Your Complete Guide to Email Marketing

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Table of contents:

• Introduction
• What is Email Marketing?
• When to Use Email Marketing
• Types of Email Marketing Messages
• Email Marketing Strategies
• Conclusion

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Introduction

With its personalization features and time saving potential, email marketing campaigns are perfect for maintaining customer relationships and inviting readers to work with your business. 

But which businesses benefit the most from these campaigns? What kinds of email marketing messages are there? And how can you make sure your emails stand out?

My name is Hannah Robertson: the copywriter responsible for the Force Media Minute newsletter series. Today, I am going to cover some of the secret tips that bring our newsletter to life to help you get a head start on your email marketing journey.

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What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message via email to convince readers to take a specific action that benefits the highlighted business. 

These personalized messages come in all shapes, sizes, and formats, and they are perfect for reaching customers at any stage of the marketing funnel. 

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When to Use Email Marketing

Email marketing is especially helpful for businesses that:

• Frequently update inventory or services
• Target business owners or professionals
• Need to remind customers of appointments or dates
• Find great success from repeat customers
• Require their customers to have great trust in them
• Sell products or services that customers tend to research before buying

What makes emails stand out from social media posts is its personalized nature. It would be pretty alarming to see your appointment reminder posted on a social media platform! Beyond that, emails maintain a lot of the same benefits of social media posting, which is key if your target audience is not the kind to spend much time on those platforms.

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Types of Email Marketing Messages

Some of the most common types of marketing emails include:

• Welcome emails
• Confirmation emails
• Updates in inventory, product lineup, etc.
• Newsletters
• Product feedback messages
• Appointment reminders

Welcome/confirmation emails can both thank customers for their interest and confirm that they actually meant to sign up for this service. These emails establish a trusting relationship early and let people know what they can expect.

Update emails and newsletters keep customers up to date on your business so that they are the first to know when there is something new for them to follow, watch, or buy.

Finally, product feedback messages and appointment reminders are excellent for maintaining a personal relationship with customers as these emails seem to speak to the reader directly. 

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Email Marketing Strategies

To gain the most leads from your email campaign, it is important to use a platform, be human and personal, think inside the inbox, and funnel content toward a call to action.

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Use a platform

While it may be tempting, manually sending emails to each customer can be incredibly overwhelming and unnecessary when you have a lot to juggle at once. 

Email marketing platforms make the process easy. They allow you to customize your template to be visually appealing, and they monitor your open rate, click-through rate, and more to help you perfect your emails. 

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Be human and personal

As our founder Jordan said in his interview with NexHealth, sounding human is the best approach to compelling copywriting. The same is absolutely true for email campaigns! 

Due to the grand personalization options of emails, the best way to sound human is to send emails that are tailor-made to match the readers’ current stage in the marketing funnel. 

For example, if you just got an oil change, you probably wouldn’t open an email advertising oil change rates. However, you might open an email that invites you to fill out a survey about your oil change experience. Sending the right emails to the right readers is key for sounding human and personal in your emails. 

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Think inside the inbox!

Let’s be blunt: If your emails go to spam, no one will read it. That’s why it is important to abide by these two rules of the CAN-SPAM Act to not be flagged as spam mail:

1. The customer must “opt in” to receiving these commercial emails.
2. The customer must be able to “opt out” of receiving these commercial emails at any time by clicking “unsubscribe” links at the bottom of the message.

For our newsletter, readers “opt in” by inserting their emails into the bar on our blog post page. They always have the option to “opt out” at the bottom of each monthly newsletter: 

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Funnel content toward a call to action

Don’t forget that you are sending these emails for a reason! Keep your goal in mind at all times and make sure that readers know what action you want them to take by guiding their eye and including links that direct them toward the desired action. 

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Conclusion

Key takeaways:

• Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message via email to convince readers to take a specific action that benefits the highlighted business.
• Email marketing is especially helpful for businesses that need personalized relationships with customers that don’t spend much time on other social media platforms. 
• There are many types of email marketing messages, such as welcome emails, appointment reminders, company updates to inventory or services, and more that should be tailored to specific customer interests.
• Using an email marketing platform, being human and personal, following CAN-SPAM Act guidelines, and funneling content toward a specific action will help your emails reach their intended goals. 

Want to see these email marketing tips in action? Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter updates or reach out to us for professional marketing guidance on your own campaign. Just fill out this application link, and our team will review your application and get in touch with you within 24 hours.

There you have it! Now you know what email marketing is, when to invest in it, and how to make it shine. Thank you for reading, and we look forward to seeing you in the inbox!

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