What does it take for a company to use email marketing effectively?

Email Marketing is a form of direct marketing, it is the process of companies sending mail digitally and is a common way for companies to get through to their customers by promoting their products and services. This blog will explore how companies can effectively use email marketing to communicate with their customers and will discuss where companies have gone wrong and where they have effectively used this platform.

BuzzFeed is a company who use email as a marketing strategy, it’s suggested that this platform is one of the top 5 or 6 referrers of traffic to their website each month (Beashel, 2015). These figures suggest that BuzzFeed are doing something right when it comes to email marketing. The company suggest that their email marketing is so effective because of their large mailing list, over the past few years they have become more vigilant in making sure that consumers are seeing the email marketing subscription sign up more frequently throughout their site (Beashel, 2015). However, when browsing a website it can be seen as annoying to be constantly asked for your email for a subscription, so maybe this isn’t the best way to go about increasing your mailing list. Although BuzzFeed can be annoying when asking for your email to sign up to their newsletter, they do also ask what you’re interested in before signing you up. This is a great way to keep your subscribers interested and to increase your website traffic.

(Source via: https://www.buzzfeed.com/tools/email)

Uber uses email marketing to inform customers of new promotions and deals, it’s suggested that the simplicity of their emails is what makes people love them (HubSpot, 2016). The first thing a customer will see when looking at an email, is the subject and Uber keeps it short and sweet, which is said to be perfect for subscribers who are quickly skimming the email (Target Marketing, 2015). There is a fine line between short and sweet and boring when it comes to receiving a marketing email, I’m sure everyone has received them at some point and they definitely need colour and an essence of fun to make you want to read them. However, Uber use their signature colours and geometric patterns to liven up their emails. Not only does Uber use simplicity to create their email campaigns, but they also use punchy language to give their consumers a sense of urgency and this stirs them in to action (Moth, 2014).

(Source via: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/email-marketing-examples-list#sm.001kj47phi3ife610mq1w8ane2ior)

Groupon use email marketing to show customers their new deals, in 2014 they gave customers a chance to win $5,000,000 in Groupon dollars and they promoted it by sending out am email consisting of a big red button. This idea excited subscribers at first, they were in for a chance for winning loads of freebies, however, the excitement quickly faded when most of the customers were obviously told, bluntly ‘sorry, you didn’t score’. It’s suggested that the majority of people who were disappointed by the big red button felt undervalued by this marketing campaign and if anything, felt put off by Groupon (Simply compelling, 2015). This is a fine example of how an email sent to promote your business needs to appear appealing to everyone, or there will be a large amount of people disappointed and if anything, it is bad publicity. Groupon have showed that effective email marketing needs to consist of targeting a majority of their subscribers, to excite and appeal to everyone.

So, now I have discussed some do’s and don’ts when it comes to email marketing you can now create the best marketing emails ever. It’s so important that the whole of your audience find your emails appealing, to ensure they don’t unsubscribe as this will lose traffic on your website, and eventually profit. The content is obviously one of the most important parts to email marketing, and keeping it simple enough for the reader to not get bored but exciting enough too is tricky but vital. The mailing list is also a big part of email marketing, and not nagging customers to join is just as important as the content, because if you have no one to email then the content wouldn’t matter any way.

References

• Beashel, (2015). How BuzzFeed uses email marketing to drive growth. [online] Campaignmonitor.com. Available at: https://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/customers/2015/04/buzzfeed-email-marketing/ [Accessed 12 Apr. 2017].

• HubSpot, (2016). 15 of the Best Email Marketing Campaign Examples You’ve Ever Seen. [online] Blog.hubspot.com. Available at: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/email-marketing-examples-list#sm.001kj47phi3ife610mq1w8ane2ior [Accessed 12 Apr. 2017].

• Moth, (2014). Email marketing CTA design: five good vs. six bad examples. [online] Econsultancy. Available at: https://econsultancy.com/blog/64997-email-marketing-cta-design-five-good-vs-six-bad-examples/ [Accessed 12 Apr. 2017].
• Simply Compelling, (2015). Examples of email marketing gone wrong – Simply Compelling. [online] Simply Compelling. Available at: http://simplycompelling.com/email-marketing/examples-of-email-marketing-gone-wrong/ [Accessed 12 Apr. 2017].
• Target Marketing, (2015). Uber Gets an A+. [online] Target Marketing. Available at: http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/article/uber-gets/ [Accessed 12 Apr. 2017].