What is Email Marketing? Transactional vs Marketing Email

Want to boost your business? Email marketing can help you sell, tell people about your brand, and connect with customers in a personal way. Learn the tricks at Learn.inpublicity.com!

Sending emails to tell people about your business and products is called email marketing. It's a way to reach customers directly, sell things, and get them to know and like your brand. Think of it like writing a special message for a group of people who might be interested in what you offer.

Why Should I Do Email Marketing?

Email is like a super-affordable marketing tool that helps you understand your customers better. It's way cheaper than most other options, and it's awesome at giving you info about what people like.

Think of it like this: you send emails, and you can see how many people open them, click on the links, and even buy something! You can also see how long they spend on your website and what they look at there. All this info helps you make better emails and sell more stuff.

This data is like a gold mine full of details! It tells you what worked and what didn't in your messages, so you can fix them up, group similar people together for better ads, and make offers that really grab their attention.

Think about sending flyers: it costs a lot more and often it's hard to tell if it actually worked. Maybe sales went up after mailing flyers, but you don't get much information you can use later, unless people use a special website link or code from the flyer.

Transactional versus Marketing Email

Before you start sending emails to your customers and those interested in your stuff, you need to know the two main types: transactional and marketing. Think of it like this:

Transactional email

Emails you get after doing something (or not doing something) are called transactional emails. They can help finish off something you started, like buying a shirt or signing up for news. They can also tell you about important things, like the website being down or the rules changing.

One common type is a confirmation email. This politely lets you know when you've done something like buying a book, joining a mailing list, or saying you'll be at a party.

Think about when these emails would be most helpful for your customers. This way, you can make sure they get the right information at the right time.

Marketing email

Marketing emails are messages sent to promote something, like a sale, event, or new product line. You can send them yourself or use special tools to send them automatically. It's important to choose the right time to send these emails to grab people's attention.

In the US, there are rules called the CAN-SPAM Act that you need to follow when sending marketing emails. These rules make sure you don't bother people with unwanted emails. Before starting, it's best to talk to a lawyer who knows about these rules to make sure you're doing everything right.

8 Types of Marketing Email

Marketing emails aren't all the same! They depend on who gets them, why they're getting it, and what you're sending. But they basically come in two flavors: hand-built and automatic.

Hand-built emails are just what they sound like - you pick the people you want to message and send them all the same thing. Think of it like sending out party invitations one by one.

A trigger marketing campaign automatically sends email to individual users based on an action, inaction, or some other variable. These can be incredibly effective, in part because they are so personalized.

Now let’s look at some examples of each:

Types of manual marketing email

Informational email

Informational email does exactly that — provides information. That information might be an update on new products, an engaging piece of content you created, or a just a reminder to visit your business.

You might use this type of email for major gift-giving holidays — Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and Mother’s and Father’s Day — to give your subscribers gift ideas or special offers (both online and in store).

Newsletters

A newsletter is one way to market to prospective customers and deepen your relationship with existing customers.

You can use newsletters to highlight new products or services, upcoming events, news related to your business, content you’ve produced, and your brand’s social media accounts.

Sale or promotion email

If you’re having a special sale in your store, email should be one of the primary ways that you get the word out.

You can also use email to do a promotion specifically for your customers, where you send them a coupon or discount code to use online or in the store. Customers who redeem coupons from Square spend, on average, 25 percent more on that sale than they do on their average purchase.

(Pro tip: You might even use a promotion like this to acquire new customers by making coupons shareable and posting them to Facebook.)

Event invitation

If you have a brick-and-mortar business and you want to get people into your store, you might hold special events. And email is an efficient way to invite your customers.

For example, a retailer might host a weeknight shopping party with later hours, cocktails and appetizers, and sales. A restaurant might do a special tasting menu for regular customers. A salon might have an event where it teams up with makeup artists to do makeovers.

Types of trigger marketing email

Welcome email

When people sign up for your newsletter, marketing email, or other offers, send them a message that introduces them to everything that your business has to offer. Let them know about things like exclusive discounts for subscribers so they keep receiving (and opening) your email.

Thank-you email

In many cases, your confirmation email and your thank-you email may be the same thing. You might use a thank-you email when a customer completes an action like subscribing to a newsletter or signing up for a loyalty program.

But you could also use thank-you messaging when there isn’t something to confirm. For example, you could thank your customers on your business’s anniversary each year via email (and provide a promo code or special discount). Or you might send a thank-you each time a member of your loyalty program purchases something or reaches a reward.

Reengagement email

The goal of a reengagement campaign is to get lapsed customers shopping with you again. You could do this with an email that offers a promotion or discount to the lapsed customer, or you might send an email that highlights products or services you provide.

But the bigger question is how do you know which customers are lapsed? If you have an email marketing system that integrates with your POS, you should be able to group customer email based on their purchase behaviors.

For example, a loyal customer might have made more than three visits to your store in the last month, a casual customer visited twice, and a lapsed customer hasn’t returned in six weeks.

Birthday or anniversary email

Another example of a transactional email is a birthday or anniversary message. Most birthday or anniversary email comes with some kind of offer like a discount or free gift if they show the email or use a specific bar code during their birth month.

According to online statistics, automated birthday offers generate the highest engagement. The open rate and redemption of birthday email is more than 2.5 times higher than the average across all types of email campaigns.

Email Marketing Tips

Want people to open your emails and click that button? You gotta be smarter than the average marketer, because folks (and their email programs) are getting wise.

Here are some tips to make your emails shine and avoid the spam folder:

• Don’t send too much email. Even if customers like your brand, they don’t want you to blow up their inbox, so unless they sign up for a daily newsletter, be conservative about how often you email them.
• Invest in optimization tools. Sometimes it’s not just what you say in the message, but when you send your message. For a more sophisticated operation, consider employing tools like a system that determines the best time to send your message to each subscriber.
• Avoid language that looks like spam: Customers will never even see your email if it gets caught in the spam filter, so avoid suspect subject-line wording like “click now to win a prize!” Also, while you want subscribers who opt in, you also need to make sure customers can opt out of email, and to comply with other applicable legal marketing requirements. Check this FTC guide for more information, and make sure you consult with a legal expert for your particular needs.
• Send clear, attractive messages. You don’t want to send email that sounds too good to be true (or legal), but you do want to appeal to your customers with great offers and easy-to-understand language.

How to Start an Email Marketing Program

When you’re ready to get started with an email marketing program, first things first, you need a tool to send your emails. This is called an email service provider (ESP). Pick one that's easy to use and tells you how your emails are doing, like with reports and charts.

Next, you need people to send emails to! This is your email list. There are a few ways to build it up:

• Through your POS
• With prompts inviting customers to subscribe to your mailing list on your website
• With calls to action on social media

Before you start reaching out to your subscriber list, you should have a clear strategy in mind, including the goals of your messages and a calendar outlining the types of email you’re going to send and when you’re planning to send them. Provider? Check. Once you’ve got a provider, subscriber list, strategy, and calendar in place, you’re good to go. Start sending!