Email marketing is one of the oldest internet marketing techniques. It’s been around for ages. If you think, sending emails to promote your products/services is an anachronism of a bygone era, you couldn’t be more wrong. Emails are still a very effective way to attract and retain customers.

I know this will come as a surprise to you, but emails still deliver tremendous ROI. According to a Gigaom research report, ‘Workhorses and Dark Horses – Digital Tactics for Customer Acquisition’:

56% of respondents say email marketing is very effective for customer retention.

Marketers also believe emails are the most effective model for revenue generation.

These figures leave very little room for doubt that the “humble” email, for long considered to be the old marketing workhorse, is as effective today as it was a few years ago. The efficiency and deliverability of email marketing hasn’t dulled one little bit in spite of the arrival of other tactics like content and social media marketing.

But there is a problem. With over a 100 billion emails being sent and received every day, the construct of your email assumes tremendous importance. You can’t just send any email to your target customers. You need to send an actionable email that makes people want to buy your products or services. As can be imagined, this is easier said than done. But, if you want to leverage the immense potential of email marketing, you can’t just send any email to your target customers; you need to send emails that work.

Let’s take a closer look at the kind of emails you need to start sending out, if you want to capitalize on your email marketing efforts:

1. The ‘We’ve Got Something Good for You’ Mail

Send a mail if you really have something important to say to your target customers, for e.g. you’ve got a new product you want to introduce, a fantastic video chat lined up or something else.

The Inc. mail is talking about an amazing event that has been planned. It is a video chat with the founder of Quirky, and it’s free! The mail makes its point brilliantly, without going overboard. Its design is clean and professional looking and has an understated appeal about it.

The key here is to make your point in a manner that encourages recipients to take action. The focus must be on ‘conversion’. If you take a look at the example of the Inc. email, you will find that readers will want to ‘sign up’ for the video chat. The text and use of images is right on the ball. Its design and wording is absolutely perfect.

2. The ‘Offers’ Mail

If you are sending an email about special offers, make sure the best offers are clearly displayed in the mail. This is the kind of actionable email that has a higher chance of bringing customers to your website or even physical store. You will do well to remember that your target customers don’t have all the time in the world to go through your mail; what’s more, you are not the only seller sending them emails about product offers and discounts. So, it’s important you are able to make your point quickly and effectively.

3. The ‘Reminder’ Mail

A no-nonsense reminder email about a special offer that is about to end should be sent to people on your email list. Reinforce the USP of the offer without beating about the bush and end the mail with a link to the offer. Such mails are simple, straightforward and make their point quickly.

You don’t have to make a song and dance about a reminder. The Copyblogger mail makes its point in three lines. All one needs to do is glance at the mail to find out what it wants to say. It’s a text book example of a reminder mail.

4. The ‘Don’t Miss Out’ Mail

This email illustrates the importance of an email subject line. The words ‘Last Chance to Register’ create a sense of urgency and a fear of missing out on a great offer. The email copy talks about the offer (chance to attend a webinar) and what’s it all about. The idea is to make sure the recipient gives your mail a reading if he/she hasn’t done so earlier.

Never stop trying to sell a product/ service to somebody who you feel will be interested in it. But how do you make sure your emails don’t put the recipient off? You can do this by ensuring your emails reinforce the point made in the earlier emails. Think of it as progressive reinforcement. This makes it easy for your mails to make a degree of sense to the recipient.

5. The ‘Leverage Holidays’ Mail

One of the best times to send an email is during the holiday season, when your customers are looking for products that could be gifted to friends or family. If you are selling products/services specifically designed for the holiday season, send a mail like the one ‘Leaders in Heels’ sent its target customers. The mail includes an image of the product, a description that says why it’s a perfect pick for the holiday season and a link that takes readers to the ‘buy’ page.

As a business, you need to continuously explore new avenues that help you sell your products and services; the holiday season is a recurring avenue that shouldn’t be missed at all costs. If you are a products-based business, you could sell products that make for ideal gifts; on the other hand, if you are selling specific services then a special holiday discount on some or all your services will be a very good idea.

How you go about making the most of your holiday season is your call, but do it you must. And in email, you have a potent medium that will successfully put your holiday products/services offerings in front of your customers.

6. The ‘Welcome’ Mail

If somebody is showing interest in your products and services, send a welcome mail. It should include links to the download page (or products page) and also a ‘how-to’ page that offers detailed information about product functionality.

Evernote follows up the welcome mail with a series of ‘tip mails’ that help first time users create their first Note and also optimize the use of this suite of software and services. The idea here is to help users become more conversant with the functionality of your products. You don’t want a scenario wherein a target user’s interest in your product turns into frustration, just because he/she is unable to optimize its use.

7. The ‘Freebie’ Mail that Doesn’t Come Across as Such

A business needs to engage with its existing and potential customers regularly. If you are running a business, it’s difficult to come up with new product/services or send a personalized discount offer all the time.

The next best thing is to send useful, actionable niche centric information in the form of a freebie. It could take the form of free eBook, guide, video or podcast. Such freebies can boost your reputation and increase the trust factor in your brand.

The more such freebies land up in your customers’ inbox, the better it will be for your brand’s awareness and reputation. What you are also doing by sending such mails is telling your customers that you are not only interested in selling to them but also want to help improve their knowledge base; you are also interested in helping them take better business decisions.

At the end of the day, it is trust and reputation that will help in customer acquisition and retention.

8. The ‘Newsletter’ Mail

One of the ways you can use emails to regularly engage with your business’s target audience is by sending a weekly/monthly newsletter. This newsletter can include information about the latest product launches, discount offers and also the latest happenings in your niche. The key is to make your newsletters as interesting as possible. You want them to be read and the stories in them to be shared. You don’t want them to be ignored.

Coming up with an interesting and extremely readable newsletter every week, or month, isn’t easy. You need to think of it strategically and cannot afford to take this task lightly. Your marketing team needs to sit down with your content writers to brainstorm ideas. These ideas need to be worked out keeping the needs of your target audience in mind. Think of your newsletters as ‘solutions providers’; thinking of them as marketing material will just make them one dimensional. Try and make your newsletters as multidimensional as possible.

This will ensure your target audience looks forward to your newsletters.

9. The ‘Did You Miss It’ Mail

Don’t confuse this with a reminder mail. This one starts off with the assumption that the recipient must have missed out on signing up for a particular service (read solution) or buying a particular product.

Now, one of the reasons why this happens is they were not interested in your product or service in the first place. But that was then and there is a good chance that circumstances have changed; your product/services can make more sense to them now than they did earlier. There is no harm in sending a mail talking about the recipient having missed an opportunity to use your product/service and the fact that it is still available to them.

Such mails make a great deal of sense if they are backed by solid evidence that the recipients are actually interested in using your product/service.

10. The ‘Give it a Rethink’ Mail

Think of a scenario where a potential customer has signed up for a free service, but you want to get him to sign on for its paid version. You need to keep reminding that person the paid version is a sound investment and can deliver high ROI. The fact is that your target customers will sign up for different free services they believe will help their business in some form or other.

If you don’t remind them to try the paid version of your service, they might continue to use the free version; and if and when they do decide to try out a paid version of a service, that particular service might not be yours; some other provider might have beaten you to the finishing line because he might have sent those ‘rethink’ emails, which you hadn’t.

It’s important to remember that when a customer finally makes a decision to sign up for a paid service he chooses the service provider who’s been making a solid case for the paid service.

Your Turn

If you are not sending in these emails to your existing and potential customers, you are missing out on a huge opportunity to grow your sales. If you belong to a school of thought that sending emails is an outdated marketing tactic, its time you rethink and start implementing a well-defined email marketing strategy. You will soon realize that emails are a great way of adding new customers and retaining old ones.

The great part about using emails is that their scope is not limited. You can craft them the way they fit and in a way that you believe will deliver maximum returns. This is what makes email marketing so special and is a big reason why it has stood the test of time as a marketing tactic.

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