Email Marketing FAQs

 

What is email marketing?

Email marketing involves using email messages to communicate with consumers about your brand’s products, services, special offers, news, and more. A consistent email marketing strategy allows brands to stay in contact with their consumers between purchases in order to keep them updated and engaged. Emails are also a great way for brands to build a nurturing relationship with leads and convert them into paying customers.

What is email marketing used for?

Email marketing can be used for a variety of different reasons, from increasing brand awareness to driving sales and everything in between. In order to accomplish these differing goals, brands can utilize different types of email marketing.

What are the different types of email marketing?

Welcome emails are typically the brand’s first communication with the user after subscribing to the email list – the goal is for the brand to get to know the user, and the user to get to know the brand. Promotional emails provide an opportunity to showcase any products, services, or events. Newsletter should be sent on a monthly or quarterly basis to update your audience on the latest brand happenings. Brands can also use email marketing tactics to connect with users on social media, re-engage with lapsed consumers, and share post-purchase information.

How can I best personalize my email marketing?

The most important thing you can do is know who your audience is and then build email campaigns specifically for them. Segmenting out who your various audiences are allows you to give your various audiences exactly what they’re looking for and helps improve conversions.

How do I increase my email open rate?

The key to improving your open rate is crafting subject lines that beg to be opened. Users receive hundreds of emails every day – the subject line is your chance to make an impression.

If you are looking to step up your subject lines, try including emojis, humor, controversy, questions, or a personalized feature. These subject lines are more likely to catch the user’s eye and entice an opening.

How long should my email campaigns be?

There is no right or wrong length for an email. If you are sharing a monthly newsletter, this is a great opportunity to share a variety of content, including announcements, upcoming events, or other important information.

Businesses can also take advantage of the one-column format to share a single piece of content. This minimalist format is highly readable and aesthetically-pleasing, which is to capture the attention of the viewer. One-column emails are perfect for sharing a blog or event invitation.

How often should I send marketing emails?

That all depends on your industry. For e-commerce, you can send a daily email, especially if you’re running sales. Service-based businesses are better off sending anywhere from once per week to once per month. You don’t want to overwhelm your audience or your open rates and click rates will plummet.

How can I measure the success of an email marketing campaign?

There are a few ways to do this. The top metrics for email marketing campaigns are typically open rates and click rates. At that point, you can track conversions on your website. We also recommend UTM codes so you can see that people came in from the newsletter to your website.

How do I incorporate dark mode into emails?

After the release of Dark Mode within the smartphone industry, there is no surprise dark mode is making its way into digital marketing trends. Not only is dark mode extremely modern and sleek, but it also creates visually striking content.

If you are thinking about incorporating dark mode into your email campaigns, try adopting transparent logos and using contrasting colors for graphic elements.

How can I get subscribers to open my emails?

The key to getting subscribers to open your emails is by focusing on the first impression: the subject line. Since it is the only piece of content the reader sees before clicking on the email, it is their only determining factor when deciding whether or not to open the email. Just like the title of an article, the subject line must convince the reader that the information in the email will be valuable and worth their time. If not, your emails will be left unopened, resulting in unsubscribes.

How do I write a good subject line?

The most effective subject lines are short and to the point. It should inform the reader exactly what type of information and messaging will be in the email. The subject line is meant to be attention-grabbing and intriguing, so using funny, controversial, personalized, shocking, and mysterious lines will also encourage users to click.

Do I need to constantly create new content?

Brands should constantly be creating and sharing content, but it does not necessarily always have to be “new content.” Repurposing allows brands to share their content with a wider range of users by reworking the information into various forms. For example, the results of a study might be more clearly expressed on Facebook through an infographic, but those same results can be shared on LinkedIn through a blog post. This strategy allows brands to continually push out new content without consuming as much time or resources.

What is email segmentation?

Email segmentation is the process of splitting up your brand’s email list into smaller groups in order to send highly targeted emails. Every brand is different, so it makes sense that the ways in which they segment their email lists will be different depending on needs and marketing goals. However, there are a few categories every brand should be segmenting, including new subscribers, interests, demographics, activity, email preferences, purchase history, and level of activity.

Why is email segmentation important?

Email segmentation allows brands to send more personalized and relevant content to their customers, which helps to decrease the number of unsubscribes and increase both open-rate and click-rate. List segmentation also helps to gracefully and effectively move users down the marketing funnel. For example, new subscribers should always receive welcome emails and other general information emails to help build brand awareness. Then, brands can start sending them more personalized emails based on product interests and engagement. Only after they have come to know and trust your brand will users become paying customers.

How can I start segmenting my email list?

The best way to get started with email segmentation is having current and new subscribers choose their email preferences. For current email subscribers, brands can send out an email asking users to choose how often they would like to receive emails and what types of emails they are interested in receiving, whether that is general news, product updates, or events. For new subscribers, brands can offer these same choices on the email subscription page. As brands gain more demographic information and consumer insights on their subscribers, then they will be able to further split up the email list.

What is a BIMI?

With email marketing, BIMI is an acronym for Brand Indicators for Message Identification. BIMI allows brands and businesses to display their logos in recipients’ email inboxes. Utilizing BIMI in your email marketing will help build authenticity, enhance trustworthiness, and increase brand recognition in an already crowded inbox environment.

What is domain authentication in email marketing?

Domain authentication in email marketing is the process of authenticating the sender of an email to ensure that communications are sent from legitimate sources. Domain authentication can occur through various methods, including SPF (Sender Policy Framework), DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance.) Marketing professionals should always authenticate their company’s email communications to improve deliverability, build trust, protect brand reputation, and enhance open rates.

How often should I clean up my email lists?

How often you decide to clean up your email marketing lists depends on several factors. It’s best practice to clean up your lists every three to six months, depending on the size of your lists and how often you send emails. It’s crucial to watch engagement metrics like open rates, in case you start to notice a significant decline – this is a good indicator that you need to clean up your email list. Additionally, you want to pay attention to bounce rates. High bounce rates can affect your email deliverability, so you want to remove bounced emails as soon as possible.

How can I make my emails more engaging?

So you want to make your emails more engaging, but you aren’t sure where to start. Our best tips for creating more engaging emails include: personalizing your emails by including each recipient’s name; tailoring your content to the interests of your reader based on past interactions with your business; crafting compelling subject lines that evoke emotion or offer value; and finally, including relevant and clear calls-to-action in your email.

Does email marketing still work?

All of us at Pink Dog Digital are big believers in email marketing campaigns, as all small businesses should be. Unlike social media platforms, emails are personal and individualized to your most loyal consumers. The email content is designed specifically for individuals who are interested in and have agreed to receive email communications from your company. Emails allow you to communicate directly with your audience, which can turn an interested user into an active consumer.

Does my business need an email marketing newsletter?

Email marketing doesn’t work for every business – but it’s still important for most businesses. Your blog can easily help feed your newsletter content. Ultimately, it’s just another touchpoint for your clients and a chance for them to see your name!