All you need to know about email marketing: definition, challenges and benefits

Email marketing: definition

E-mail marketing is a powerful communication tool, designed to keep customers informed, build loyalty and sell through regular mailings. 

Email marketing, as the name implies, aims to stimulate your customers' interest in buying. The creative phase is important, as it must both inform and encourage the reader to make a purchase. You can personalize emails according to the segments of your database, enabling you to create better adapted and more effective content.

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Why email marketing?

Email marketing aims to inform and retain a base of contacts interested in your products or services, and to stimulate sales by encouraging them to visit specific pages on your website. This communication strategy deploys powerful levers.

Notoriety

By sending your customers emails with informative, high-quality content, you increase your brand awareness and expertise. It's also a way of reaching a wider audience and increasing your brand's visibility. Indeed, this process can reach prospects you'd never have discovered otherwise.

This way, you can direct them to your website and increase traffic tenfold.

Expertise

By distributing targeted, documented and expert information, you maximize your credibility. Email marketing gives you the opportunity to share relevant tips and information on a regular basis. This undeniably boosts the confidence of customers who come back to read your content and wait to find out more. They're reassured, they trust you, and they turn into buyers.

The call to action

To boost your sales, you need to encourage your prospects to take action. Email marketing is the perfect medium for following up and convincing them. 

Spark desire with promotional offers and product launches that will engage them. From prospecting to loyalty building, email marketing scores points every day.

Positive figures

According to the 2023 Email Marketing Report:

• 48.4% of companies consider their emailing strategy to be effective, and 34.5% still too average;
• At both ends of the spectrum, 10.3% of participants indicated that their emailing program was not powerful, while only 6.8% described it as very effective. 

These relatively cautious figures may be linked to the events of 2022, marked by the onset of a recession, geopolitical crises and rapidly rising inflation. 

Nevertheless, it's comforting to note that in France, emailing is perceived as generally effective, with almost 90% of responses ranging from very effective to average.

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All types of emailing

Let's get to the heart of what you're interested in: what are the different types of e-mailing that exist and that convert?

Welcome and thank-you emails

You need to make a good first impression on your prospect. This is essential when developing a communication strategy and acquiring new subscribers or customers. That's the purpose of a welcome email. Here's how you can do it:

• You can simply send an email thanking them for signing up;
• You take this opportunity to introduce yourself and convince the reader of the added value you bring;
• Include a call to action (CTA), such as a link to your articles.

Otherwise, we've put together an article on how to create the perfect welcome email to make it easier for you.

Don't hesitate to invite them to follow you on social networks, while highlighting your visual identity. These steps are essential for building momentum and encouraging interaction with your followers.

Newsletter

Newsletters are a great way to communicate with your subscribers or customers. You send marketing content such as :

• What's new?
• Articles ;
• Or videos. 

Highlighting entertaining content has proven its effectiveness in marketing. It positions you as an expert. That's how you earn users' trust. 

For a sound strategy, follow the golden rule: 90% informative content and 10% promotional content.

And don't forget: newsletters differ from email marketing in that they are mainly informative, and don't directly encourage purchases.

The follow-up email

The reminder email supports commercial emails. It is sent to consumers who have already received this type of email, but have not yet reacted.

It's used to get back in touch with someone who hasn't shown any particular interest in your previous solicitations. It also helps to clarify the situation: is your prospect likely to become a customer, or is it better to remove them from your mailing list?

Wondering how long it takes to send a reminder e-mail? Don't panic, we've got the answer in a dedicated article. Just click ;)

Transactional email

This type of email is sent to a web user following the completion of a specific action: 

• Cart abandonment ;
• Password reset ;
• Order confirmation ;
• Etc.

For more on this subject, we have another article available: how to set up transactional emails.

Email notification

Notification emails are similar to transactional emails. The difference lies in the fact that you determine the content to be sent to your recipient based on their actions. It must encourage the reader to interact with you.

Loyalty emails

Loyalty e-mails are usually sent periodically to newsletter subscribers. It can have a commercial aspect, highlighting offers, products or services. 

However, its purpose can also be more customer-focused, revealing tips and informative content.

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Email marketing and marketing automation 

Marketing automation consists of setting up automatic communication scenarios based on actions taken. 

These predefined scenarios are based on user behavior. We can think, for example, of sending a welcome email when subscribing to a list, or a reminder email in the event of shopping cart abandonment.

There are various terms used to describe the automation of marketing tasks:

• Autoresponder ;
• Trigger marketing ;
• Or automated emails.

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So what's the difference with email marketing? 

The latter consists of sending an email to a list of contacts(one to many) to serve a general purpose, such as promotions, new products or news content via a newsletter. 

A traditional email campaign isn't targeted at a specific audience, and doesn't correspond to a particular user activity.

On the other hand, as we do at Kiliba, marketing automation sends automated, personalized (one-to-one) emails, which are triggered by specific actions taken by your contacts. These are more relevant messages, individually tailored to each user based on their progress in the customer journey. Do you understand?

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What are the 7 benefits of email marketing?

Email marketing is an ideal solution for communicating effectively with your customer database. It offers many advantages.

1. Automated creation and management of customer files: 

Thanks to dynamic fields, targeted contact lists are created without manual effort. Email marketing software automates the entire campaign process. This saves you considerable time.

2. User loyalty 

People who agree to receive your e-mails show their interest in your company. It's also an opportunity to measure the performance of your actions.

3. Cost reduction

Email marketing tools make campaigns less expensive than other actions. This is the case with some tools that offer free sending up to a certain number of emails.

4. Database segmentation

You can segment your e-mail list according to the information available. This way, you can tailor your emails to your target audience for better results.

5. Enhanced statistics

Email marketing enables you to obtain relevant statistics on your campaigns, such as the number of recipients, opens and clicks, as well as the type of device and messaging used.

6. Social network integration

Email marketing makes it easy to connect to a variety of social media, strengthening your cross-channel strategy. It also encourages recipients to migrate to your social networks.

7. RGPD compliance

Email marketing complies with RGPD rules. To this end, it includes:

• Double user consent;
• Storage of consent receipts ;
• And the possibility for users to request the deletion of their personal data. 

Namely, the impact of the RGPD is significant for some website publishers.

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Trust Kiliba to manage your email marketing strategy.

Benefit from enhanced personalization, optimized open and conversion rates thanks to our highly-trained artificial intelligence!

We'll help you improve the performance of your email campaigns for superior results. 

Kiliba connects to your online store and automates your marketing campaigns. Stop wasting time and start making money!

Contact us today to find out more about our services.