Many businesses think that sending a newsletter each month is email marketing. Newsletters can be effective but did you know that there are more marketing emails you should be sending?
In this article, I suggest 10 that you could use. Now, every business is different so you might use two or three or even all 10. Just stop thinking newsletters are all that matter.
1. Welcome emails
A welcome email is typically sent when someone signs up for a newsletter or free resource. And by exchanging their email address with you, they’re showing you that they’re interested in what’s being offered.
The key to this type of email is that new subscribers have come to expect a welcome email soon after they submit a form. These should be sent within an hour of them subscribing.
Research has shown that most people expect a welcome email .
Welcome emails show better open and click-through rates when they offer a personal touch and introduce your organization without slathering on the sales pitch. Don’t introduce a new product or service before you’ve built a relationship. Simply work on giving off a good first impression — one that illustrates your industry knowledge and expertise — and pave the way for future contact.
The elements you include in a welcome email will depend on the specifics of what you’re offering. But in general, you can use the email to showcase your brand’s personality and to highlight the value that recipients can expect to receive. If you’re welcoming new users to a product or service, the welcome email is a great place to explain how everything works and what users need to do to get started.
Advantages of welcome emails
The start of a beautiful relationship
When you fire off that first welcome email to potential prospects, it’s the first step in forming a relationship. When done correctly, this will be a positive experience for them and will leave them more receptive to future emails. In fact, subscribers who read an initial welcome email will read 40 percent more content from a sender over the subsequent 180 days.
They’re eager to learn more
Welcome emails have higher open rates and click-through rates than standard marketing emails. This can be a good way to kickstart your email marketing metrics for the better.
Disadvantages of welcome emails
Don’t screw it up
A welcome email is the first communication you will have with a potential buyer and if you don’t nail it right out of the gate, you can blow any chance of closing a deal.
The average open rate for welcome emails is a whopping 50%
2. Email newsletters
This type of email is the most common. If a business only sends one email type, it will probably be this one.
It is NOT an email for promotions.
Many businesses and organizations send email newsletters to stay top of mind for their readers. They can be a great foundation of an email marketing strategy. They can be used to educate customers and prospects about product announcements, team profiles, events, and feedback requests.
Before we get into the details of creating email newsletters, you need to determine your goal. What is it that you want your email newsletter to achieve?
You might want to nurture your existing contacts and become the first brand they think of when they need a product or service that you provide. Another goal could be to encourage your readers to share the newsletter to build your list. As you define your goal, think about how you’re going to measure the effect.
If your goal is to drive traffic to a specific page, you need to monitor the click-through rate (CTR) for that link in your email.
As you work on your newsletter layout and content creation, stay mindful of your goal, and make sure you’re working towards meeting it by making sure you make the most of the design and placement of calls-to-actions.
They’re typically made up of a two or more sections. Each section should be made up of the same components. They are:
- A section headline
- An image that matches the section headline
- A summary of what the section is highlighting
- A call-to-action (CTA) to lead the reader to more information
This simple format will allow you to use visuals to attract the reader to each article while still giving you the ability to feature multiple articles — without sending a super lengthy email.
Advantages of email newsletters
Brand awareness
Like newspapers, newsletters can create a certain level of anticipation with your readers. Whether your newsletter is sent each day or once a week, you readers will get into the habit of receiving it. So, if you’re considering sending email newsletters, make sure you’re sending them regularly. If your readers are enjoying the content, they will stay subscribed. Creating this habit of receiving and opening with your subscribers means that they recognise your brand and associate it with a positive experience.
Repurpose content
Generally, newsletters are a summary of content that you’ve already published. Many businesses summarise their most popular blog posts and link to the articles from their newsletter. In this way, they bring subscribers back to the website and engage them with more content.
Diverse content
Email newsletters give you the ability to include different content types in the one email. For example, in the one newsletter, you can include links to a recent or popular blog post, a special offer, details of an upcoming event, information about a special offer and a link to a survey.
Disadvantages of email newsletters
Diluted call-to-action
Newsletters tend to be a summary of different pieces of information. They tend to have multiple calls-to-action. The problem is that the attention of your readers is spread across the newsletter. There’s no focus on the one thing your really want them to do. To counter this, put the most important information at the top moving down to the least important at the bottom. Make sure each block of information has a clear call to action.
Design
Newsletter design become more complicated. Image placement that takes into account the need for responsive presentation in today’s world. To help with the ‘best’ design for your business, use A/B testing.
3. The re-engagement email
If metrics are showing that a portion of your subscribed client list has been inactive, it may be time to send out a re-engagement email in order to re-establish contact and good will. Asking for feedback is an excellent way to bring your business back to their minds, and if they respond, it’s a win-win; they’re again actively aware of your business, and you’ve got fresh feedback to work with for improving processes and marketing tactics.
And even if they wind up unsubscribing, there is a bright side: Your email engagement rates will improve overall, and your email reputation will see a boost among internet service providers (ISPs).
Advantages of re-engagement emails
Turning a loss into a win
According to Active Campaign, turning an inactive subscriber into a customer is 5 times cheaper than acquiring a brand new customer.
Clean up your lists
Worst case scenario is that your re-engagement emails doesn’t reel these prospects back in. The silver lining is that no matter what the outcome of this send, you’ll be able to clean up your email lists.
Disadvantages of re-engagement emails
Don't pester
If a contact has become unengaged once before, maybe they don’t want to be contacted again. Sending a re-engagement series is definitely worth it because we all have to shoot our shot to win new business but be sure not to pester your prospects again if they’re not ready to partner up.
4. Dedicated emails
Also known as stand-alone emails, dedicated emails focus on one piece of information. It could be an offer, event, or product update. For example, if you have a new webinar scheduled, sending an email focused on getting registration to your list is a great way to get a campaign started.
The key element of this type of emails is a single call-to-action.
Depending on your business and the information, you need to consider whether all your readers need to receive the email or whether the information is relevant only to a segment.
Advantages of dedicated emails
Focused call-to-action
Unlike newsletters, dedicated sends can focus on really driving results for one call-to-action, because there is just one message and one goal.
Easy to build
Once you an email template for this type of email, future dedicated emails are easy. Spend some time crafting a subject line and preheader text, take the key message that is already on your landing page, make some tweaks, add an image and you’re good to go.
Fast to measure
Having one main message with one call-to-action means that it is easy to track what’s happening. You have one CTR to monitor, one landing page to check for page views, and tracking conversions becomes very easy.
Disadvantages of dedicated emails
Less consistency
These aren’t typically scheduled like an email newsletter.
Due to their nature, this type of email can’t be delivered with any consistency.
Single focus
By their nature, it’s hard to include other information that may be important to your readers.
To counter this, make use of the P.S. (These are displayed at the very end of your email) and your landing page. At the bottom of your landing page, you could include other information or offers. Be careful though. Remember that a landing page should conversion focused.
5. Lead nurturing emails
Most of the people who become aware of your business aren’t ready to buy from you.
Only 25% of them are ready to spend money with you and 50% are qualified but not yet ready to make a purchase.
Nurturing is a tactic to move these people closer to buying from you.
To make these effective, you need to understand where your leads are in their buyer’s journey and what their needs are. To do this, it’s important to define your buyer personas. If you don’t, your emails are likely to be unopened and deleted.
This becomes more important if you’re business offers goods or services to different market segments. For example, you may sell products direct to consumers and to wholesalers. If you’re a photographer, you may offer services photographing newborns, families, and weddings. Sending one email to multiple market segments can be detrimental. Put each segment into their own nurture sequence to have highly targeted messages and offer greater value to the reader.
The overall goal here is to guide them through the sales cycle to move them down the funnel and, ultimately, convert them into loyal customers.
In your lead nurturing emails, it’s important to call out why recipients are receiving the email. For example, you could say something like, “We noticed you’re into [topic x] since you downloaded our [Topic X] ebook, and we thought you might want to learn more about [topic x] …” Once you’ve addressed why recipients are getting email from you, you can format your lead nurturing emails like the way you’d set up your general marketing offer emails.
Other important considerations when crafting your lead nurturing campaigns are the planning, setup, segmentation, and timing.
Advantages of lead nurturing emails
They’re timely
When someone shows interest in your product or service, they will never be more likely to buy.
Research continues to show that the longer a lead stays in your funnel, the lower the rate of engagement with your emails.
What that means is that if you have a new lead, don’t wait to contact them!
Easy to build
Once you an email template for this type of email, future dedicated emails are easy. Spend some time crafting a subject line and preheader text, take the key message that is already on your landing page, make some tweaks, add an image and you’re good to go.
They’re automated
As new leads come in, lead nurturing emails are automatically sent out based on your schedule. Using automation gives you a high return on a low investment. You can set and forget. Automation means the emails will be doing the work for you, helping you qualify leads and push them down the sales funnel faster.
They’re targeted
A segmented, highly targeted series of emails will always outperform one email sent with no thought to the recipient’s needs or situation. Lead nurturing enables you to have a coherent series of emails tied to an action the lead had taken. Using a series based on their interest will result in more, better conversions.
Disadvantages of dedicated emails
Not designed to create ‘buzz’
With dedicated emails, you can generate a lot of buzz around your brand, products, and services. If you’re letting readers know about a new product or service, there is usually an increase in engagement. People opening, clicking, and sharing.
Lead nurturing can’t achieve the same buzz. They’re sent with the objective of engaging leads and moving them closer to a purchase. There’s fewer emails sent to a segmented audience.
Tracking can take 2nd place
Because they’re automated, measuring tends to be seen as less important. However, you should continue to track the performance of lead nurturing emails to make sure you’re getting the ROI. Are they being opened? Are any links being clicked. If you’re not measuring the performance, and in particular conversion rates, you won’t know if they’re effective.
Related article: How to create an email nurture sequence
6. Brand story emails
Telling stories is a powerful tactic to get an emotional response. Getting that all important emotional response increases the likelihood that a connection is created between your reader and your brand. One of the most important stories you can tell is a personal story behind your brand.
Across all your emails and marketing collateral, your story should be evident. Having a unique story gets the point across to your readers of who you are, what you do and how you can help them.
Advantages of brand story emails
Emotional connection
Emails that tell your brand story that can trigger an emotional response with your readers. This can help tip them over the line into making the decision to purchase as well as building customer loyalty.
Disadvantages of dedicated emails
Don't spam
Sending a brand story for the sake of sending it can be counterproductive. Sending a poorly crafted brand story could be seen as being spammy.
If you don’t have a fully developed, well-crafted brand story, then wait until you do.
7. Review request emails
These days, buyers aren’t making a purchase decision until they’re about 70% of the way through the buying process. Many buyers are looking at review sites such as Google Reviews, G2Crowd to learn the experience past customers have had.
If you’re asking purchasers to give a review of their experience, you are building credibility and boosting your search engine results.
These aren’t the same as asking for a testimonial. Testimonials are used on your site to help decrease buyer’s remorse. Reviews are left on third party sites to help people in deciding to purchase.
Make requesting a review part of your post purchase process. Offering an incentive can also help increase the number of reviews being given.
Advantages of review request emails
Credibility
With more buyers researching businesses they might want to purchase from, reviews sites are places they’ll end up on. When a buyer is making a choice between two suppliers, a handful of positive reviews may be the thing that sways them to choosing you over your competitor.
Search engine optimization
Review sites can play an important role in raising your SEO profile. When your review page includes links back to your site, it boosts your site’s domain authority. When linked to your website, reviews become new and unique content about your business. This will contribute to improved rankings on search engines.
Disadvantages of review request emails
Bad reviews
The number one reason people don’t ask their customers for a review is that they’re worried they’ll get a bad review. Imagine you’re researching a business and there are a 1,000 review and they have a 5 star average. This can be counterproductive. Having a few bad reviews isn’t a problem. The problem is where a business doesn’t address those bad reviews.
8. Co-marketing email
Co-marketing is when two or more complementary companies partner together for some mutually beneficial task, event, or other promotion. The main draw of co-marketing is to leverage the audience of another company to increase your reach.
Sometimes the relationship results in a strategic announcement; other times it’s as simple as a joint webinar. Let’s use the latter for an example of how co-marketing emails work, and why they’re so beneficial: Let’s say you and another company decide to do a webinar together on a particular subject. As a result, that webinar will likely (pending your arrangements) be promoted to the email lists of both of your companies. This exposure to a list that is not your own is one of the key benefits of co-marketing partnerships.
When it comes to the email your business sends, make it clear that this offer or event is the result of a partnership with company X — especially if your co-marketing partner is particularly popular or impressive. To do this, you can adjust the company logo in your email to also include the other business’ logo. Furthermore, make sure your copy mentions both businesses, and create a custom graphic or image to visualize the offer or event.
Advantage of co-marketing emails
Build your list and expand your network
Co-marketing puts your message in front of a complimentary and relevant audience. Because your partner’s audience trusts them, any recommendation is likely to receive a positive response.
Providing immediate value to your partner
Co-marketing can be difficult. Especially if your partner isn’t as invested in promoting your business as you are in promoting theirs.
Sending co-marketing emails is a quick way to prove your value to them.
Warming your prospects
This works best when the partners combine their lists.
The chances are that your current list of prospects have already seen what you have to offer. With a co-marketing campaign, you can offer something new and different and therefore get their full attention. They’ll be able to opt-in to a new experience and move along in your funnel.
Disadvantages of co-marketing emails
Technical challenge
Sending co-marketing emails may need more integration and coordination than and email sent from a single brand. For example, if someone unsubscribes, which brands is it they don’t want to hear about? Multiple calls to action with multiple landing pages can be confusing to readers.
Poor performance reflects equally on all partners
If just one of the co-marketing emails fails to impress readers, this will negatively affect the image of all the partners. The outcome can be a poor relationship with partners and a poor reputation with any one of the partner audiences.
Proper analysis of the success of the campaign is impossible
Because each partner is represented in co-marketing emails, it’s hard to work out which brand is performing better or worse than the others. Each audience has different needs. Segmentation becomes extremely difficult. This ultimately leads to a situation where measuring the success of a campaign across all of the partner brands is impossible.
Many emails will not be opened
Because co-marketing emails contain various elements including leading readers to different landing pages, spam filters may be triggered by these emails. Deliverability becomes an issue which means some of these emails may never reach the inbox.
9. Confirmation email
Imagine you’ve booked an expensive overseas flight. Now imagine that you didn’t receive an email to confirm your booking. Every time I make an online purchase, I expect a confirmation email.
While many businesses send them, many businesses make the same two mistakes in their confirmation email.
The subject line is vague.
The information in the email doesn’t confirm the item that’s been purchased.
Confirmation emails should be just that — confirmation emails.
These emails should be simple with a summary of what the reader wants to confirm. Item and price are the two main things.
As far as advantages and disadvantages go, there really isn’t anything more to say.
10. Form submission kickback email
Whenever a prospect, lead, or customer submits a form, a kickback, also known as a thank you email, email should automatically be sent.
The message contained in these emails depends on the form that was submitted.
If it was a contact us type form or a newsletter subscription form, then the email simply confirms that their details have been received.
If the form was submitted to receive a discount code or resource, then the email should deliver that promise.
One thing that these emails should have in common though is a simple thank you to the reader for submitting the form. “Thank you for contacting us.” “Thank you for your interest in [lead magnet name].”
Don’t overcomplicate the appearance of these emails. The reader isn’t looking for additional information, just the thing they asked for.
As far as advantages and disadvantages go, there really isn’t anything more to say.
Regardless of which type of email you send, always remember that the content is more important than the look. A beautifully designed email won’t get the engagement you’re looking for if the information isn’t valuable to the reader.
Visual appeal has its place but understand your audience before digging too deeply into stock images, colour palettes, and humorous gifs.
Do you know of any other types of emails that should be on this list? Share them in the comments section below.
Enjoy your day.
