Email marketing campaigns are not launched without careful thought and planning. It is important for your organization to implement these types of email campaigns, but keep in mind that this is not an exhaustive list – every brand has its own unique characteristics, so adjust your strategy to fit accordingly.
Discover the techniques for maximizing and dispatching different kinds of email marketing series.
Types of email marketing
Email marketing can be categorized into two main types: inbound and outbound. Depending on their purpose and target audience, all campaigns and emails fit into these two categories.
Inbound email marketing
The process of sending marketing emails to your existing subscribers is known as inbound email marketing. It aims at reaching out to customers at various stages of their journeys. These marketing campaigns typically rely on buyer personas to segment the audience.
To achieve various purposes like increasing brand awareness, boosting engagement, and improving customer loyalty, targeted and calculated campaigns are utilized in inbound email marketing.
Inbound email marketing focuses solely on individuals who have given their consent to receive marketing communication, ensuring that it is consent-based.
Outbound email marketing
The objective of outbound email marketing is to broaden its reach to individuals who are not currently part of the email list. This strategy aims to enhance brand visibility among potential customers who have not yet engaged with the product or service.
This blog post provides additional information about the disparities between inbound and outbound email marketing. Outbound email marketing heavily relies on ideal customer profile (ICP) research and does not necessitate consent due to its nature.
Types of email marketing campaigns
As stated previously, all email marketing campaigns can be classified as either inbound or outbound. Therefore, we made the decision to categorize various types of email campaigns according to this distinction.
1. Campaigns involving repeated emails.
Recurring email campaigns are campaigns that you send regularly. They follow a specific schedule and target a specific audience. Recurring campaigns can be sent weekly, monthly, or yearly. They are beneficial for nurturing customer relationships, offering value to subscribers, sharing regular updates, or conveying promotional content.
In the email marketing strategy, the details of recurring campaigns such as content, schedule, audience, and purpose are typically specified. This ensures that each email is consistent with your brand’s tone and business objectives.
Most recurring campaigns are automated by utilizing different types of marketing automation and email marketing software in order to enhance consistency. This enables the creation of email templates containing personalized variables that will be dispatched based on a predetermined schedule.
The benefits of running email marketing campaigns on a regular basis:
- Makes it easy to achieve consistency in communication;
- Establishes a strong relationship with the audience;
- Can help drive engagement;
- Keeps the audience informed about regular updates or upcoming promotions/events;
- Improves sending reputation as scheduled emails seem less spammy to internet service providers (ISPs) and spam filters.
There are drawbacks to recurring email marketing campaigns.
- Can overwhelm subscribers if you’re sending too many emails;
- May not be suitable for all audiences.
2. Email campaigns that are done only once (or are separate from other campaigns).
One-off email campaigns, also known as standalone or ad-hoc campaigns, involve the sending of single emails that are not part of a regular schedule. Marketers often utilize these campaigns to promote a one-time promotion, introduce a product update or new product, advertise a particular event, or diversify their content marketing approach.
One-off email campaigns, despite lacking a schedule, do possess a specific target audience.
Advantages of implementing a solitary email marketing campaign.
- Allows marketers to test subject lines, copies, designs, and different structures;
- Makes it easy to inform subscribers immediately about changes, news, or one-time promotions;
- Can introduce the aspects of your brand that aren’t part of your regular communication, such as history and values;
- Can diversify your content marketing.
One-off email marketing campaigns have a number of disadvantages.
- Can disturb the usual flow of communication;
- Could result in spam complaints since the subscribers won’t be expecting the email;
- Requires more resources because its design and copies are different from regular campaigns.
3. The welcome email series
Congratulations on acquiring a new subscriber. Take a moment to envision making a new friend or colleague. It is customary to present yourself in a polite manner, and this is precisely the purpose of the welcome email series. Although not frequently utilized, it is an exceedingly powerful email campaign.
By sending a sequence of three, four, or five messages, you have the opportunity to establish a level of familiarity with a new subscriber. Additionally, you can provide them with information about your brand promise at a time when they are most receptive to receiving communication from you.
If you delay contacting a new email subscriber, their spam score may increase as they might forget that they had subscribed to your list. Additionally, welcome emails have higher open rates, click-through rates, and generate more revenue compared to the average.
If you don’t implement any other type of email marketing campaign, make sure to use this specific one. Remember these crucial points when creating your welcome email.
- Wow your customers
- Showcase your brand
- Say thanks
- Give them a little gift
4. The standard promotional campaign
This is the most familiar type of email marketing campaign and is likely to be the one you encounter most frequently. It is highly probable that you currently have a promotional email from a brand in your inbox, or even multiple ones. From my personal perspective as a consumer, these emails tend to be less structured and strategic than we would prefer.
They resemble rapid machine-gun fire, continuously appearing in inboxes with a repetitive rat-a-tat-tat rhythm that remains unaltered. We do not endorse this, therefore take the time to carefully plan these campaigns.
Instead of individually sending 10 separate emails to promote your products, why not consider developing a progressive or cohesive campaign where each email builds upon the previous one and leads to the next?
Below are a few ways to enhance your traditional email promotion and make it more exciting.
- Provoke emotion
- Add humor
- Leave them curious
- Give a free product
- Use slogans from popular music
- Use color, images and font that grabs attention
- Give a free product
5. The seasonal campaign
The seasonal campaign is a branch off of the promotional email campaign.
You can launch an email marketing campaign on any major holiday, such as Valentine’s Day or Father’s Day, which may be less popular but still highly effective. These campaigns can include a pre-event buildup and a post-event follow-up, giving you multiple chances to send emails.
Retailers should give extra attention to this particular period, as holiday sales make up 20% of their total sales, as reported by the National Retail Federation. In the United States, these sales exceeded $84 billion. When strategizing for the season, there are certain factors that should be taken into consideration.
- Know the holidays in the country you are promoting. This is a great way to segment your list.
- Start early. People are bombarded over the holidays so make sure you’re the first one to reach their inbox.
- Make sure the colors as well as the language matches the theme of the holiday.
- Give them an exclusive discount for the holiday. This is a critical reason why holiday marketing is effective.
- Use urgency. One of the main reasons email marketing works well is that they are for a limited amount of time.
6. The triggered email series
By utilizing automated email marketing, a sequence of targeted and relevant emails can be activated based on a user’s action.
Their behavior, whether it be clicking on a link in the promotional email series, adding items to their cart without checking out, downloading content, making a purchase, or responding to a survey, has “triggered” their entry into the drip campaign.
According to the 2013 National Client Email Report by the DMA, more than 75% of revenue from emails comes from triggered campaigns rather than generic promotional campaigns. Here are some types of triggers that you can incorporate into your email marketing toolkit.
- Campaign activity: an email is sent to someone who is part of a campaign list, opened a specific campaign, didn’t open a campaign, clicks on a specific link, didn’t click on a link.
- List management: triggers an automated email when someone is manually added to a list, or if they sign up to a list on their own.
- Workflow activity: triggers an email that sends after a subscriber receives, opens, doesn’t open or clicks on a link in the previous automated email in your series.
- Ecommerce: triggers an email that sends after a customer purchases any product, a specific product, hasn’t purchased a second product, abandoned a product in a cart or showed interest in a product from a previous email.
7. The connect-via-social campaign
This is a social campaign that utilizes various channels such as email and social media, possibly alternating between the two. It aims to involve individuals in their newsfeed through email marketing. There are numerous options available, ranging from Facebook to Instagram.
For instance, in the case of a kitchen gadget, a social campaign could employ email marketing to request users to pin images of recipes created using the gadget on Pinterest, share them on Facebook, or tweet with a specific hashtag. There are countless potential options!
8. The newsletter
A regular communication between you and your list, such as a newsletter or digest, is essentially a clever email, although it is not considered a “campaign” as it can continue indefinitely.
If you do newsletters correctly, your audience won’t perceive them as sales pieces that they will eventually get bored of. Instead, these emails can actually be valuable by providing updates on your products, educating your audience, and even offering entertainment.
Brands like the Skimm send out newsletters which are among the most popular emails. However, it is not just about what you receive. You also gain advantages by staying in people’s thoughts, creating loyalty to your brand, and offering content that can be shared and potentially expand your audience.
9. The abandoned cart series
Abandoned cart emails may be categorized as a type of email marketing campaign.
Similar to other automated campaigns, these emails are activated when a user adds an item to their online shopping cart but does not proceed with the purchase. Typically, these emails provide an incentive, such as offering a 10% discount, to motivate the user to complete their purchase.
Email series like welcome emails are known to have significantly higher open rates and conversions. Despite being more complex for beginners, they should be considered by everyone for implementation.
10. Re-engagement emails
Re-engagement emails aim to reach out to email subscribers and users who have not been active. By using a CRM or an email marketing platform, you can select contacts who have not recently engaged with your brand. You can then create a compelling email to regain their interest. This can involve sharing updates about your product, providing discounts (which can be effective in any situation), or requesting feedback.
By sending unsuccessful re-engagement emails, you can effectively cleanse your email list and potentially decrease the number of spam complaints. Although you may lose some subscribers, you will be left with a targeted audience who genuinely demonstrate an interest in your content.
When it comes to their re-engagement email, Clear incorporates all the industry best practices we discussed earlier. The email commences with an update about the product, explicitly mentioning the pricing, and includes a call to action that guides users to the discount. Subsequently, the email illustrates how Clear simplifies journeys to emphasize its effectiveness.
How to reactivate subscribers who are inactive:
- Send a personalized email. Feature an update or benefit that would be interesting to the inactive subscribers based on their demographics, interests, and past behaviors;
- Ask them why they stopped engaging. Even if they unsubscribe, you’ll be left with interesting insights and get a chance to improve future campaigns.