I was taking to another VA recently about some email marketing she was doing for a client and it got me thinking about the different types of email marketing that there are so I thought I’d put some of these into a blog to try to explain them a bit better for anyone thinking about starting email marketing for their business for the first time or for those of you working with clients on this.
There are lots of systems out there for email marketing and they all have different terminology however for the purposes of this email we are going to define the following teems:
Newsletter – a regular email sent out witty updates from the company
Promotion – a one off email sent to promote a specific product or event
Series – a set of emails sent out at specific intervals to a certain group of subscribers
So let’s look at some different scenarios for using these emails
Scenario A
A photography business owner wants to send out an email to promote a special offer.
Firstly we need to look at the list and who they are sending the email to. Their list is most likely to comprise of those who have signed up and those who have been past customers – so this will be a promotion email – a one off email sent to advertise this specific offer.
Scenario B
A legal firm want to keep their clients and colleagues up to date on changes in legislation. They decide to send out a monthly email with updates.
This is a newsletter – the subscribers on this list will most likely have been added by the company or will have signed up to receive emails.
Scenario C
A social media management company want to offer a free download of key social media tips to people who subscribe to their list. They want this download sent to new subscribers when they sign up. They also want to grow this list so they can send them weekly updates on social media channels.
For this scenario we have a combination of things happening. Firstly we need an automated email to send out the free download. However we don’t need a series as the subsequent emails will be newsletters. In this scenario most email marketing systems will let you send a welcome email to subscribers which can be used for this download.
Scenario D
A coach wants to attract subscribers with a free webinar. She needs to send a number of emails prior to the webinar and also wants to then use this group of subscribers to send information ahead of the launch of her new ebook.
This scenario needs a series of emails sent out at specific intervals.
I hope this helps to identify some of the possibilities but if you have a different scenario then feel free to ask me about it in the comments.