So you’ve decided to take on email marketing. You expect that it’ll be a great undertaking, but you’re not afraid of a little hard work. Now that you’ve mentally prepared yourself to begin planning your campaign, you find yourself in the first phase: researching the type of email campaign to model.
Email Marketing Type 1: Transactional Emails
Description: This is the email that you receive after having completed an action (bought a product, signed up for a service, etcetera). Often, this type of email serves as a sort of receipt which shows proof of transactions and/or provides login information.
Pros: Due to transactional emails containing useful information (profile login info, proof of payment, etcetera) these emails are generally welcomed and tend to have a high click through rate.
Cons: If this form of follow-up email requires any other sort of action (i.e. verification), you can expect to have some immediate unsubscribes.
Email Marketing Type 2: Sponsorship Emails
Description: Sponsorship emails are used to promote a brand by taking advantage of another brand’s success by paying to be mentioned or linked to them in others’ email campaigns.
Pros: Helps you expand your leads by tapping into those of another company.
Cons: The people you’re marketing to are not choosing to follow your brand voluntarily, so you’re kind of being forced upon them.
Email Marketing Type 3: Lead Nurturing
Description: Lead nurturing emails are emails which are sent out to prospective leads meant to educate them on all the possible reasons why they should use your product or service.
Pros: Lead nurturing email campaigns increase conversion rates exponentially.
Cons: With time, leads tend to get cold. If you don’t use analytics to act quickly when leads ripen and consistently publish the type of material that your readership desires, your email and prospective leads list will dwindle with every post.
Email Marketing Type 4: Dedicated Email (aka “Stand-Alone Emails)
Description: Dedicated emails are single emails which are meant to notify your target audience that they have the option to take a specific action (i.e. “Save Now”, “Buy Now”, “Download”, etcetera) or that you are inviting them to attend an event (i.e. a webinar).
Pros: Due to this form of email focusing on only one call to action, these types of email campaigns tend to have a greater impact on your targeted audience. This type of email is also the easiest to measure when it comes to immediate ROI.
Cons: If your audience isn’t impressed by the single type of information that you publish in your email campaign, you can expect to see your number of subscribers plummet.
Email Marketing Type 5: Digest
Description: Email digests are similar to newsletters in their being published on a regular schedule. However, email digests tend to be easier to process because instead of including a full-length article, they include brief summaries of articles and links for interested readers to follow.
Pros: These emails can be sent to targeted audiences. Plus, readers feel less pressured by these types of emails because whether or not to take action and continue reading is completely up to them.
Cons: The consequences to not following through with these types of leads are similar to those of dedicated emails. If you do not use your analytics properly or act swiftly, you end up missing out on opportunities to reach out to potential customers.
Email Marketing Type 6: Email Newsletter
Description: An email campaign consisting of several articles all aimed at promoting one goal. Newsletter campaigns are also set on a consistent recurring schedule deemed appropriate for your field (i.e. monthly, bi-monthly, weekly, etcetera).
Pros: Due to the consistency with which these emails are sent out, newsletter campaigns offer a great opportunity to increase brand recognition and show off your brand’s ability to provide diverse content.
Cons: Sending out the same call-to-action week after week tends to dilute the sense of urgency necessary to listen to your call-to-action.
Now that you know when each type of email campaign works best, are there any adjustments you plan on making to your email marketing campaigns? Does this information make you more inclined to embark on this form of marketing? Which qualms do you still have about email marketing? Let us know in the comments section below!
