Email Marketing Guide 2023

Email Marketing Guide 2023

Explanation Email Marketing

Although Email Marketing or email marketing belongs to the old school in marketing, and some marketers believe that its impact is weak, in fact it is still considered one of the most powerful and important e-marketing channels , as it is an essential part in the marketing process of any online business.

It works alongside and complements other marketing channels.

In fact, email marketing will continue to be an important marketing element and will never become consumed, because everything that happens on the Internet is related in one way or another to email, as it is the first and most important official means of communication on the Internet.

E-commerce professionals know the value of email marketing, as the return on investment in email marketing is usually greater than most other marketing channels.

Also, email is one of the best channels to communicate with interested customers, and share the latest news, products, and services with an audience that already knows you, so it's time to take advantage of that most effective and income-generating marketing channel.

Note: This article is a comprehensive guide on how to market via e-mail, which we will start with a theoretical aspect in which we explain what e-mail marketing is, its importance and advantages, and then we will move on to the practical side of how to actually start.

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is one of the oldest and best e-marketing strategies , through which you can get highly targeted visitors, whether to your company's website or online store.

Email marketing depends on communication between a site and the targeted users of this site. It is a marketing method that enables you to send marketing messages to users who have visited your site before.

In order to understand the importance of email marketing, you only have to open your private email, you will find messages from Facebook informing you that you have new friend requests and with a link to return to open your account.

You will find messages from the online stores from which you have purchased before, telling you that there are products suitable for you, and you will find other messages from some sites informing you that there is important new content that has been added to the site.

And you will find many, many other marketing messages. In fact, there is no strong business on the Internet that does not use Email Marketing.

The importance of Email Marketing visitors

Why are email visitors of particular importance? The answer simply boils down to the way the mailing list was collected.

As the visitor subscribes to the mailing list with all his will, and he is expected to receive emails containing new offers or marketing messages that are primarily in the area of ​​his interest.

For example, if you work in the field of commission marketing , and assuming that you choose to market products related to food recipes (such as a book, a guide, or a cooking guide).

If you are a user of email marketing, you will actually take visitors first to your landing page , before entering the product sales page.

In this case, you will offer your visitors to join your mailing list, you will motivate them by giving them a free book, for example.

Assuming that they have actually purchased what you are marketing or not, you can still reach them via email, as they are now very targeted visitors in everything related to the field of cooking and recipes, and therefore you can market the same product or market other products to them in the same field.

In this case, they know very well that when they subscribe to your mailing list, they will receive emails with marketing offers.

But if you are one of those who are not looking to build mailing lists from the visitors they get, then you are missing out on a lot.

Advantages of email marketing

1. Ease of setting the tools through which you can get access to your mailing list

Just subscribe to one of the companies that provide email marketing service (we will list the most important of these companies), then put the company code on your site or your landing page, and start collecting your mailing list.

Of course, you can set messages automatically to reach each subscriber according to exactly what you plan, everything can be set automatically as you want specifically.

2. The low cost compared to the benefits that can be reaped through it

All you have to do is pay the company that provides the email marketing service, while using the same visitors that you have, and you will get double benefits from that.

As we mentioned at the beginning of the article, email marketing has a return on investment that is not comparable to any other marketing channel.

3. The ability to accurately measure results

You can easily track the results, in terms of the percentage of those who opened the email out of the total number of recipients, and the number of people who clicked on the link in the message...etc. , through the company that provides Email Marketing services.

4. This type of marketing is characterized by taking a personal image in dealing with the customer

Meaning that you can formulate a message that appears personal and directed to each customer separately, as email marketing services allow you to put the customer's name at the beginning of the message.

Not only that, but you can set certain messages to be sent at certain times, and according to certain events. For example, at the beginning of the subscription, you can send a message thanking the user for being subscribed to the mailing list.

It is primarily a personal message that arrives on the client's personal email, and this is what makes email marketing a very effective marketing channel.

We have come to the end of the theoretical part of defining the world of email marketing, its importance and advantages, and now let us start with the practical part.

What do you need to start Email Marketing

In order to enter the world of Email Marketing, you must first have your own mailing list, and this is achieved in one of two ways, either by purchasing a mailing list, or by building a mailing list yourself.

There are a lot of risks that you need to be aware of if you decide to buy a mailing list.

For example:

You will pay a lot for something that you can get for less, if you build the mailing list yourself.

You will find it somewhat difficult to find the right source to buy a mailing list.

It is possible to buy a mailing list, and then discover that it is not targeted for the purpose for which you purchased it.

The secret of email marketing success depends on trust. Internet users often do not open messages sent from sites unknown to them, so your chance of achieving results from purchased lists is weak.

Therefore, many marketers who are pioneers in the field of email marketing do not recommend purchasing a mailing list. Accordingly, if you want to enter the field of email marketing, you must build your own mailing list.

In this case, it will be one of two:

Owner of a website, blog or online store (owner of Business Online).

She works in commission marketing.

1. In the event that you own a business and have a website that represents it

In this case, you must place the mailing list subscription form on the site, in addition to that, you must motivate visitors to subscribe to your mailing list, such as giving them a free book, for example.

2. In the event that you work in the field of commission marketing

In this case, you must create a (Landing Page), which is an intermediate page between the direct source of visitors and the advertiser's page (which may be a page for selling a product or a page for a specific offer).

And you must have a convincing reason for the visitor to subscribe to your mailing list, such as giving him a free book, or making subscribing to the mailing list a step that must be done in order for him to reach the advertiser's page.

How to email marketing

Email marketing is mainly done through the correct preparation and adjustment of the postal marketing system, as it depends heavily on the mechanism that you have to set up, and then monitor performance and make the necessary developments to improve results.

Here are separate steps how you can do email marketing:

1. Build the system

Email Marketing has a special nature, somewhat different from other types of digital marketing . There is a system that must be built first in order to start the email marketing process.

This system consists of some elements, namely:

A/ Involvement in one of the email marketing services

It is a service for collecting and managing mailing lists, through which the data of subscribers to the mailing list (name - e-mail, etc.) is stored and saved.

And through it, messages are sent to subscribers automatically according to pre-settings (the most important providers of this service will be dealt with later).

b/ Designing a form to capture user data

There are many types of these forms, some of which appear as a pop-up window above the content of the site, and some that appear next to the content of the site.

In other cases, user data is captured through the registration process on the sites, for example, the process of opening a Facebook account that requires you to enter the name and email, and then this data is used to send messages to you, without registering in a separate form.

A/ Linking the mailing list subscription form to the Email Marketing service

This is done through a code granted to you by the company providing the service, and it is placed on the site, which carries out the data transfer process.

Although this is a software process, it is not difficult and non-programmers can accomplish it, and you will often find most email marketing companies have educational videos and articles on how to link the service to your site.

As for WordPress and MailChimp users , they can use this great plugin .

d/ Setting your brand identity

Email marketing companies allow you to create a unique design for the messages that you send to subscribers, such as placing your company's logo, and choosing specific colors to use (by creating messages in html).

It also enables you to use images, or create Embed from your store for some products, as well as put communication data (such as website link, email address, company name, and social media page icons).

E/ Setting the messaging system

The messages are the final marketing output from the e-mail marketing process, and they are set by the e-mail marketing company, and they are sent automatically according to pre-set orders.

The messages here are the ones through which you will get marketing benefits, but you must understand very well that not every message that you will send to the subscribers of the mailing list is a marketing message.

Therefore, let us divide the messages through the email marketing system into two types:

Regular messages:

These are messages that are sent automatically based on a specific action taken by the user, the most important of which are:

E-mail activation message (which is sent to the new subscriber, which contains a link to activate the e-mail address).

The welcome message for the new subscription (which is sent after activating the e-mail to congratulate the subscriber on joining the mailing list).

It is worth noting that regular messages are set once at the start of email marketing, and they are often not changed because they are a fixed thing, but of course they can be changed or modified as you wish.

Marketing messages:

These are the messages that you send to the mailing list for promotional purposes such as:

A weekly message with the articles that have been added to your blog.

A message containing offers on specific products from your online store.

Abandoned cart reminder.

These messages are also sent automatically, but they are often modified according to the marketing plan that you follow at a particular time.

Now you are ready to start using email marketing to achieve marketing benefits for your business… so move on to the next step.

2. Build your mailing list

In the world of Email Marketing, this process is called Op-tin, and there is another important term called Double Opt-In. The difference between the first and the second is; In the first place, the registration process for the mailing list ends once the data is entered.

In Double Opt-In, the e-mail address must be activated, by sending an e-mail with a special link. The user must click on this link to activate registration in the mailing list.

Of course, all email marketing professionals recommend building Double Opt-In mailing lists.

Building a mailing list is not easy, and you have to do marketing efforts and do a lot of experiments and tests to reach the best possible result.

The key to success in building a mailing list is by providing users with a strong reason to subscribe to the mailing list (such as appearing on brand, giving them good content).

For example: When you buy from Amazon, you will confidently put a checkmark in front of receiving promotional messages on your mail, and this is because it is a reliable brand. Also, if you find a blog that provides good content, you will confidently fill out the subscription form to the mailing list.

3. Start sending marketing messages

This process is linked to the system settings, so it is difficult to manually send marketing messages to users.

Hence the importance of the system. For example, you can set a message that is sent every month containing the best-selling products in your online store.

You can set marketing messages for users weekly, monthly, or every 15 days, and this is not the only thing that can be set through the system, as there are many other advanced settings through which mailing list subscribers can be classified and private messages sent to them according to their classification.

For example, you can send a message to every shopper who has passed three days since he left a shopping cart without completing the sale.

Here's an example:

“Welcome Ahmed”

“Three days ago you selected some products to buy, but you did not complete the purchase”

We are contacting you to tell you that the products you have chosen are still available in our store, and you can log in to your account and complete the purchase through the link below with the click of a button.

Now let's move on to another important point.

The most important criteria for successful email marketing

Email marketing is like any other type of marketing, it has success criteria, which you can observe to understand how successful you are in email marketing.

1. The rate at which messages are opened

What is meant by the message opening rate here is how many users open the message sent out of every hundred users who receive the message, for example if you have a mailing list consisting of 100 users, and you send a message, and you get an opening rate of 15%, this means that there are 15 users who opened the message of the 100 users who received it.

When the open rate is between 20-25%, then this means that you have an effective strategy, and if your email open rate is 5-10%, then you need to examine your program and find areas for improvement.

To calculate click-through rate, take the number of recipients who clicked on your message, and divide that by the number of emails you sent.

Of course, there are many factors that contribute to the increase in the rate of opening messages, such as:

How was the mailing list built from the ground up?

How reliable a business or brand is.

The title of the message and its attractiveness.

2. Repeat opening messages

Are you wondering if potential customers are interested or not? Look at how many times they opened your message.

If the number is large, then this means that they found your email valuable, and continued to deal with it, and it is clear that they experienced something that they found valuable to them. It is also important to measure the time that the user spent reading the message.

The frequency of opening messages depends primarily on the trust that you have to build between yourself and your users.

3. Clicks on links in the message

This is in line with our frequent open rate. Someone opened your email, now what?

Tracking clicks in your email indicates that users are interested in your content, whether it's an aggregated product demo, an article, or a short video (note: videos get the most clicks).

Measuring link clicks will let you know what content and offers your audience likes, and then help you improve your way of placing links in messages.

Also, the percentage of those who clicked on the links must be measured out of the total number of those who opened the message. According to our previous example, if the message was opened by 15 users, how many of them clicked on the links in the message.

Also read: How to generate leads from email marketing (12 very effective tips)

4. Unsubscribe rate

No one likes to be rejected, but unfortunately this is part of email marketing, and the unsubscribe rate is simply the percentage of those who unsubscribe from the total number of people who received the message. In our previous example, if 3 percent unsubscribed, here the unsubscribe rate is 3%.

If you have a high unsubscribe rate, then you need to examine your email marketing strategy, because perhaps your content is not very interesting, or your topic title is unattractive.

5. Conversion rate

Email conversion rate is one of the best “macro” KPIs you can determine, while some prefer to focus on overall profitability or return on investment.

The typical return on investment for email marketing is 122%.

Do you know, my dear, what is the return on investment for your advertisements outside the home, radio, television or print? Let me tell you, you probably won't be able to measure the ROI of traditional advertising channels like email marketing.

The number of people who download your offer or purchase a product from your email, these are the conversions that drive sales, and allow you to continue to improve your email marketing program.

To apply in our previous example, how many of the 15 people who opened the message will purchase your product (this is if the message contains a purchase link, for example).

How to improve email conversion rates?

There are two main ways to improve conversion rates:

Improve the personalization of your offering with the right omnichannel and segmentation strategies.

You can improve the mechanics of the presentations themselves (implementing best practices such as submission times, message headers, etc.).

Also read: How to start digital marketing (a simplified explanation for beginners)

How do you write an attractive email address to improve your open, click and conversion rates?

The message title is the most important line in the entire content of your email, so you should follow the recommendations of experts, including:

Never send an email without an address, because this leaves a bad impression on the user, and free email services (such as Gmail) classify it as spam.

Do not send an email with a title that is too long or too short, because this leaves a bad impression on the user.

Do not send an email with a deceptive address to increase the open rate, because this will negatively affect it in the long run.

Include the username of the email address.

Use the question form to pique your users' curiosity.

Keep the title easy and focused on the topic.

Use an intriguing and shocking headline, for example, “Your marketing plan is failing because you are not thinking in the right direction” (a great title for a blog about e-marketing).

Do not write a title that burns the content of the message.

Use numbers if possible.

The most important sites that provide Email Marketing services

As we mentioned above, the job of email marketing service providers includes building a complete system for recording and saving subscriber data, as well as controlling and managing the message sending system automatically.

In short, email services provide you with everything you need from a technical point of view in order to start marketing via email, and here are briefly some of the most important features that email services give you through your account with them:

Email marketing services are a storage unit for users who are subscribed to your mailing lists.

Provides templates for user data capture forms.

It provides you with the ability to automatically send messages that you want to send according to orders you specify.

It provides templates and templates for HTML messages with the ability to modify them.

It provides you with accurate statistics on the rates of opening messages, clicking on links, unsubscribing...etc.

Provides you with the ability to upload and use ready-made mailing lists (according to certain conditions).

Provides you with the ability to take a copy of your mailing lists.

Of course, each company has different features and features, and perhaps in some companies you will find more features, and most companies provide monthly paid plans, according to the size of the mailing list, but some companies provide free plans with very limited capabilities.

Here is a list of the most important and popular Email Marketing service providers:

Moosend

Omnisend

GetResponse

ConvertKit

HubSpot

ConstantContact

mailchimp

iContact

AWeber

Tips for success in email marketing

I will conclude my article with some top tips that will help you succeed in email marketing.

1. Make it easy to subscribe to your email, add a form to your homepage and all your social media accounts to get more subscribers.

2. Encourage your subscribers to share and forward your emails.

3. Include social sharing buttons and an “email a friend” button in your emails.

4. Personalize all your emails, when you personalize your emails with your username it increases your open rates and conversions

5. Send your promotional messages at the right time, for example, the beginning of the month is the right time for marketing, and Thursday is the right time for luxury…etc.

6. Never neglect to follow up on the results of your marketing campaigns, and do more tests and experiments to get the best possible results.

Always remember that tracking and analysis is one of the basics of e-marketing in general.

7. Avoid using words that are classified as spam (such as free, get, money...) Do a search for all the words.

8. Avoid using practices that are classified as spam such as adding more links in the message.

9. Don't overwhelm your mailing list subscribers with messages, one weekly or even monthly message that is effective is better than one every day and leaves an annoying effect on the user.

10. Deal with your mailing list on the basis that it represents people, so always make sure to build a relationship, and try to appear as an assistant, not a marketer.

11. Think about how the average consumer interacts with a brand these days. Buying is not linear. Many times buyers interact with you through multiple channels – email, apps, social media – before making a purchase.