What is email marketing?

E-mail marketing has long proven to be an effective tool of online marketing and is part of outbound marketing. It is characterized by the sending of e-mails, especially for information and advertising purposes. Even for smaller companies it can be implemented without great effort.

What is achieved with email marketing

In order to provide customers (or potential consumers) with information in the course of a campaign, email marketing has proven to be a secure tool for years. If the messages are well thought out, customer loyalty can be improved enormously. Even if the reputation of this method has suffered somewhat among private recipients in recent years, good content with added value and, above all, relevant content ensure that positive effects can be achieved with the respective target groups. Of course, the legal regulations applicable in Germany and Europe must always be observed. Even though companies now have an enormous number of different marketing tools at their disposal, e-mail marketing, as one of the oldest, still belongs to the best practices. That is why there are hardly any companies today that do not send newsletters or the like to their customers on a regular basis. Usually the existing customers are addressed, but there is also the sending to unknown recipients, which in many cases is classified as spam. The regular e-mail marketing has the task to inform the customers about current products, certain special offers and other interesting promotions or campaigns. Newsletters and related e-mails give the customer the positive feeling of closeness and thus strengthen customer loyalty. This is especially the case with so-called personalized online advertising

This is how you go about email marketing

E-mail marketing not only works very well, but is also characterised by high efficiency. Sophisticated software is now available for most tasks in this area. With certain tools, e-mail campaigns can not only be created, but also monitored and analysed. In no time at all, high-quality content for newsletters can be created that complies with all regulations of e-mail marketing. In addition, the effect is always verifiable. First and foremost, an e-mail campaign always has to decide to which recipients it should be addressed: There is one-to-one and one-to-many. With one-to-one, an individual customer is addressed in a way that is tailored to his or her needs. This is much more complex because of the individuality. With one-to-many, the newsletter addresses a larger number of customers, so this form of campaign is usually much more cost-effective. However, the recipients may not feel addressed personally and the advertising message may fizzle out. Nevertheless, this form is the more common method of e-mail marketing. The subject line is always of great importance, as this is where the recipient decides whether to open the message. It helps here to briefly reflect the message content or to personalise the message. For this purpose, databases make it possible to assign e-mails and customer names, which makes the reader more inclined to open the e-mail in question. Another important component of e-mail marketing campaigns are calls for action, so a “call-to-action” should also be included if possible. Readability on mobile devices should also be kept in mind. In order to be on the safe side legally, many senders rely on the “double opt-in procedure”.