Creating Relationships by Email Marketing

We all have things that make us cringe and nothing to me is more cringe-worthy than seeing email inboxes that are 5000+ deep in unread emails. But at the same time, I'm an avid email deleter which makes me and the person with 400 unread emails pretty much the same. I'm all about visually pleasing interfaces and the red notifications on iPhones drive me wild but that leads us to our next topic, marketing automation, and email marketing.

Email Marketing is emails sent to a contact list for commercial purposes. These emails are used to promote products, services, campaigns, and much more. When used effectively, emails can help brands build relationships with existing or potential consumers.

Marketing Automation refers to software programs that will prioritize and execute various tasks. This allows companies to run campaigns during each step of the consumer life cycle - from the led to end conversion. Benefits include saving time, money, and measuring the efficiency of operations while increasing revenues. This guide by Devrix goes into depth on marketing automation and best practices. Ones to highlight include are sending personalized messages that are targeted and specific instead of general messages that are broadcasted to all. Each email must be carefully crafted and edited to communicate clear messages that drive conversions. As well as revisiting goals so that they are updated and aligned with strategies that work best for the company.

Automation can move business processes much faster than expected and using software to execute simple tasks is a great start. Leveraging this tool, can simplify tasks and free up time for marketers to focus on other aspects of campaigns.

Mail Chimp and Constant Contact are both email marketing service providers with some slight differences in features. Some differentiators for Mail Chimp include

• Unlimited photo uploads for free

• A/B testing

• Email previews specific to each provider

• Easy to read reports

• Advanced automation capabilities

Constant Contact provides similar services but will charge for premium features such as uploading more than 5 photos. Certain features they are more known for include:

• Ready to use email templates for various occasions

• Great deliverability

• Customization options

MailChimp seems to be an internet favorite as I dug up features and benefits from both sites, not because they had more features but because they outperformed Constant Contact in those same features. In most of my classes, we keep coming back to the idea of people not wanting to be sold to but talked to. Keeping messages personal and targeted will continue to help build audiences while creating meaningful relationships with loyal consumers.