When building a business on the Internet, emails are the true currency. When you sign up for anything, it’s among the first things asked of you. It’s the fastest, most direct way of communicating. You can use it to reach new leads, past customers, and even employees as a way to run your business internally.
The most important asset in your email marketing is your campaigns. Picking the right ones to run depending on your business and industry is a tricky one.
In this post, we’ll explore these email campaigns that are most effective — as per their open rates — in keeping your contacts engaged with your brand:
- Welcome Email
- Newsletters
- Standalone Promotions
- Lead Nurturing Email Series
- Post-Purchase Drip
- Social campaign
- Re-engagement campaign
As a bonus, we also have strategies that you can apply to your own marketing no matter what business you have.
Welcome Emails
When GetResponse studied millions of emails from different industries during the last two quarters of 2018, they found that welcome emails have an open rate of more than 84%. Beyond that, they also have higher-than-usual click-throughs, which is when people click links within the email.
Out of all campaigns, welcome emails are almost foolproof in engaging people right after they opt into your list. Most people expect and even await to get this email as soon as they subscribe.
One email is the most common way of doing this campaign, but some businesses make a series of 3 to 5 emails.
Strategy
Use your welcome campaign to introduce yourself or your business. Give them the rundown of what you can offer, how their life can be easier with your products or services. You can also ask them specific information related to your business like their age or birthday so you can put them in appropriate segmented lists in the future.
Welcome emails are a way to utilize the hype of your new contact. Skipping this part or waiting long before sending it can actually increase the possibility of ending up in spam because they might forget that they subscribed to you.
Newsletters
Newsletters are one of the most popular email campaigns. It’s a universal kind of email that can be used by any business in any industry. It’s used to share content and lead people deeper into the sales funnel.
A subtle way of directing your contacts to what you want them to see, the goal is to gradually direct them to make a purchase. This is not the campaign if you want instant results, but it’s a necessary process if you want to lay out the foundation for loyal and fully engaged customers.
Strategies
First set out a goal for your newsletter. Do you want to use it to direct more traffic to your website? Or perhaps invite people to your events? Some use it to encourage repeat transactions with past customers and also obtain new ones.
Newsletters can be used for a lot of things, but you have to be sure of your intention. That’s the only way that you can measure success with newsletters because it’s a slow process that don’t incite an immediate action.
Standalone Promotions
Promotional emails are possibly the most common type of emails. You probably have one now in your inbox. If they’re not strategized properly, wherein one email builds up to another until they convert, these emails can just pile up and lead people to unsubscribe.
Standalone promotions have only one goal. In this sense, they’re like landing pages.
You have a focused call-to-action that you can put sole focus on in the email. Unlike newsletters, this one-off email aims a direct response from the one sent email.
Strategies
Instead of putting several links within the email that can distract from your main call-to-action, be straightforward about what you want the customers to do. Visit a webpage, watch a webinar, buy a product, or reserve a seat in your workshop are a few examples.
That said, it’s still important to hint at their existing desire. You’re simply directing that desire towards your offer. What makes this type of email effective depends on how well you can drive your point without being pushy.
Lead Nurturing Email Series
Lead nurturing emails are only similar with stand-alone promotional emails in terms of having one focused call-to-action, but the way they’re delivered is the complete opposite of one another. Lead nurturing emails are sent as a series that run over a period of weeks.
Strategies
Since this is a series of emails that have one purpose, it needs to be more coherent than, say, newsletters and as focused as dedicated promotional emails. Plan this as you would a big project because every email until the last one need to be decided before launching the first one. Make sure that with every email, you’re picking up from the last and building curiosity, interest, or desire in your contacts.
Post Purchase Drip
A post-purchase drip is a follow-up email sent after a customer makes a purchase. It’s a way to provide more information about the product. Sometimes tips for how to use it or added benefits can be included.
This isn’t a popular type of email. Very few take the time to make this, which is why I think this email is valuable if you want to make an impression to your customers.
Strategies
Be candid about the features and products that your product offers. Now that they bit the bullet and purchased from you, it’s your job to make sure it’s something they can use regularly. In this kind of email, you can also encourage them to leave a review or testimonial. Make it a call-to-action so that you know they used it and they have something to say about it.
This doesn’t only apply to businesses with products. If you’re a service-based business, in my case a contractor business, you can also give tips for how customers can utilize their new home improvements. You can also ask for testimonials so you have something to put on your website.
Social Campaign
A social email campaign is simply for connecting all your channels. In this case, you direct your email contacts to your social media accounts and eventually back to email but with a stronger connection to your brand.
Strategies
With the integration of email marketing to your socials, there are plenty of options. You can ask past customers to share something on Facebook, preferably something similar to what they already purchased from you or the exact product.
You can also encourage people to be more interactive with your social media pages. This encourages engagement and makes your pages more visible to customer’s friends of friends.
Re-engagement Campaign
A re-engagement campaign is an email series sent specifically to contacts who haven’t engaged with your emails for an extended period. Re-engagement emails are a way to clean out your list of people who have probably changed emails or have lost interest in your business.
It’s also a reminder for people who may still want to actively consume your emails but haven’t had the time to go over them. Ultimately, this is a method to make a solid contact list with people who are engaged and genuinely interacting with your emails.
Strategy
The strategy here lies not in the email itself but in the act of straightening out your email list. Lack of engagement from your contacts can hurt your email deliverability.
The Importance of Mobile Optimization
Mobile drives most of the open rates nowadays. It’s been the dominant device where people view their emails from since 2011 and it’s only grown from 2018 statistics. Regardless of the campaigns you’re implementing, it’s important to make all the emails optimized for mobile to increase open rates and click-throughs.