Email marketing : form of direct marketing that uses email to convey messages, commercial and otherwise, in a direct and personalized way, in order to acquire new customers or retain existing ones.
For companies, the advantages of email marketing are efficiency and convenience (the latter especially when managed internally); companies benefit from the ability to quickly reach a profiled audience, at low costs. Email marketing offers an additional benefit in that it operates under an opt-in system, assuming that the sender has obtained permission from the recipient to use their personal information for sending information and promotions about goods and services. The use of permission marketing further enhances the effectiveness of email marketing campaigns by requesting consent before sending out commercial communications. Messages sent to users who have consented to receive commercial communications are more likely to be opened and read. Today’s dedicated email marketing tools and ease of use, like the distinctly Italian Email Chef, make this task simple.
On the other hand
Companies must know how to adapt to the needs of the recipients of the campaigns in order to make the most of this communication tool, proposing commercial solutions that are as much as possible in line with their profile and their browsing or purchasing behavior; it is as important to know how to carefully choose one’s promotion as to modulate the frequency of the messages, so that the latter are not intrusive, inappropriate or of little interest to the recipient, in other words, at the risk of spam.
Email marketing responds, more generally, to two different purposes. The company aims, on the one hand, to achieve sales objectives (that is, to generate conversions in a short time), on the other, to develop and maintain relationships with its contacts over time, whether they are existing or potential customers, partners , suppliers or the various other relevant stakeholders . Among the tools useful for pursuing the aforementioned purposes are, in the first case, advertising emails or DEM (Direct Email Marketing) and, in the second, newsletters. Below, an in-depth analysis of DEMs as an advertising tool.
DEMs (Direct Emails or Direct E-Mailing)
The main and most widespread email marketing tool is DEM (Direct Email Marketing or Direct E-Mailing), advertising emails sent to a list of users who have agreed to receive promotional messages consistent with their stated interests.
Sending of DEMs can be made on the basis of one’s own list of recipients (that is, on a proprietary database ), or with recourse to lists provided by third parties (publishers, agencies and advertising agencies ). In this second case, it is a question of real advertising campaigns which are based on the use of profiled lists for the identification of new customers (prospecting). Purely advertising logic, the client company typically pays a cost for each shipment made, with the reference unit of measure being Cost Per Mille or CPM.
Campaigns
By integrating the data voluntarily provided by users with their navigation data in a CRM system or in a professional email marketing platform, in fact, it is possible to develop specific behavioral models, called behavior patterns, capable of dynamically identifying clusters of consumers who are more receptive to particular types of advertising messages or specific product offers. In this way, companies are able to promote relevant and personalized proposals, thus implementing the effectiveness of direct email marketing campaigns.
To deal with the rising complexity of direct emailing campaigns, businesses are increasingly turning to third-party platforms for mailing administration and list analysis. In practice, the usage of these technical platforms enables for the automatic as well as human sending of emails. Automated messages, which are classified as transactional messages. Frequently employed to provide beneficial services to the receiver (such as notifications and notices of deadlines). In addition to conveying tailored promotions. Terms of outcomes, however, these platforms give an articulated reporting system allows user behaviour to be reliably traced beginning with the opening of email.
Marketing metrics
The most useful and commonly used indicators to evaluate the effectiveness of direct email marketing campaigns are the following:
- Delivery rate : expresses the percentage of emails delivered out of the total number of mailings made in a given period of time. In formula: delivery rate = (email delivered*/ email sent) x 100
*Where delivered emails are the emails actually delivered to the inbox delivered. They are calculated by excluding from the calculation of sent emails the number of incorrect or undelivered (bounce) emails in the mailbox due to a full or non-existent mailbox, an incorrect address or in the case of email ending up in spam. In formula: email delivered = email sent – email bounced
- Bounce rate : expresses the percentage of failed deliveries out of the total number of mailings made in a given period of time. In formula: (email bounced/ email sent) x 100
- Open Rate or OR: represents the number of times the message has opened in comparison to the number of recipients. In formula: (opens/ email delivered) x 100
- Unique Open rate : expresses the number of users who have opened the message at least once (unique opens) compared to the number of people who have received it. In formula: (unique opens/ email delivered) x 100
Roi Concept
- Click-Through Rate or CTR: expresses the number of clicks on the links contained in the message compared to the number of people who received it. In formula: (clicks/ email delivered) x 100
- Unique Click-Through Rate or UCTR: expresses the number of users who, after opening the email, clicked on a link inside it and landed on the site promoted by the advertiser compared to the number of people who received the ’email. In formula: (unique clicks / email delivered) x 100
- Click-To-Open Rate or CTOR: expresses the percentage of users who, after opening the email, clicked on a link inside it and landed on the site promoted by the advertiser compared to the number of people who opened email at least once. In formula: (unique clicks / unique opens) x 100
- Conversion rate : expresses the percentage of conversions (users who, prompted by the email message, have performed a specific direct response action: subscription to the newsletter, a purchase order, download of an application or multimedia content, etc.) compared to the number of people who received the email. In formula: (conversions/ email delivered) x 100
- Unsubscribe rate : expresses the percentage of users who have abandoned a service in a given period of time compared to the total number of users who have used it in the same period; for example, those who have requested the cancellation of their address from the mailing list of a newsletter in order to no longer receive emails for promotional and advertising purposes. In formula: (unsubscribes/ email delivered) x 100
