What is Email Marketing?

In today’s digital world, we assume that anyone can write an email. Isn’t it? We all send and receive quite a few emails every day. However, to your surprise, even today, very few professionals know how to compose emails effectively. Yes, writing an email is an art in itself and requires a certain degree of creativity, focus and control over language. In fact, Email Marketing has emerged as a profession in itself in the era of Digital Marketing. Let’s learn more about it…

What is Email Marketing all about?

Email Marketing is one of the forms of Digital Marketing, in which an email is sent to a group of people based on certain criteria. For instance, an Indian organization sending an email informing its U.S. customers regarding the online courses they can attend. Thus, Email marketing is a channel to create the brand image of one’s company by keeping the customers as well as the potential customers engaged with new products, features, services, updates, etc.

Permission based – Email marketing is permission-based marketing. This means that you can send your newsletters and promo emails only to those readers who have ‘opt-in’ for these. Also, you need to mention why they are receiving these emails. Email Marketing also gives the option to your subscribers to ‘unsubscribe’ from your mailing list.

Types of Email Marketing:

1. Periodic Newsletters:
Sending Weekly/Monthly/Quarterly newsletters to your subscribers is one type of email marketing. Newsletters are a great way to keep your readers updated regarding new features, services, blog posts uploaded on your website.

2. Promo Emails:
Promotional mails are sent out to people to announce an offer that you have launched in your company. It could be giving a 15% discount on products till a certain period or Buy1, Get 2 FREE offer! Promo emails are a great way of attracting customers and leads to purchase your products/services.

3. Autoresponders:
Autoresponders/Email Streams/Email Sequences are a series of emails sent to your leads/customers once they register to your website or when they have filled an online form on your landing page. Autoresponders usually begin with a Welcome Email, followed by subsequent emails showcasing your strengths, testimonials or future plans.

4. Email Surveys:
Another form of email marketing is sending surveys to your clients or potential customers in the form of emails. Surveys help to get opinions of your readers and take decisions based on these results. For example, a survey can be sent to find out which product your readers like better – Product A or Product B to take better decisions.

Benefits of Email Marketing:

In the midst of so many channels of Digital and Traditional marketing, why would one choose Email Marketing? This is because Email Marketing has surprisingly several benefits over other forms of marketing. Let’s look into these:

1. Easy, Quick and Effective communication:
Undoubtedly, email marketing is one of the easiest and the quickest forms of marketing. You can send an email from anywhere, even at the comfort of your home. As it is a personalized form of marketing, it is very effective in communicating the core message to the relevant audience.

2. Reach Targeted Audience:
Email marketing facilitates you to send emails to targeted audience. We can maintain a list of subscribers based on certain market segmentation which could be city-wise, gender-wise, product-wise, income bracket and so on and send relevant emails to relevant list. For example, through email marketing we can easily send promotional offers related to automobiles only to male subscribers. We can also add personalized information to connect to the target audience instantly.

3. Reaching Wider Audience:
You are free to send your newsletters or a promotional email to all those subscribers who have ‘opted-in’ for such emails. So, the broader is your subscriber list, more chances you have to reach larger segments and spread your brand, identity and creditworthiness. Also, email marketing helps in creating a strong bond among subscribers globally.

4. Measurable:
You can easily measure the success of your email campaign which you recently sent out! Certain criteria like open rates, click rates, delivery rates, responses, conversions, help you to judge what works out and what doesn’t and eventually allows you to frame future marketing strategies based on your past experiences. A fair amount of Analytics will give you a clear picture of how your customers and leads are responding to your brand.

5. Mobile friendly:
As more and more people are getting mobile with their smart phones, it is imperative to reach your targeted audiences on their mobiles too! Email marketing does this for you. Your readers can easily check their inboxes and even respond to your emails while travelling or dining out via their mobiles.

6. Environment friendly:
No paper work, no physical logistics, just a perfect solution for today’s environmentally-threatened world! Thus, not only email marketing helps individuals, businesses but also our ecosystem by reducing the need to cut trees and use paper for conveying personalized messages to clients.

7. Helps to integrate with social Media sites:

With little awareness, you can easily integrate your email marketing with social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and so on. You can do strategic, channel or message integration. For instance, email marketing can help in increasingly your Facebook fans and vice-versa.

Popular Email Marketing Providers:

Here is a list of some of the popular Email Marketing Providers that help companies in creating targeting lists, beautiful email templates and help in sending emails at specific date and time:

• MailChimp
• Constant Contact
• StreamSend
• iContact
• AWeber
• GetResponse
• CampaignMonitor

Career in Email Marketing:

Email Marketing has emerged as one of the most sought-after career options in Digital Marketing. Here is a glimpse of how popular this field is getting:

http://jobsearch.naukri.com/email-marketing-jobs
http://www.linkedin.com/job/q-email-marketing-specialist-jobs
http://www.indeed.co.in/jobs?q=Email+Marketing&l=
http://www.simplyhired.co.in/a/jobs/list/q-email+marketing

Browse through the links below to learn about the average salary Email Marketing Experts are getting:

http://www.indeed.com/salary/Email-Marketing-Manager.html
http://everydaylife.globalpost.com/email-marketing-salary-13511.html
http://www.totaljobs.com/salary-checker/average-email-marketing-salary
http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/jobs/uk/email%20marketing.do

Email Marketing is a very dynamic career where you learn new things everyday. You deal with technology, you deal with people, and by merging the two, you market your brand effectively with a wide spectrum of audience. A few tips like keeping your emails creative, relevant, spam-free, timely with effective call-to-actions, will take you Email Marketing a long way!