What is Email Marketing? How is it Done?

Email marketing is one of the important parts of e-commerce. As digital marketing strategies evolve, the question “Is email marketing still important?” continues to be asked. It is possible to increase sales targets by creating a strong email marketing strategy. Therefore, it is highly important.

Email, which is essential to stay in touch with customers, is one of the most important marketing channels. So, what is email marketing and how is it done? What are the advantages of email marketing? Here are all the answers to these questions and the details you need to know about email marketing.

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing refers to the approach of using email to keep in touch with customers and promote products. It helps you increase brand loyalty. Additionally, it allows you to deliver useful information, such as upcoming promotions, to customers.

Therefore, entrepreneurs need to have a good understanding of what email marketing is. This is highly important for most businesses to achieve a high return on investment (ROI).

When you have a well-designed marketing strategy in the long run, you do not just increase your sales. Along with this, your brand awareness also increases. Consequently, you handle most of the heavy lifting. For this reason, experts recommend proceeding strategically when using email marketing.

The Importance of Email Marketing

Email marketing increases your bond with customers. It is also very effective in attracting customer interest. At the same time, it is cost-effective and easy. You get the chance to reach hundreds of users with just a few clicks.

Emails can appear as phone notifications. This increases the likelihood of emails being seen. Therefore, businesses can gain many opportunities when they proceed with email marketing strategies. However, it is to your advantage to be inspired by examining impressive email examples. Along with this, it is necessary to act by analyzing marketing email examples as well.

Types of Email Marketing

Marketing emails can be promotional and informational. In other words, many emails sent by your brand or e-commerce site are examples of marketing emails. Campaigns, surveys, discount coupons, free trials, and announcements are among email marketing examples. The types of email marketing are as follows:

1. Welcome emails

Welcome emails have a critical importance as they bring potential customers closer to the purchase stage. Hence, this type of email gets better click-through rates when you offer a personal touch and introduce your organization without overwriting. Therefore, you should know very well that you should not offer products or services before sending a welcome email.

2. Promotional emails

Promotional emails are used to promote special offers, new product releases and introductions, e-books, and webinars. Furthermore, promotions are necessary for brand awareness.

A campaign consists of 3 to 10 emails sent over a few days or weeks. These emails have a call-to-action point. They are mostly delivered to the customer during the company's campaign periods.

3. Informational emails

• Newsletters: A newsletter means sharing news related to your business with customers. Newsletters are sent to email subscribers at regular intervals. At the same time, they enable sharing insights, thoughts, and tips with customers.

• Announcements: Company announcements are a great way to inform about topics like new product releases or changes in service.

4. Re-engagement emails

Re-engagement emails serve to connect with inactive customers. In this email, you need to focus on the user. In other words, you must make your customer feel valued.

You can send abandoned cart reminder emails. For example, you should offer exclusive offers to subscribers. This attracts customers. You should celebrate your customers' birthdays.

How Does Email Marketing Work?

Email marketing works by sending effective messages to subscribers who have signed up for your brand's email list. In this way, you build brand awareness among your ideal potential customers.

Throughout all their experiences, you deepen the loyalty of your existing customers. However, you should not send just any message. You must know how to deliver the right message at the right time.

What Are the Advantages of Email Marketing?

Emails are an important part of growing and managing your business. Consequently, you can achieve the following goals with email marketing:

1. Your conversions increase

Thanks to email marketing, consumers get to know your products and brand better. For example, you can offer campaigns to your customers via email. You can engage with your subscribers for their birthdays.

Personalized coupons and special offers make your customers feel special. Additionally, you can send reminder emails for carts abandoned by customers.

2. Your brand stays top-of-mind with your target audience

Email allows you to reach someone directly. In other words, your communication with your target audience increases. Therefore, appearing in someone's email inbox helps keep your brand top-of-mind for your target audience.

In addition, email marketing is scalable. This means you can market cost-effectively to a large number of recipients.

3. It allows you to attract new customers

To attract new customers, you need to have an effective e-commerce marketing strategy. A company without an e-commerce marketing strategy unfortunately cannot make progress. For this reason, you should try to attract new customers to your brand with an email marketing strategy.

For example, you can start by creating campaigns. You can offer buyers discount or free shipping opportunities on their first purchase. A well-structured email marketing strategy succeeds in attracting customers to itself.

4. It offers the opportunity to easily reach your customers

People also access emails easily from mobile devices. According to the Litmus report, 54% of emails are opened on mobile devices. Therefore, email must be deployed in any marketing strategy. Well-designed emails provide a higher conversion rate. At the same time, it helps you easily reach your customers.

5. It allows you to increase your website traffic

Thanks to emails, customers visit your website. For example, you can add your site link to your email content. Thus, you can use emails to get your target audience to interact with your website or blog. As a result, you will drive traffic to your website.

6. You instill credibility in your target audience

People like to buy from people they know, like, and trust. That is, by sharing informative and customer-satisfying content via email, you instill credibility in your target audience. On the other hand, by earning customer loyalty, you increase your sales and revenue.

Email Marketing Statistics You Need to Know

According to research data conducted through HubSpot, here are the email marketing statistics you need to know:

• In 2021, an average of 319.6 billion emails were sent and received per day. This figure is projected to rise to 376.4 billion daily emails by 2025.

• 64% of small businesses use email marketing strategies to reach their customers.

• 33% of marketers send weekly emails.

• 86% of professionals prioritize email communication.

• Marketing and advertising emails influence the purchase decision of 50.7% of customers.

• 28% of consumers say they want to see promotional emails two or three times a week.

• The best time to send email is 11:00 AM.

• Email traffic peaks in the autumn and winter months.

• The best days for email are Tuesday and Thursday.

• 62% of marketers say personalized emails are one of the most effective techniques.

• Welcome emails generate 320% more revenue per email than promotional emails.

• The email subject line usually includes: customer's name (46.21%), product name/details (44.01%), company name (42.88%).

• Emails with photos and signatures receive more responses.

• The number of active email users is estimated to reach 4.3 billion people in 2023.

• 68% of millennials enjoy seeing emojis, GIFs, and stickers in their emails.

• Emails with emojis in the subject line show a 56% higher open rate.

• 54% of consumers prefer emails with videos. Furthermore, 90% of consumers say videos help them make a purchasing decision.

• 88% of smartphone users regularly check email received on their mobile devices.

• Global email marketing revenue is expected to reach 17.9 billion USD by 2027.

How to Do Email Marketing?

Companies generally use service providers to send emails. An email service provider sends and manages campaigns on behalf of the seller.

Of course, you have the option to send emails technically and manually. However, you need to be careful. Because of delayed delivery of emails and limitations, you may encounter some disruptions.

1. You should build an email list

First of all, you should start by building an email list. This list should consist of members, subscribers, and customers who have opted to receive emails. This increases your chances of getting more clicks via email.

Therefore, to acquire new customers, email can be 40 times more effective than Facebook and Twitter. The more you encourage customers to subscribe to your email content, the stronger your email list will be.

2. You must comply with “Can-Spam Act” rules

If you plan to do e-commerce globally, the marketing system you use must comply with the “Can-Spam Act” rules. The Can-Spam ACT sets the rules for commercial emails. There are also severe penalties when you violate the rules. For example, it gives your subscribers the right to stop receiving emails.

For this reason, you should not send false and misleading email content. At the same time, you should not falsely identify your message as an advertisement and avoid deceptive subject lines. On the other hand, you should not forget to add instructions for recipients on how to opt-out of receiving future emails.

3. You should offer different content to customers

Email content varies. Trying to choose among them can sometimes be overwhelming. However, you should take care to present whichever content is more suitable for your target audience.

By creating various content for different audiences, you can attract potential customers to your business. This way, customers will turn to the emails that are suitable for them. In addition, you must ensure that you prepare your email content in an appropriate tone.

4. You should create an email sending schedule

You should make a plan of how often you will communicate with your list or audience. Sending an email once a week or once every two weeks is best. Because sending 3-4 emails a week can become overwhelming.

After creating the sending schedule, you should inform your customers. This way, consumers know when they will receive emails. If you do not do this, your emails will end up in your customers' spam folder.

5- You must optimize email content to be mobile-friendly

According to statements made by experts, the majority of consumers check their emails regularly on mobile devices. For this reason, it is beneficial to design the content you send to be mobile-friendly.

Thus, you appeal to a larger audience. On the other hand, you should make sure you optimize the email subject line, sender name, and preview text.

• You should set the subject line to be around 50 characters.

• You should highlight your most striking offers.

• You must appeal to customers' emotions and aspirations.

• You should use the same sender name and address across all content.

• You should spark curiosity in the preview text.

6. You must have reliable email deliverability

To be successful in email marketing, you must ensure that you have reliable deliverability. Email deliverability means delivering an email to the inbox.

In other words, when you proceed in a planned manner, your email passes spam filters and reaches its destination. When deliverability is compromised, the email ends up in the spam folder. Worse still, your sending IP is blocked by the ISP. To make deliverability reliable, you should do the following:

• You must ensure that the email subject line is not perceived as spam or promotional.

• You should keep the database updated by removing unsubscribed individuals and inactive addresses.

• You should only send emails to registered subscribers. Unsubscribed individuals may mark your email as spam.

• You should always include an unsubscribe link in your emails. If you have a target audience and business in the European Union, you must prepare content compliant with the GDPR (Europe's general data protection regulation).

7. You should scale autoresponders

Autoresponders are the simplest form of email automation. That is, various and personalized emails are sent at different stages of the recipient's journey. This allows you to send personalized emails without needing to manually follow up with your customers.

The welcome email is known as the most commonly used autoresponder example. Being equipped with the right email responder allows you to go one step further.

8. You should track email marketing metrics

While doing email marketing, you must track your metrics. In this way, you can proceed strategically. To follow metrics, you should have knowledge about these concepts:

• Open rate: Obtained by dividing the number of people who opened your email by the total number of recipients.

• Click-through rate: The ratio of the number of people who clicked a link in your email to the total number of recipients.

• Unsubscribe rate: Obtained by dividing the number of people who unsubscribed by the total number of recipients. If this number is high, you should review your email list.

• Bounce rate: You find the bounce rate when you divide your undelivered emails by the number of sent emails.

• Bounce back rate: Refers to the number of people on your list who cannot receive emails for some reason. If the email address is invalid, a hard bounce occurs. If an email is rejected because the inbox is full, a soft bounce is experienced.

9. You should establish effective communications through email personalization

People like to feel special. For this reason, you should establish effective communication through email personalization. Consequently, you can benefit from these email personalization ideas to increase click-through and conversion rates:

• You should use subscribers' names in the subject line and content of emails.

• You should consider time zones to increase email read rates.

• You must segment contacts. This allows you to reach targeted people effectively.

• You should research how your customers interact with your products. This increases your chances of sending emails that trigger your customers.

How to Build an Email List

It is possible to build email lists to benefit your business. What you need to do is as follows:

• You must define an email strategy. That is, you should start by creating strategies regarding how to use the email list. Therefore, this situation becomes the determinant of subsequent steps.

• You should create a sign-up form. Once you decide what to do with lists, you must complete the sign-up form step to collect emails.

• You should connect to CRM. CRM stands for the software system that manages customer relations. If CRM is already synced, simply placing a link or choosing a list will suffice. You can also analyze your performance here.

• You should place the registration form in areas of your website or blog page that receive traffic. That is, placing the registration form on your homepage is recommended.

• Finally, you must boost your email performance. Once the email list is built, you must ensure that it supports your business goals. That is why you should regularly perform email list cleaning. Inactive subscribers negatively impact your metrics.

What do you need to create an email list?

There are many benefits to creating an email list. Therefore, you should not ignore building an email list. So, let's take a closer look at what you need to create an email list:

• Website or blog

• High-converting opt-in forms

• An email marketing service

All three of these are quite simple to set up. Thus, you do not have to struggle with configuration and design. So, what are the benefits of building an email list?

How to grow an email list?

There are many ways to manage, protect, and grow your email list. These are:

• You should ask your customers to subscribe to your email list. This way, your email list grows organically.

• You can offer your customers free PDFs, e-books, and reports in exchange for their email addresses.

• You should provide priority interest and extra discounts. This reduces the likelihood of your customers unsubscribing.

• You should not send unwanted or spam emails. In the first instance, you should keep new customers updated with welcome campaigns.

• You should not buy email lists. These lists harm your brand. Along with this, they cause your customers to unsubscribe.

• You should provide an extra discount when your customer shares the gifts you offer on their social media accounts.

• You should create surveys. Thanks to surveys, you decide which marketing campaigns to proceed with in the future. Consequently, you increase the click rate, the email list, and the number of visitors.

• You should set the subject line of the email to be around 50 characters.

• You should highlight your most striking offers.

• You should appeal to customers' emotions and aspirations.

• You should use the same sender name and address across all content.

• You should spark curiosity in the preview text.

How to Design Email Marketing?

Email design does not need to be overly difficult or laborious. You can easily create striking and professional emails. You should not waste time with detailed and fancy emails.

More importantly, no matter what it looks like, you should focus on emails that embody your brand. For example, you can achieve success in email marketing with pre-made template designs.

Template design effectively delivers the message you want to give through email marketing to users. At the same time, it increases your sales and click-through rates.

You can customize a template to match your brand's colors and typography. You should never hide your identity while designing the templates. On the other hand, you should create more readable content. When editing the template, you can divide it into columns and blocks.

Emails prepared with fonts viewable on all devices attract customers' attention. Also, you should not be boring. For example, you can benefit from visuals to avoid being boring. However, you should not overwhelm the reader with visuals either.

At the same time, you should add a CTA (Call to Action) button into the text. This button includes actions like "Sign up", "Buy". Thus, your site traffic and click rate increase. You should also add social media links into your email. Finally, the unsubscribe link should be in a place where your customer can easily click.

Where is Email Marketing Used?

Email marketing can be used for different purposes across various sectors. Now, let's examine the areas where email marketing is commonly used!

• E-commerce: Online retailers use email marketing to send order confirmations, promote products, and recover abandoned shopping carts.

• Content marketing: Email marketing is used in blog posts, articles, videos, and other resources.

• Lead generation: Businesses offer incentives like e-books, webinars, or discounts in exchange for an email address. This creates potential leads.

• Customer retention: Email is a tool used to keep existing customers engaged, provide updates, and promote loyalty programs.

• Newsletters: Organizations use newsletters to inform subscribers about updates, events, and news.

• B2B marketing: Companies use email marketing to generate leads, share industry insights, and nurture relationships.

Email Marketing for Marketplace Sellers

Email marketing is one of the most powerful tools sellers use to increase purchasing power. Selling on marketplaces like Amazon, Etsy, and eBay undoubtedly has countless benefits.

However, by collecting emails, you can nurture your customer relationships and instill your brand personality in consumers. You can also use emails from marketplaces to sell products on your own e-commerce site.

As an online retailer, marketing your products to existing customers is an inevitable part of selling in Amazon, Etsy, and eBay stores. Therefore, having strategies is essential to stand out in marketplaces.

Email marketing is also a powerful strategy that will allow you to stand out in marketplaces. So, how is email marketing done in key marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and Etsy?

Email marketing on Amazon

A company like Amazon values efficiency. It also allows you to communicate with your customers easily. However, Amazon does not offer email marketing services to sellers. In other words, sellers cannot reach customers with their phone numbers and emails through the Amazon platform.

On the other hand, thanks to email marketing, you can interact with buyers personally and keep them updated on promotions available in the Amazon store. Let's take a closer look at how you should perform email marketing in your Amazon store.

How to do email marketing on Amazon?

To do email marketing on Amazon, you should follow these steps:

1. Offer landing pages with email opt-ins

You should run marketing campaigns for your product in places like Facebook, Instagram, and Google Ads. To do this, first, you should share a product on Amazon on your social media page. Then, you should have the customer enter their email address to receive the product on Amazon with their discount code.

2. Add a link or QR code to cards in product packaging

There are small insert cards placed in product packages. You should add a QR code or link to cards in products purchased from Amazon. For example, you can create a CTA that says “Sign up to our email list and receive 20% off”. With these codes and links, your customers win discounts for future purchases. This is how you get your customers to provide their email addresses.

3. Advertise leads on social media

You should offer e-books and video courses that require the person to provide their email address. Of course, it is beneficial for these to be free. You should advertise your e-books or videos on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. Then, you should share the e-books and videos in exchange for people's email addresses.

4. Organize contests

You should organize contests on your social media accounts for participants to win prizes. You should hold giveaways for your customers to gift a product on Amazon. You should require your customers to sign up for your email list to participate in these giveaways and contests.

Note: Enabling Amazon email marketing requires some time and effort. However, when you proceed with the strategies mentioned here, it is possible to easily present email marketing services to your customers.

Email marketing on Etsy

In the Etsy marketplace, you also cannot add your customers' emails directly to your list. However, you can offer your customers various opportunities to sign up for your email list. If you want to grow your Etsy store and drive traffic to your website, going with email marketing is beneficial.

Today, there are many marketing tactics. However, email remains one of the most profitable and useful marketing tactics. To do email marketing in the Etsy store, you need to proceed strategically. Now, let's take a closer look at what strategies you should use to do email marketing in your Etsy store.

How do you use email marketing for your Etsy store?

To do email marketing on Etsy, you should proceed with the following steps:

1. First off, you must choose an email service provider

The first step in marketing with email starts with creating a solid subscriber list. However, to create a subscriber list, you must choose an email service provider. Many different options are available for email service providers.

2. You should promote your products effectively

Once you build your email list, you can promote the products you will sell in the Etsy marketplace. However, creating emails that include new product lines and upcoming discounts in your Etsy store is recommended.

While promoting your products, you should focus on the benefits of the products. Therefore, you should talk about benefits rather than product features. Make sure you offer opportunities for people to enjoy. To do this, you need to know your target audience in your Etsy store very well.

3. Ensure the reader follows your business on social media

You should get your subscribers to follow your social media accounts. You can share links to your social media accounts under the email content. Thus, you enable your audience to get to know your business thoroughly. At the same time, your audience understands why they continue to receive emails from your business.

With every email, your primary goal should be to get readers to comment on new products in your Etsy store or website. You should also add links to your email content that direct subscribers to your blog posts on your website and to follow your social media. Tips on how to use your products should be featured in your blog posts.

Email marketing in the eBay store

From a customer perspective, one of the biggest advantages of email marketing is that it feels like communicating directly with brands. In the eBay store, buyers can communicate directly with the brand by signing up for sellers' store newsletters.

Sellers create a newsletter promoting their store using email design tools. They send this newsletter to subscribed individuals. So, how is email marketing done in the eBay store? Here are the ways to do email marketing in your eBay store.

How to do email marketing in your eBay store?

eBay wants you to proceed with these steps to do email marketing:

1. Build an email list

Building an email list in the eBay store is quite simple. Because eBay offers free email marketing. It allows you to add a “Sign up for Store Newsletter” link to all your listings.

Along with this, you can create up to 5 email lists to target different customer types and product categories. Additionally, you can send a total of 5 thousand free emails per month to your customers in your eBay store. To create a new email list, you need to follow these instructions:

• You should go to the “My eBay” section and click the “Marketing Tools” link.

• When the Marketing Tools summary page appears, you should go to the “Email Marketing” tab from the “Store Marketing” section.

• Then, you should click on the “Create Mailing List” button.

• Once the next page appears, you should enter a name for your email list and hit the “Save” button.

2. Create a newsletter in the eBay marketplace

You cannot add subscribers manually to your mailing list. Users can subscribe to your email newsletter when they add your store to their favorite list. Additionally, if users visit your eBay store, they can be added to your email list through the “Sign up for Store Newsletter” section at the top of the page. Once people sign up for your newsletter, they start appearing on your list. To create a newsletter, you should follow these paths:

• You should hover the mouse over “My eBay” and click on the “Selling” button.

• From the left sidebar, you must select “Manage My Store”.

• You should go to the “Email Marketing” link from under the “Marketing Tools” pane on the left side.