Let's take a closer look and find answers to the following questions:
- What is email marketing?
- The specifics of email marketing companies.
- What services email marketing provider offers to businesses?
- How does email marketing works?
- What are the best email marketing companies and how do you hire the best of them?
Email Marketing Services: Basic Concepts
To build direct communication between the brand and the client (potential or existing) marketers use email marketing services.
Simply put, email marketing is a tool that promotes products/services of a certain brand via email. To make the message more productive and noticeable, email marketing specialists generate subscriber bases, those who would be interested in their newsletters. After that, they prepare and personalize them accordingly. Therefore, do not confuse "spam" and "email marketing."
It's worth explaining in more detail:
- Spam implies sending emails to users found on open sources. Such emails are often blocked;
- Email marketing is a tool-based strategy. And users only receive it after subscribing to the service.
The Dawn of Business Email Marketing Era
The first mailing list was launched in 1978 from the Digital Equipment Corporation and brought its owner what he claims to be more than 10 million dollars.
Today, the rates may not be as successful because there are automatic blocking extensions and spam filters. That's why email marketing agencies develop safe ways to send messages so that they reach their recipients.
Email Marketing Firms: Measuring the Effectiveness
In modern marketing, email marketing is a classic. When some trends come and go, email marketing remains always a powerful channel where you can interact with your client and stick to your budget. There are 7 reasons for this assumption:
- 1. Greater reach;
- 2. 90% of 100% email delivery;
- 3. Stimulates conversions;
- 4. Higher ROI (Return on Investment);
- 5. Preferred communication channel;
- 6. Open-source platform;
- 7. Modern solution.
Let's justify each of the above reasons to eliminate any doubts.
Why More Reach
Several times a year, statistics on the number of global and regional social media users appear on the web. But what about email?
There are far fewer posts with that info. However, email marketing companies keep track of this and remember that in 2013, the number of emails was 3.9 billion. Then the numbers grew. It's now estimated that every second person on the planet has an email account.
Why 90% of 100% Email Delivery
The best email marketing service providers compared social media and email delivery rates. The result was that 90% of the emails reached their subscribers. In its turn, only 3% of the subscribers checked the message in their news feed on Facebook.
Imagine that you have 1000 subscribers on Facebook, and only 30 of them will see your post. Whereas in the case of email marketing services, the result will be 900 delivered emails.
Why Stimulated Conversions
According to statistics, the click-through rate (CTR) for emails is 3%. If you take, say, Twitter, it's only 0.5%. The activity of an email marketing company will bring more customers to your site from newsletters than from messages on Twitter or any other social network.
About ROI
Do you know the difference between a social media feed and an email?
On social media, your posted message will be shown to subscribers regardless of their location, interests, gender, or other characteristics.
It's quite different with emails. Email marketing firms customize their newsletters in a way that the message reaches specific groups of people. Email marketers study their customers in detail (their age, location, interests, etc.) and then use this information to personalize their newsletters. This is why email marketing has a high ROI.
Why Preferred Communication Channel
Email marketing agencies have learned that for many people, social media is where they come to see how their families, friends, relatives, or acquaintances do. And almost all of these people (namely, 83% of users) don't want to receive ads there. They would rather brands use email marketing specifically for advertising.
Email Marketing as an Open-Source Platform
Any social network is controlled by a third party. Frequent updates and changes in algorithms result in fewer subscribers seeing companies' posts. By doing so, social media pushes paid advertising. Whereas, email is not controlled by anyone - it's an open-source platform. That means that no email marketing company has to worry about algorithm changes.
About Modern Solution
Email marketing has a long history that started at the end of the twentieth century. Since then the popularity of emails has only grown. And today, email marketing companies offer new tools to create branded messages that help attract customers.
Email Marketing Company: Emails Types
Emails come in all sorts of forms. Basically, they can all be divided into these types:
- Regular newsletters are digests with news, recommendations, or articles on specific topics - it can be anything. Such emails are typically sent on a regular basis and contain direct or hidden advertising;
- Trigger emails are automated emails that users receive after performing a specific action on the site. This can be site registration or a subscription to a newsletter. In other words, trigger emails are an automatic reaction to a subscriber’s particular action or behavioral pattern. There are quite a few types of trigger emails - welcome emails, reactivation emails, which help reactivate clients, etc.;
- Transactional emails. Such emails are automated, real-time messages that do not contain any ads - they are merely informational. This can be receipts, shipping notifications, legal updates, delivery confirmation, etc. To set up transactional emails, you need to contact reputable email marketing services providers.
How Email Marketing Service Providers Use Newsletters
After you understand the types of emails, we can say that email marketing providers use newsletters for a variety of purposes. These are communication through personal letters, brand recognition, retention/attraction of new customers, and promotion of content, products/services.
In order for your emails to work, you should understand the principles of strategy building, your goals, and business uniqueness. That's why contacting email marketing providers so their teams can provide top email marketing services.
Direct Email Marketing Services: The Strategy
As you have already understood, email marketing starts with a strategy. The latter includes business goals, the target audience, marketing campaign tactics, segmentation, types of newsletters, optimization, testing, and analytics. Let's take a closer look.
Goals
What goals should your company achieve? Answering this question is best done using the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely) system.
Audience
Any marketing begins with the study and description of the client profile. It's a time-consuming process that helps understand what tactics to use when working with your clients.
Tactics
What tactics will you use to attract your target audience? Marketers often choose multi-channel subscriptions to expand their customer base.
Segmentation
Segmentation can be used to send relevant campaigns. This tactic is often used by the best email marketing providers for personalized newsletters.
Types of Emails
At this stage, experts determine which format they will use, based on the data they receive about the company.
Timeline
When it comes to newsletters, every business owner wants to get the highest open rate. Therefore, determining the right (i.e. convenient) time for your target audience is crucial.
Format
Your emails should not only be informative but also attractive. Email marketing providers choose email and font types/sizes. They also create original email templates that match their company's unique corporate style.
Mobile Optimization
Statistics show that more than 80% of all emails are opened by subscribers on their mobile devices. This is why mobile optimization is important for email marketing services.
Testing
Email marketing service providers perform split testing to determine the best email for a specific audience. This results in choosing specific subject matters, images, headlines, and more.
Analytics
This stage is based on adjusting the strategy based on the results. It is the last stage of the strategy.
Best Email Marketing Providers
Finding the top 10 email service providers offering online email marketing services can be a real challenge. With more than 1000 companies on the market, how do you separate the leaders?
So how do you choose an email marketing company for your business?
The following rules should guide you towards full-service email marketing agencies:
- Top email marketing services are typically provided by firms that regularly do research and make discoveries in the industry. Such companies undoubtedly understand the principles of working with customers, how to interact with them through newsletters;
- Companies should work on the personalization of emails. After all, we remember that it's the personalized message that gets more feedback;
- Email marketing companies include a data collection phase in their strategies focused on improving campaign effectiveness;
- Businesses that provide the best email marketing services always do A/B testing to understand which emails work best.
These are the features that all email marketing agencies should offer. Also, you want to check customer feedback and client reviews of service providers. They directly reflect the reputation of the company on the market.
Email marketing consulting: ask your questions
The main thing to remember is that there are no bad questions - only bad answers. So don't hesitate to ask email marketing service providers everything you want. Ask them what strategies they use, how they measure the effectiveness of their campaigns. Find out if they provide reports, what platforms they use, how they establish communication, etc. And of course, don't forget to specify the financial side of the deal.
Is it worth hiring an email marketing service provider?
What are the most common problems businesses face that prevent newsletters from being effective? Limited internal resources, lack of the necessary data and strategies to work with the TA, not enough content, etc.
These are the most common problems encountered by owners. The same reasons dissuade the latter in the effectiveness of newsletters. However, firms providing email marketing services can easily cope with these problems. All they have to do is approach brand promotion comprehensively through email.
Email Marketing Service Providers: Pricing
Each company evaluates its services depending on the scale of the project, its complexity, the company status, and the services ordered. Of course, there are other also factors that affect the final price, e.g. the size of the company providing email marketing services.
Pricing can also be set for the whole project or as an hourly payment.
Email Marketing Business in 2021
Email marketing is undoubtedly the oldest channel for promoting services and products online. However, it can't in any way be called outdated. This is because every year there are new tools to work with newsletters.
First, instead of simple emails, it can be interactives - introducing your brand to your target audience will be much more efficient through interactive content. In addition, there are features like dynamic design and gamification. They perfectly cope with audience retention.
Secondly, these days, brands can (and should) talk about their values and concerns, show behind-the-scenes content, and get closer to their target audiences. That's how they prove themselves to be a real family and increase their credibility.
You can also use trigger-based automation to track the actions of your subscribers.
Conclusions
Email marketing is one of the most effective promotion channels. Thanks to various functions, platforms, specialists can create unique content which will be engaging for your clients, contribute to their attraction and retention. This results in better brand awareness, sales, and profits increase.
FAQ
Should I outsource my email marketing?
Lack of experience, time, and staff is a reason to turn to outsource email marketing service providers.
What is the most powerful email service?
Each email service has a number of features and advantages. For example, Gmail is liked by many people in all aspects, Outlook is used for integration with apps, Zoho Mail is great for business. However, if you are looking for storage with unlimited capacity, then you might want to use AOL.
Do marketing emails work?
Yes, they do. Emails, according to marketers, are an effective channel for promoting brands, products, and services.
Is email the most powerful marketing tool?
Yes. The reason for this is that only those who are interested in brand content will receive newsletters. In addition, email marketing agency specialists use different metrics to achieve their goals.
