correct Strategy

In general, email marketing is a marketing strategy with a relatively simple process, starting with collecting a database of customer email addresses.

To maximize the potential benefits of this type of marketing, you need to design and implement a well-thought-out strategy.

Here are the steps to implement a marketing strategy to help your business improve marketing effectiveness through email:

1. Understand Customer Habits and Preferences

The first step is to understand the habits and preferences of potential customers. 

In the dynamic digital marketing world, understanding the characteristics and behavior of the audience is key to creating relevant and engaging campaigns. Hence, this strategy needs to be implemented with in-depth market research.

2. Competitor Analysis

The next step is to research business data from the same niche sector. This analysis allows you to obtain the effectiveness percentage of such strategies based on similar business niches.

By setting realistic targets based on this data, you can direct marketing efforts more precisely. The data obtained from this analysis can also help you assess the relative performance of email campaigns.

3. Customer Segmentation

Customer segmentation is a crucial strategic step that allows you to understand the needs and preferences of each group in more detail. 

This process requires you to sort and classify customers into groups based on certain criteria, such as location, age, interests, or purchasing behavior.

4. Determine the Type of Campaign

Since this strategy is based on the goals of each business, you need to identify whether your main focus is on increasing sales, raising brand awareness, or promoting specific products or services. 

For example, if your goal is to increase sales, the campaign can focus on special offers, discounts, or customer loyalty programs.

5. Review, Analyze, and Evaluate

The step you need to take after launching the campaign through email is to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of its results. 

This evaluation allows you to obtain data on how effective your marketing strategy is. One of the main aspects to measure is how well your emails are received by the target audience.

Pay attention to the email open rate to review how many customers actually see the content of your message. 

Furthermore, evaluate the click-through rate (CTR) to measure how many email recipients click on the links or buttons included in your email. 

Additionally, conversion analysis is also an integral part of this evaluation. Conversion refers to the desired actions taken by email recipients after reading your message, such as making a purchase, filling out a form, or subscribing.

In conclusion, email marketing is a marketing strategy that is crucial for businesses to stay connected with consumers and enhance authenticity in the digital business world. 

In the digital business world, in addition to email marketing, businesses also need to maximize visibility in search engines to enhance the overall user experience. 

Therefore, implementing an SEO strategy for businesses is necessary to boost brand visibility in search engine results (SERP). 

If you encounter challenges in implementation, SEO Service by cmlabs can be a reliable partner to help you dominate the digital search space. Let's collaborate and Contact cmlabs Marketing Team now!