How the different types of email act in the Digital Marketing strategy

 We know that working with Email Marketing is not easy. There are so many rules, good practices, types of email and metrics that many people wonder: is it worth continuing to invest in that channel? Am I doing the right thing? In what percentage does Email Marketing contribute to my results?

Every day we have contact with companies that have used the same strategy for years and many times they did not stop to think about how email really fits into Digital Marketing and what is the benefit of having a good strategy, considering the different types of existing emails.

First of all, it is good to be clear that in the funnel the email acts throughout the cycle from the moment in which a visitor, until then unknown, becomes a Lead when downloading educational content, requesting a budget, demonstration or leaving a contact on the website.

It should be noted that a good strategy only tends to consolidate if your company does not buy an email base (run away from it) and works and invests to convert visitors into Leads in a "lawful" way.

We also understand that each business is unique and that is why it demands different Email Marketing strategies . In this post we are going to show you some types of campaigns and how they fit into the different objectives of your company.

Newsletters

Newsletters are perhaps the first step that many companies take when they start working with Email Marketing. They are generally sent to the entire contact base - or just to a part that showed special interest - periodically, and the main characteristic of this type of campaign is the variety of content.

This variety is precisely one of the most important points, since the newsletter is a type of email that reaches Leads at all stages of the Sales Funnel and at different moments of the purchase, from people interested in reading introductory blog posts even others who may be interested in more advanced offerings in the funnel, such as case studies and demos. It is a way to maintain some type of contact over time and allow people to interact more with your company.

In any case, the main measure that must be analyzed in a newsletter is not the direct metrics of the campaign (opening, clicks, etc.), but the information of who clicked and on which link.

This information will allow an excellent segmentation by subject of interest, depending on the content that the Lead clicked on and its purchase stage, based on the type of offer they received on that click.

Promotional campaigns

Here it is good to keep in mind that "promotional" does not mean an email announcing promotions and products. The meaning of promotional goes in the sense of "promoting an offer", be it free content or a product. Its great advantage is the focus, since it has a single objective and a single option.

That said, creating such an email is relatively simple and has enormous potential to deliver the right message to the right person at any stage of purchase, if it is done in an optimized way.

And how to make an email in an optimized way? The secret is in the segmentation.

In the case of the launch of educational material, for example, it is interesting to know to whom that content is directed. Examples:

Managerial or technical positions;

Professionals from the sales, HR or Marketing area;

Technology companies or agencies;

People who have already shown interest in other content on the same topic;

People who converted, or not, in the last 4 months;

People who have already shown interest in a certain product;

Customers or non-customers.

The main point here is to define the audience to which the offer will be sent and carry out the segmentation based on the information that your company has in the Leads database.

To get an idea of ​​the result that the segmentation brought, here below are two real examples of promotional campaign statistics. The base to which the emails were sent is the same, with the only difference that the first was for all Leads and the second for a specific segment.

Types of email

Types of email marketing

The difference we want to highlight here is the volume of emails that were clicked. In the second email, more people clicked, despite being sent for a smaller amount of leads. In that case, a large part of the database did not receive a second email and was not "burned", that is, it stopped receiving an email that would not be relevant to it and left latent the opportunity to receive another, more focused, on the case that it is in the segment of a third campaign.

Transactional emails

Have you ever needed to recover the password of a service and received a link by email? Have you made an online purchase and received the order or payment confirmation? Have you already downloaded an educational content and received the material by email?

All of those examples are transactional emails. They are quite common in services, e-commerces ( order confirmation, delivery, payment) and software (password change, confirmation of a new user), but any company that has any downloadable content can leverage and use an email of thanks , which is also considered transactional.

The great advantage of this type of email is that it is expected by the Lead, since they have taken some action and are waiting for a message. For this reason, thinking about the Purchase Process , this email can act at various times, from the first conversion into an educational content to the confirmation of a purchase.

In the case of the thank you email, after converting to a Landing Page, the Lead usually expects an email to be sent with a link to access the content in question. This would represent the main conversion. However, what not all companies take advantage of in these emails is the "secondary conversion", one that is being offered beyond the conversion that is already expected.

Some examples of secondary conversions are: follow on social networks, talk to a consultant, download complementary material, recommend to a friend, see a demo, among others.

Due to this variety, depending on the level of the downloaded content, the secondary offer can also be adapted at the time of the Lead purchase. Offers more related to the Purchase Decision (or the next stage of the process) can be sent as the conversion is more advanced.

Lifecycle Email

As we said, the key to the success of these and other types of campaigns is segmentation. There are several ways to segment, and one of those that must be considered by any company is segmentation based on the stage in which the Lead is within the Sales Cycle.

Some of the stages to be considered are: Lead, opportunity being worked on by the commercial sector, active client (in the case of companies that work with recurring payments), client who has already made a purchase (it can even be separated into a recent purchase or from more than x months), former clients, among others.

It is important to bear in mind that for each stage, there are specific offers that can be sent by email, since in each case there is a different objective: to teach, sell, upsell or upgrade, commit, recover, etc.

Marketing Automation

Many of the types of emails mentioned above work alongside a Marketing Automation strategy.

Since the entry "trigger" in an Automation Flow is an action executed by the Lead - be it downloading a material, clicking on a certain email link or a specific response on a form - the emails that Lead will receive will be highly segmented, not only because of their profile and interest, but also because of how advanced that Lead is in the Buying Process.

A very common case in automation, for example, is the following: the company sends a promotional campaign offering an eBook or a newsletter with links to various offers. Then a Lead downloads some of these materials and begins to receive emails with complementary content. However, it is already considering a solution to a specific problem and ends up showing that interest by going to the website and asking for an evaluation of your company.

In this example, using automation, that Lead stops receiving emails about the downloaded material and enters a new flow where they will receive the contact of a salesperson of the company.

This is just one of the use cases. The important thing is to know that the emails sent through Marketing Automation are quite segmented and, therefore, they reach all the stages of the Buying Process and have a good interest, in addition to the characteristic of better preparing the Lead for the purchase of a product.

conclusion

An email marketing campaign, regardless of the type of email sent, requires thinking about how it can influence a digital Marketing strategy. Therefore, it is necessary to think about going beyond writing the body of the email and clicking on send, taking into account the objective that this email will have for your company.

Do you need help planning your email campaigns? Download our checklist to launch your email marketing campaigns without errors.