In 2017, an average of 269 billion emails were sent per day. That means the competition for attention in inboxes for email marketers is very high. Email marketing continues to generate high ROI for marketing departments that build a well-thought-out strategy that delivers personalized messages at the right time to the recipients. Below are three types of emails needed in a marketing strategy today: welcome emails, trigger emails and re-engagement emails. All of these emails play a critical role in the customer journey.
Welcome Email
There are multiple reasons that many people consider the welcome email to be the most important email that a business can send. For starters, this is one of your new user’s first impressions of your brand. It can help build trust and give new subscribers a preview of what they will be expecting in the future. Imagine receiving a welcome email that provided valuable information, made you laugh or previewed what you’ll be getting going forward. In the future, you are more likely to look for these emails and interact with them. Additionally, a welcome email typically has the highest open and engagement rates of any other email, if sent shorty after a signup or engagement. This leads to higher deliverability in the future and a great opportunity to get across a message you know the subscriber will see. Overall, when sending a welcome email be sure to send it quickly, show your brand’s personality and provide the user with information they may find useful.
Trigger Emails
Although a welcome email is a trigger email, there are many other types of trigger emails. Most trigger emails are further along the customer journey and, according to the DMA (Data and Marketing Association), have over four times the amount of clicks as a usual campaign. That's because a trigger email is sent after a type of event and is relevant to the event that was completed; thus, an action is more likely. Types of trigger emails include content the subscriber requested from a form submission, a reminder of something they added to their cart and then abandoned, a date-based email letting them know they have a renewal coming up soon, etc. These types of emails are intended to get a relevant message to users at the right time and, with marketing automation, can be done much easier. With these emails, marketers have a great opportunity to use data, to personalize the message and to drive a response, whether a purchase, event sign-up or just trying to get a message across.
Re-engagement Emails
Re-engagement emails have gained an even greater significance over the last few years, and most marketers agree about their importance, yet only about half of companies actually use them. Over time, contact databases will decay at a rate of nearly a quarter a year, due to switching jobs, changing email addresses or even contacts unsubscribing because they feel the information they are receiving is not relevant. Already losing that amount means you will want to keep the remaining contacts you have in your database engaged. Additionally, continuing to send generic emails to unengaged contacts will lead to lower open and engagement rates. Over time, that hurts your sender score. You'll start to see more emails sent to your engaged contacts ending up in spam or junk folders.
To avoid this, create a segment of your database that has not engaged and create a series of emails to follow up with them to drive engagement. These emails can include new content similar to what they originally showed interest in, an offer they would be interested in, or even directly asking them what they want to receive going forward. Personalize the message and test different subject lines, copy and send times to see what can re-engage an interest.
Aligning these types of emails, with others needs to be well thought out. If you are looking to build or improve on your current email marketing program, J&C can help you address pain points and develop an overall campaign that delivers results to your bottom line.
Topics: Email Marketing
