The beginner’s guide to e-mail marketing in 2016

Like every channel, email marketing has also changed through the years and while many marketers try to avoid it, let us tell you some interesting things about it so that you can reap benefits, even in 2016!

Let’s start with the most basic question “What is e-mail marketing?”

Sending your target audience engagement inducing e-mails, and thus driving traffic is the core of e-mail marketing. Or simply put, sending e-mails to drive sales or keeping in touch with customers.

There are two major types of e-mail marketing : Permission-Based and Spam-based.

Sending e-mails to people who have willingly given you their e-mail address while visiting your website or clicking the activation link in the e-mail is the ethical way to go about it. This is known as Permission based e-mailing. The open ratio (OR- Clicks on subject line by the recipient) and the click through ratio(CTR- Clicks on links in your e-mail by the recipients) of legit emailing is too damn high. It is the art of respectfully driving traffic to your website that will make you work harder and not take short cuts that we are going to discuss in the next few lines.

Then there is Unethical/Spam based e-mail marketing. This is the short-cut the lazy one’s love to take. The trash icon in your inbox gets clicked more often than usual when people receive such e-mails. The Click Through Ratio is generally lower than 1% for these kind of e-mails. So please avoid, until and unless you want to have a bad spam score (which is only likely if you do not know what “spam score” means).

Tip: The intention behind sending an e-mail should be clear. This will help you convey the core message to your target audience like a boss. The core intentions could be promotion, advertising, customer servicing etc

Have you ever wondered what happens to your mail draft once you click on send? And why do e-mails go to spam? If not, now would be a good time to do so. This will be explained by answering the second big question. “How does e-mailing work?”.

Once you have clicked on send after drafting the mail, it goes to the spam filter of the respective e-mailing client (If your e-mailing client is the same as your recipient’s, it is known as a Local Delivery. And if your recipient’s e-mailing client is different, it is known as a Foreign Delivery). The mail then gets rejected or accepted on the basis of authenticity of the email ID and the storage capacity of the recipient. This is for one-on-one emailing. Google does not create a big fuss about such e-mails, as long as the other person has enough space in their inbox. But problems may arise in bulk e-mailing(While shooting out hundreds or emails in one go). As we discussed in the previous article on blacklisting, how Google wants to make it’s users’ lives easier, but spamming has become a big issue for both Google and legit marketers. This brings us to the importance of having a low spam score(Spam score is a metric by moz). You can read more about it here.

Tip: The higher the spam score, the higher are the chances of your e-mail hitting the spam folder. An ideal spam score is less than 5.

The following are the key things to keep in mind while practicing bulk e-mail marketing:

1. Content: To avoid hitting the spam folder, http://bit.ly/2atoUG3, avoid the words given in this awesomely comprehensive article on hubspot.com
2. Links: Make sure that the links with in the mail do not redirect your audience to a blacklisted website.
3. Source: If e-mail messages sent from the same IP are going to spam, your e-mails may also be categorized in a similar manner. This is a big issue for senders on same servers.
4. Headers: Make sure to not have any inconsistencies in the “from” and “reply to” addresses and domains.
5. Engagement: Recipients might mark your e-mails as spam, this has a direct effect on your OR and CTR. Every major e-mailing client uses these metrics to determine the credibility of the e-mailer. Thus, your mails should be engaging and fun.

Now, we come down to the e-mailing list/database you are going to create to be able to begin practicing e-mail marketing. There are two ways to add a new recipient to your mailing list: Double opt-in and Single opt-in. And all this is done from the backend that is provided to you by e-mailing clients.

In double opt-in, an automatically generated e-mail is sent to the subscriber. This mail has an activation link. The e-mail address is only added to your e-mailing list once the user has clicked this link. And in Single opt-in, the e-mail ID is not confirmed and straight away added to your database.

Double opt-in is the best way to create an authentic database but the rate at which your database is going to grow will be slow. On the other hand, single opt-in is an awesome way to create a massive database quickly, but the authenticity of the e-mail IDs cannot be assured.

Become an auto-responding (E-mails that are shot at a particular time or after a particular action taken by the recipient)/broadcasting (bulk e-mails that are sent manually) e-mailer using any of the following e-mailing clients (www.gmail.com has a limit of 500 mails/day):

1. www.Aweber.com (No trial/Gotta pay, straight away)
2. www.mail-chimp.com (Only single opt-in)
3. www.constantcontact.com (To get the basics)
4. www.sendgrid.com (To get the basics)
5. www.getresponse.com (Recommended)

Tip: Explore and experiment with different templates on the above tools. Devote some time to any of the above tools everyday and you’ll become a pro at e-mail marketing in no time.

Now go spam! Until you make it to the inbox!

Also read: 4 Obsolete SEO techniques you must avoid in 2016

WeBeeSocial is a full service creative digital marketing agency in New Delhi India. Our In-house tech team can help you optimize your website, set up e-mail servers, design and develop e-mailers and shoot them to a targeted database. Feel free to connect with us to inquire more about our e-mail marketing services.