Email marketing is the use of email to build brand awareness, nurture B2B and B2C relationships, generate leads, and motivate prospective and existing customers to take some type of action that benefits your business. It is a low-cost way to achieve impressive global reach with personalized and targeted messaging that can make a difference in your business.
A good email list consists of people who have already expressed an interest in – or opted into – receiving messages from your company. There are many ways to collect email addresses from willing participants, including website registration forms, lead-gen offers, Facebook promotions, offline events, and promoting your emails through other media like print and direct mail.
The most important driver of success for emails once they get delivered is well-written and value-added content. It’s important to apply copywriting best practices to both your subject line and your email body. This includes using action language, keeping the message clear and concise, and focusing on benefits rather than features. It’s also critical to take the extra step of formatting emails to display properly on various mobile devices.
Testing and measuring is common practice across all marketing initiatives as a way to learn what works and what doesn’t. Email marketers can leverage a solid set of metrics that have been proven to provide actionable feedback including, delivery rate, open rate, bounce rate, click-through rate, conversion rate, and unsubscribe rate.