Emails have an ability that many channels don’t which is creating valuable as well as personal touches.
Creating an email marketing plan can be challenging for small business owners. They often don’t have time to plan for more than just announcements and promos.
So, in order to keep our subscribers engaged, we will need much more than announcements or promos. Ideally, our emails should be something that every customer should look forward to reading, so that they’ll keep our business in mind.
Do be mindful that we are not sending out similar emails every time when we interact with our customers.
I will now start listing out different types of email campaigns you can implement to keep your subscribers engaged and even drive sales.
There are two broad types of marketing emails that you’re going to send out every time there's an interaction with any customer: engagement emails and transactional emails.
Engagement emails are more about storytelling, while transactional emails are directly related to making and closing a sale.
Engagement emails::
The goal of these emails is more for branding and storytelling, rather than directly making/converting a sale. Their purpose is to keep the subscribers/customers interested and engaged with the brand, even when they aren’t in a buying mood.
When they’re finally ready to buy or when our business has a special offer, the subscribers will already have an active relationship with you even if they’ve never made a purchase before.
You have to be more creative with these emails. In some cases, adding extra visuals or embedding links to audio and video work very well. Engagement emails can also be sent in real-time or on a pre-planned schedule rather than being automatically triggered.
These are the types of engagement emails you can use:
*Welcome Emails:
These are the first emails your subscribers/customers receive after they’ve confirmed their email address. The welcome email should make your branding clear.
Since this is their first interaction with your brand in their inbox, you have to make it memorable and worth their while. After all, subscribers are highly likely to open and click on the welcome emails compared to other types of promotional emails.
Experian study also found that welcome emails have higher transaction revenue per email than other transactional emails since the welcome email is also for high-engagement and indirectly works as a great transactional email.
This is the reason it’s typical for welcome emails to also offer discounts or free shipping to new subscribers.
*Tutorials and Tips Emails
We should also focus on sending a lot of instructive and educational emails that will help subscribers in ways that’s relevant to our business. These usually come in the form of how-to tutorials and tips. They can be in simple follow the steps lists or in-depth—depending on what your products do and what your subscriber needs.
Instruction emails are a great way to familiarize our subscribers with our products or services. Teaching our customers/subscribers something new can also help them make quick positive changes in their lives that they can associate with our brands instantly.
* Customer Stories
Customer stories are generated from interviewing or studying our customers. These stories could be about their success with our products or services, their personal stories, and tips to other customers like them. Their stories could also come in the form of pictures or video they’ve taken.
Since these stories come from other customers, it builds a sense of community amongst the subscribers and they are able to identify other buyers sharing their interests and experiences.
Let us study the same with an example::
Udemy, an online learning marketplace, had a 35% increase in the content engagement criteria when they started sharing customer stories on their blogs.
We can even start applying this concept to our email campaigns, and subscribers will be looking forward to your future emails and keep opening them.
*Brand Stories
Unlike customer stories which majorly focuses on your brand from customers’ perspective, brand stories comes from you or your team. This works best if you have a compelling personal story behind your brand which will give your subscribers ways to identify/relate with your brand.
Your brand’s stories can have other positive effects as well. Sometimes the story of how your products are made, the stories behind certain business decisions, can also help give your subscribers something engaging to look at and relate with.
*Re-engagement Emails
It is possible that some of your subscribers will not be as engaged as others. This could be because of their level of interest to begin with, it’s been a while since your last update, or they’re just not that interested in your emails. Whatever the reason, it’s important to encourage them to re-engage with your brand.
Around 12% of those customers receiving re-engagement emails read them. If these numbers seem small to you compared to the other types of emails on this list, consider that re-engagement campaigns are meant to win back customers that are inactive or uninterested. Getting 12% of such customers engaging with your brand again is never a small feat to achieve for any brand.
According to the study, there are two types of re-engagement emails that work really well in the market. The first is an email with “We miss you” or “Do come back” in the subject line. The second re-engagement email you can use is to indicate a dollar-off discount in the subject line, which performs twice as well as those with percentage discounts.
2. Transactional Emails::
As the name implies, transactional emails are relevant to transactions your subscribers have with your business. Their objective is to initiate or close on a sale.
They could also be used to send or request updates on various customer orders. Because of this particular reason, they are always triggered by any specific customer actions and are sent automatically.
Here are some of the transactional emails you can use in your marketing campaigns::
*Cart Abandonment Reminders
This type of transaction email is essential for any online store. These emails are sent out when potential customers add items to their online shopping cart, but don’t follow through on a purchase.
These could provide an opportunity to increase your potential profits since study says that approximately 2/3rd of any shopping carts transactions are abandoned instantly.
A good cart abandonment email should include a prominent call-to-action and some compelling copy to remind the customer why they should complete the sale. It should contain not just a large “Finish Order” button, but also some content telling customers what they’ll get as a result of their purchase.
*Time-Sensitive Promotions
Time-sensitive promotional emails include offers expiring soon. These offers could be about the limited availability of the product or service, or it could be a discount that’s only available for a limited time.
When sending out these types of emails, the subject line has to be clear about the time sensitivity of the email. Otherwise, customers might not feel the urgency to open it immediately.
*Receipts Emails
It’s a standard format used for online stores to send order confirmation or receipt emails once a customer completes a transaction.
Usually, rather than just reiterating the order details, there are many other things you can do to make your receipts bring in additional returns like including coupon codes that customers can use on their next purchase, which gives you an incentive to have a repeat customer.
Another way to encourage additional purchases via your email receipts is to show customers related products that they can buy in the future.
*Sales Follow-ups
If you are selling a physical product, the odds are your customers have to wait a bit before they receive their orders.
You can use this time to send post-transaction email updates on the status of their order, whether it's shipped, delivered, or arrived.
It's best if these emails are maximized for their branding opportunity. Don't just send order update details in plain text. You can also add the following:
Other necessary order information (expected arrival dates, what your customer has to do to receive their order or check its status).
Contact information for customer support, in case they have any questions or concerns, and promos for future purchases.
Now that we have a fair idea about the types of Email marketing used by marketers, what are you guys waiting for?
Let's start implementing these techniques and gain more results for our business!
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