In case you’re wondering, this blog post comes in response to a tutorial I designed for HubSpot titled “The Beginner’s Guide to Email Marketing”. If you’re looking for a cheat sheet on the subject or just want to get inspired, you’ve landed in the right spot!
General Email Marketing
Unless you have a specific customer in mind, your first thought may be to send out a general email marketing campaign. This type of campaign is commonly referred to as a “mass emailing” or a “blast emailing” because you’re basically sending out the same message to a large number of contacts at once.
The advantage of a general email marketing campaign is that you can be flexible with your approach. You don’t have to worry about losing a customer or notifying someone (that is, unless you want to) of your new product or service. Your goal is simply to get as many people as possible to learn about your product or service.
The disadvantage of a general email marketing campaign is that you might end up creating a bit of a jumble in your contacts’ inboxes. If you’re using a service like HubSpot, you can segment your contacts based on how they clicked on a web link or signed up for your newsletter. This way, you can ensure that only the right people see your pitch.
Single Email Marketing
If you’re looking for a more targeted approach, you might want to consider a single email marketing campaign. With this type of campaign, you’re sending a message to one or several contacts at a time. The advantage of a single email marketing campaign is that you can carefully choose who you’re reaching out to. For example, you can target only certain regions or interest groups.
The disadvantage of a single email marketing campaign is that it’s fairly contained in nature. You can’t exactly include the same type of content or the same hyperlinks throughout the email. In addition, once you’ve sent the email, you can’t necessarily follow up with more communications (at least, not without getting into some trouble).
Inbound Marketing
If you’re looking for a more modern approach, you might want to check out inbound marketing. This type of marketing focuses on attracting, engaging, and delighting people to grow a business.
What exactly is inbound marketing? Well, it starts with a clear understanding of your target audience’s needs and challenges. Next, you can use that insight to form questions that will engage your audience. Furthermore, you can use that same insight to determine what content to create and what campaigns to run.
The advantage of inbound marketing is that you’re creating content to solve a problem. People are naturally drawn to content that they can relate to and use. In addition, studies have shown that having an engaging email campaign can lead to increased sales.
The disadvantage of inbound marketing is that it can be a bit more complicated to implement. You have to have a clear understanding of your target audience, and you have to be able to articulate your goals and the strategy you’ll use to achieve them. You might also need to spend a little more money on content to make it more effective.
Automated Email Marketing
If you’re looking for an even more targeted approach, you might want to consider automated email marketing. This type of email marketing sends out emails based on a list of contacts you’ve previously gathered. You can use a service like HubSpot to create automated emails that are sent based on trigger words or phrases that you’ll define in advance. For example, let’s say you’ve defined the term “sales” as a trigger word. Every time someone types “sales” into the chat box of one of your contacts, they’ll get an email from you.
The advantage of automated email marketing is that you can easily define and target the right audience. Furthermore, you can consider this type of email marketing to be more cost-effective than the others mentioned so far. The disadvantage of automated email marketing is that you have to input your contact list manually and there’s always the possibility that you’ll input the wrong information. In addition, you can’t always be sure that your automated emails will get opened or acted upon.
Behavioral Email Marketing
If you’re looking for something a bit more futuristic, you might want to check out behavioral email marketing. This type of email marketing uses inbound marketing to collect information about your contacts’ online and offline behaviors. Based on your analysis of this data, you can determine what type of content your contacts are most likely to respond to and engage with. In addition, you can use this data to determine when your contacts are most likely to respond to your messages.
The advantage of behavioral email marketing is that it determines what will work best for your audience based on their personal information. In addition, you can consider this type of email marketing to be more cost-effective than the others mentioned so far because you’re not necessarily paying for the email itself as you would be in the case of other types of email marketing. The disadvantage of behavioral email marketing is that it can be a bit more complicated to implement. You have to have a clear understanding of how to collect, store, and analyze the right kind of data. Furthermore, you have to be able to consider all the ethical implications of using personal information in this way.
What we’ve discussed so far are the most common types of email marketing you’ll encounter. Now, let’s discuss some specifics regarding each type.