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The e-mail marketing defines the set of activities that uses e-mail to convey promotional actions aimed at establishing a direct and personalized contact with existing customers (to keep them) or with potential customers (to acquire them). These activities are generally regulated by an opt-in system (option through which the user expresses his consent to be included in a mailing list to receive advertising or information e-mails).
Advertising e-mails, also known as DEM (Direct E-mail Marketing), and newsletters are the most common forms of e-mail marketing. There are many software options available for e-mail marketing today. For further information, we recommend visiting the site of Capterra: a software comparison site. Capterra uses different methods of comparison.
Software e-mail comparison tools No 2
On Capterra site you will also find a way to understand the mechanisms of operation and use of software for e-mail marketing. To find out more about e-mail marketing, here is a document published by SendGrid and HubSpot: Email Marketing – Myths, Experiments, Inspiration Ebook.
E-mail is a very popular communication tool: people send and receive emails every day, all over the world. To find more about actual numbers, you can consult a recent study by the Radicati Group, which predicts, for 2019, about 3.8 billion e-mail users in the world: more than half of the entire
The estimates of the Radicati Group may be a bit overestimated but the numbers are certainly relevant. In the following image we present you with an overview of the evolution of Gmail users elaborated by Statista
For further information, we also present a study that collects statistical data on the effectiveness of e-mail marketing, according to which 60% of the interviewed people state that e-mail marketing influences their purchases. Map Consumer Views 2016)
The open rate indicates the percentage of open messages calculated on the total number of messages sent. The open rate percentages can sometimes be very low: an open rate between 10% and 30% is considered usual. Important in the evaluation of this data is the trend of openings.
This parameter measures the number of people who, after opening and reading an e-mail message, open the links inserted in the e-mail. The main mailing services trace this data. The reference usual average is low, between 5% and 10% and also in this case it is useful to refer not only to the sector averages but also to the history of the e-mails sent. MailChimp, for example, provides a report that indicates the most clicked links in the newsletter: a very useful tool for delineating the interests of the target and the topics of greatest interest.
The delivery rate measures the number of messages actually delivered.
The bounce rate measures the percentage of messages that return undelivered.
E-mail messages may return because the email address does not exist or is incorrect, in this case we talk about hard bounces, or because the mailbox is full, or for a temporary overload of the servers: these are the so-called soft bounces. The presence of soft and hard bounce is quite normal: it is a normal turnover of the mailboxes: acceptable if less than 5%.
The DEM is a direct email that promotes a product, an event, or a brand in a clear, effective and specific way. This tool, which can complement the newsletter in the context of general email marketing strategy, can be used when you want to reach new customers or launch strong promotional offers.
The DEM differs from the newsletter mainly due to its extraordinary character. Precisely for this reason, once the ideal target for the direct email marketing campaign has been identified, the audience is often found externally. A DEM can represent, in some cases, the first step for the creation of a contact list to which subsequently direct the sending of a periodic newsletter.
Communications (mainly informational) that are sent periodically to a loyal audience. An essential element for the planning and management of newsletters is the selection of recipients: construction, maintenance and development of the customer database, prospect and stakeholder is a crucial point for the effectiveness of the tool and it is therefore important to collect email addresses at each useful contact opportunity.
As for the contents of the newsletter, editorial planning is essential. The characteristics of the newsletter are in fact the periodicity of sending and the dissemination of interesting contents. It is important to design a repeatable, but flexible, design, both in terms of contents and layout.
In the following images we present you with some examples of newsletters: Oil Carli, Eataly, Amazon, Harvard Business Review, Oxford owl, busuu, Internet bookshop Italy, SiteGround. Leafing through the different newsletters you can easily see how they are very different from each other: some use captivating images, others use pictograms or drawings. Some are informative, others are promotional. However, all of them are carefully designed.
Like any communication tool, newsletter must be built in line with the corporate image, carefully looking at the target audience and the objectives it sets; it must be written in a language appropriate to the target group, but always in a clear way. Good rule is to always include links to the reference site and any other channels used: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or other.
Transactional e-mails are e-mails that are sent in a more or less automated way, confirming a phase or the conclusion of a process: confirmation of an order, notice of arrival of a delivery, sending an invoice etc.
