August 6, 2018

2.3 : Email marketing and how it can be used

2.3 : Email marketing and how it can be used

Dr. Tahir Rashid, Senior Lecturer, Salford Business School, UK

Typically we will receive a number of emails throughout the day, sometimes perhaps as a part of a promotional message, so sometimes maybe just communications from different suppliers. But email marketing is a typically outbound type of marketing communication. It is about directly marketing a commercial message to encourage a purchase or promote a brand.

Outbound Marketing: a conventional form of sending messages to individuals and expecting to trigger a response

Opposite to Inbound Marketing where customers find your products and services – remember ZMOT?

It may involve adverts, it may involve a business request or be soliciting information. Email lists can be bought, or they can be actually created through a customer database.

There are different types of email marketing and typically they may be transactional email marketing or direct email marketing. Transactional email marketing could be, for example, we have bought some kind of insurance over the telephone and the supplier wants us to consider the information and confirm the information through email. And they may send that information through email and for us to respond either through email or through the post.

Transactional email marketing:

A personalized email that is received by an individual as a consequence of an event triggered by them – signing up for something – or by their inactivity – e.g. not been to Facebook for a while etc.

Direct email marketing is about receiving promotional messages prompting us to act upon those messages.

Direct email marketing:

An email that is triggered by the marketer who wants to reach out to their mailing list

Key difference to transactional email marketing is the trigger for the email to be sent

But, at the same time, email is all about building trust and relationships with our customers. So we need to consider that we do not spam our suppliers with emails that are not relevant.

Colin Telford, Managing Partner, The Candidate Ltd, UK

Within the Candidate, we do use email marketing that’s really in the form of a monthly newspaper and it also goes at other key times in terms of seasonality or promotions that we do.

Direct marketing email example:

Monthly newsletter

We collect that data using opt-in fields on our website, or people requesting that they actually want to receive the newsletter, or when they apply for a job they can tick a box to say that they want to keep in touch with The Candidate through the newsletters that we produce.

In terms of targeting, we are not the most sophisticated when it comes to email.

Email targeting:

Businesses or Candidates?

I suppose, for us, the only two types of targeting that we do is making sure that the email is targeted towards and split towards candidates and clients because, obviously, it’s two different types of audience that we are after: candidates we’re trying to find new jobs for, and clients who obviously brief us to find candidates for them.

Alex Charalambidis, Digital Marketing Strategist, MONKS, Greece

Email marketing is the first channel and the best channel related to conversion with a search.

Email is one of the most direct reminders for your customers about your products and services

And we are using it because, when you have an existing database, it’s really easy for you to remind them your service, your product, or even some new offering. So database marketing, in general, is important for us, not only for conversions but for other techniques. For example, you can include a pixel of remarketing in your email and you can send it to your to your database and with this pixel, you can use remarketing across channels, so it can be something very structured.

Remarketing is a technique used to identify individuals who have already engaged with your organization online and to automatically target them with advertising reminders

But the secret here is to use specific channels like buyers or non-buyers, or new business or prospect clients. It’s really important, all the database segmentation.

Kristina Chokoeva, Marketing Director, DINO, Bulgaria

Other than social media, we have email marketing where we send our weekly newsletters to our online fans who’ve registered on our website.

Direct Marketing email examples:

Product sales, new season updates etc.

We update them on new products, new initiatives, or upcoming sales.

Additional material

Do’s & Don’ts of Email Marketing

Watch this video on Do’s and Don’ts of email marketing. Consider the last time you received emails from marketers – how could they improve the way that the email targeted you?

References

Email Marketing Field Guide

 http://mailchimp.com/resources/gui…

The Power Of Email Remarketing

 https://moz.com/ugc/the-power-of-e…

Please see following pages for chapter 2:

2.0 Understanding the different nature of digital channels based on geographic, demographic and digital fit for a campaign
2.1 Search Engines – differences in countries – based on the case study examples
2.2 Social Media platforms differences in countries and how to they can be used
2.4 Affiliate marketing and how it can be used
2.5 Mobile marketing and how it could be used
2.6 Paid channels overview – search and social
2.7 Communities focused engagement