Email remains one of the most effective ways to communicate and engage with an audience. With a 3,800% ROI on every marketing dollar spent and 5.6 billion active email accounts in the world, it is an incredibly powerful sales and marketing tool that should be in your arsenal.
But just because email is generally effective doesn’t mean all email is effective. The right emails need to be sent at the right time to the right people. Let’s take a closer look at the different types of emails you can send your subscribers, the impact they have, and some best practices for generating significant results from your efforts.
1. Welcome Email
Whether someone makes their first purchase, signs up for access to content on your site, or has simply subscribed to your blog, the welcome email is a must.
In this first email, sent within 24 hours of one of these initial interactions, you introduce yourself, thank them for signing up or purchasing, and provide them with 1-2 useful resources.
Customize these messages based on how people first find and engage with you. A subscriber is different from a buyer, for example.
2. Survey and Followup Email
The best way to improve is to ask people how you did.
Email is often the best way to get this information. Don’t be afraid to send regular surveys to people who buy from you, subscribe to your content or otherwise engage with your website.
A simple NPS survey (Net Promoter Score) that asks for their feedback on a scale of 1-10 can be immensely valuable, or you can build surveys that trigger based on individual sales to measure product and service satisfaction.
3. Newsletter Email
A newsletter is a great way to provide a regular, content-driven update to your subscribers.
How frequently you send a newsletter should be directly related to how much content you produce. The more articles published to your blog, webinar replays uploaded, or other generally beneficial resources you publish, the more often you can send a newsletter.
Most companies aim for a monthly newsletter, though, weekly is doable if you publish frequently enough.
4. Free Gift/Offer Email
Who doesn’t like a giveaway? The best way to engage your list and keep them active is to give them things.
This comes in many forms. You can distribute a free white paper or eBook you’ve published, present a webinar and invite a select group to join you, or give away an actual gift.
This is different from a sale or discount code that you might send out during key shopping seasons. This should feel exclusive, targeted to their specific needs and have no strings attached. You legitimately want to help them and this email highlights the ways in which you can do so.
5. Educational Value Email
Similar to the offer email, a value-based email presents a series of in-depth insights and resources that they can use immediately.
While you don’t necessarily have a full editorial team on staff to write your newsletter, you can share relevant articles, write responses to recent news stories that affect your subscribers or provide insights that they will find interesting.
6. Announcement Email
If something exciting happens, don’t be afraid to announce it to your list.
These types of emails can be a new product offering, expansion of your business, new website launch or any number of other things that would attract new attention to your site.
These often feel self-serving, but if you keep your list engaged through the other email types on this list, they will care when you share the big news with them. For many companies, these emails tend to have the highest open and click rates of any they send and it can be a great way to reintroduce yourself to subscribers who haven’t heard from you in a while.
7. Reorder and Renewal Email
If you offer a product or service that can be used recurringly, use your CRM and ordering database to schedule reorder and renewal emails.
By segmenting prospects based on their purchases and the last time they made them, you can send targeted emails reminding people to buy things they might need to reorder soon.
Amazon does this frequently, even offering subscriptions for some key products that are needed often enough.
8. Abandoned Cart Email
This is a must-have for any eCommerce company. The ability to send an email to a registered user who added items to their cart but never completed the transaction has the potential to recapture significant revenue that might otherwise be lost.
People shop everywhere. On their phones. Commuting to work. During dinner. Because of this they frequently get interrupted and many people actually rely on these emails to remind them of what they were looking at and to finish their transactions.
Well-timed abandoned cart emails can make a huge difference for your business.
9. Anniversary Email
Finally, a fun one. You know exactly what date each of your subscribers joined your email list. Use that information to send them an anniversary email. This is a great way to show that you appreciate their subscription and patronage, while also reactivating them to your list if they’ve been dormant.
Include a coupon code, links to recent content, or a gift/offer that will entice them to engage with you further
The Right Types of Emails at the Right Time Can Change Your Business
The subscribers on your email list are immensely valuable. Each of them represents not just one but dozens of potential sales that can help you grow your business, expand word of mouth about your product offering, and position you as a thought leader in your space. To effectively monetize that list, however, you need to send regular, relevant emails to your subscribers. The 9 types of emails outlined above will help you do just that.