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9 Email Marketing Campaign Types You Should Be Using Right Now

 

Email marketing campaigns are not launched on the spur of the moment; rather, they are planned and calculated.

These are the nine types of email campaigns that your company should be using, but keep in mind that each brand is unique, so tailor your strategy accordingly.

Learn how to optimise and send each of the following types of email marketing series:

 

1. Series of Welcome Emails

2. The Conventional Promotional Campaign

3. Seasonal Marketing

4. The Email Series That Was Triggered

5. The After-Purchase Drip

6. The Connect-Through-Social-Media Campaign

7. The Bulletin

8. The Campaign Against Cart Abandonment

9. The Campaign for Re-Engagement

 

1) Welcome Email Sequence

 

Congratulations, you've gained a new subscriber. For a moment, imagine you've made a new friend or perhaps a new colleague; it's only polite to introduce yourself. This is precisely the purpose of the welcome email series. It isn't the most common type of email campaign, but it is one of the most effective.

Sending a series of three, four, or five emails gives you the opportunity to become acquainted with a new subscriber. You can also teach them about your brand promise when they are most receptive to hearing from you.

 

Here are a few examples of what you should include in your welcome series:

 

• Introduction and Fulfilment

• Invite them to your social media accounts.

• Learn about them.

 

Inquire about their birthday; inquire about their email preferences; inquire about how they discovered you.

Taking too long to contact a new email subscriber can result in higher spam scores simply because your subscribers forgot they signed up for your list in the first place. Furthermore, welcome emails have higher than average open rates, click-through rates, and revenue generation.

 

If you only use one type of email marketing campaign, make it this one.

4 important details to consider when creating your welcome email

 

• Your customers will be impressed.

• Display your company's logo.

• Thank you.

• Give them a token of your appreciation.

 

 

2) The Conventional Promotional Campaign

 

This is the most common type of email marketing campaign and is most likely the one you are most familiar with.

You've probably got a promotional email from a brand in your inbox right now...or a few dozen. As a consumer, I've noticed that these are frequently less strategic or systematic than we'd like to see.

They're like machine-gun fire, repeatedly appearing in inboxes with a rat-a-tat-tat repetition that never changes. That is not what we encourage — plan these campaigns carefully.

 

Rather than sending 10 different one-time emails promoting your products, why not plan a campaign that is progressive or unified in some way, so that each email builds on the previous one and leads to the next?

 

Here are some ideas to spice up your traditional email promotion:

 

• elicit emotion

• Include some levity.

• Keep them guessing.

• Provide a free product

• Make use of popular music slogans.

• Use eye-catching colours, images, and fonts.

• Provide a free product

 

 

3) Seasonal Advertising

The seasonal campaign is a subset of the promotional email campaign.

You can most likely launch an email marketing campaign on any major holiday. From Valentine's Day to Father's Day, less popular but still highly effective campaigns These types of email marketing campaigns can include a buildup before the event and a follow-up afterward, giving you multiple opportunities to send an email.

This is an especially important time for retail. Holiday sales account for 20% of total retail sales, according to the National Retail Federation. Those sales alone were worth more than $84 billion in the United States.

 

Here are some things to think about as you plan your season campaign:

 

1. Understand the national holidays of the country you are promoting. This is an excellent method for segmenting your list.
2. Begin early. People are inundated with emails during the holidays, so make sure you're the first one to arrive in their inbox.
3. Make sure the colours and language are appropriate for the holiday.
4. Give them an exclusive holiday discount. This is a key reason why holiday marketing works so well.
5. Make use of urgency. One of the main reasons email marketing works so well is that it is only for a limited time.

 

 

4) The Automated Email Series

 

With automated email marketing, a user's action can be used to trigger a series of targeted and relevant emails.

 

It's possible they clicked on a link in one of your promotional email series, added items to their cart but then bounced without checking out, downloaded a piece of content, purchased something, or completed a survey. Their actions "triggered" the drip campaign they are now a part of in some way.

 

According to the DMA's 2013 National Client Email Report, triggered campaigns generate more than 75 percent of email revenue, rather than one-size-fits-all promotional campaigns.

 

According to MailChimp's automation triggers, you can add four types of triggers to your email marketing toolbox:

 

1. Campaign activity: an email is sent to someone who is on a campaign list, has opened a specific campaign, has not opened a campaign, has clicked on a specific link, has not clicked on a link.
2. List management: sends an email when someone is manually added to a list or signs up for a list on their own.
3. Workflow activity: initiates the sending of an email after a subscriber receives, opens, does not open, or clicks on a link in the previous automated email in your series.
4. Ecommerce: sends an email after a customer buys any product, a specific product, hasn't bought a second product, abandoned a product in a cart, or expressed interest in a product from a previous email.

 

 

5) The Following-Purchase Drip

I'm not sure why I don't see these more often. I believe the post-purchase drip is simply smart email marketing!

This is an email series that is sent as a simple follow-up to a purchase rather than to sell.

Assume I purchased a new kitchen gadget. The astute email marketer could use automated email marketing to send emails (triggered by purchase) that both reinforce my decision to buy and build brand loyalty.

 

For example, one email may contain instructions on how to clean and care for the device. The next email could contain a recipe for using the gadget... and so forth. From an emotional standpoint, it fosters customer trust and delight because you're providing value after you've already made the sale. Nonetheless, each of these emails represents an opportunity to upsell and cross-sell.

 

6) The Connect-Through-Social-Media Campaign

 

The social campaign is one that moves from email to social media and possibly back to email.

It's an email marketing campaign that aims to get people to interact with their newsfeed. With this one, you have a lot of options, ranging from Facebook to Instagram.

Take, for example, a kitchen gadget. A social campaign might use email marketing to ask users to pin pictures of recipes made with the gadget to Pinterest, post them on Facebook, or tweet them with a hashtag. The options are limitless!

 (Wishpond has some fantastic examples of Facebook contest promotions to inspire you.)

 

 

7) The Bulletin

 

Although not technically a "campaign" because it can last indefinitely, a newsletter or digest—something that serves as a regular communication between you and your list—is simply smart email.

 

When newsletters are done correctly, they are not sales pieces that your audience will grow tired of, but rather emails that can provide real value to them by keeping them up to date on product updates, educating them, and even entertaining them.

 

Newsletters from companies like theSkimm are among the most popular emails. But it's not entirely your fault. You benefit as well by remaining top-of-mind, building brand loyalty, and creating shareable content that has the potential to grow your audience.

 

 

8) The Series of Abandoned Carts

 

Abandoned cart emails can be used to launch an email marketing campaign.

 

These are emails, like other automated campaigns, that are triggered by a user's actions—in this case, adding an item to a virtual shopping cart but not purchasing. These emails usually include an incentive, such as "Hey, you didn't finish checking out. Here's a 10% discount to entice you to complete your purchase."

 

This type of email series, like welcome emails, has significantly higher open rates and conversion rates. They are, however, more difficult for a beginner to master, but they should be on everyone's radar for future implementation.

 

 

9) The Campaign for Re-Engagement

 

A series of emails is sent to inactive subscribers as part of the re-engagement campaign.

 

The average email list churn rate is 25-30% per year. This is normal; people's emails change, companies' names change – it's part of the industry. A re-engagement campaign is an attempt to combat this reality.

Assume that a portion of your list hasn't opened an email in over 6 months. Your re-engagement campaign is an attempt to either a) re-engage these subscribers or b) determine if they can even be re-engaged and, if not, cleanse your email list.

Why would you remove them from your list? Because they are dead weight, and by not opening or engaging with your emails, they may have an impact on your reputation with ISPs, and thus your deliverability rate.

 

 

What to Remember...

 

Before you begin implementing these campaigns, there is one thing we must emphasise: there will be email marketing campaigns that must be adjusted based on a recipient's action, or you risk being extremely annoying.

 

Here's an illustration: Assume we're promoting a conference. We intend to send five emails in the weeks leading up to the conference to encourage people to register. We must remove recipients from the list once they have registered for the conference! We don't want to keep sending them "register today!" emails after they've already registered, do we? They must proceed to a different list, one of registered attendees.

This isn't often the case, but I've seen people get worked up when the messages don't stop coming even after they've followed through on the call to action, so be aware.

 

Remember that a campaign is almost never (if ever) a one-time email. It is a method of reaching out to a prospect, subscriber, or customer several times in a strategic, systematic manner. So, choose a campaign idea or come up with a few marketing ideas of your own, and start emailing!

 

Maropost for Marketing enables users to create personalised email marketing campaigns in order to engage users more effectively and increase ROI.