Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach your target audience, promote your business, and invite clients or prospects to purchase your services or products. It has multiple important advantages, including educating clients about what you offer, your discounts, and more. It is also a great way to keep the communication going between visits and purchases, as long as it doesn’t turn into spamming.

Types of email marketing

There are several types of marketing emails you could send to your clients and prospects. They include:

Email newsletters

The marketing goal of email newsletters is to advertise by providing recipients with useful information and tools. By sending these, you’re strengthening relationships with your clients, increasing retention, and growing client loyalty.

To be effective, these emails need to add value to the recipients’ inboxes. Otherwise, they’re no different than typical spam. To achieve this goal, you need to provide them with interesting and engaging content.

Examples include:

  • how-to tutorials 
  • thought leadership pieces
  • exciting announcements about your business
  • roundups of your recent blog posts or videos
  • exclusive membership deals
  • tips and best practices
  • industry news
  • listicles
  • Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Acquisition emails

Like their name says, the marketing goal of acquisition emails is acquiring new clients. In other words, it’s all about converting prospects into customers. The process starts with a prospect that accepts your offer to receive emails from your business. You then send them informative content and enticing special offers that they would get access to if they became an active client.

Acquisition emails allow you to target prospects that have shown a certain level of interest in your services or products, and take it up from there. They facilitate a quicker turn of leads into paying clients, which adds fuel to the growth of your business and drives more revenue.

Examples include:

  • subscription confirmations
  • social media engagement follow-ups
  • actionable advice
  • sweepstakes
  • abandoned cart notifications
  • special deals and offers

Retention emails

Your work doesn’t end with turning your prospects into clients. You need to make an effort to keep them coming back. This is the marketing goal that can best be achieved through retention or winback emails – if used wisely.

This category of email marketing allows your business to keep the communication going. With retention emails, you’re making sure your clients don’t forget about you and why they became your clients in the first place.

Examples include:

  • asking for feedback or review
  • we-miss-you emails
  • promotional offers for returning clients
  • listicles of reasons why they should come back
  • advice and information about your services or products
  • content digests
  • expiring trial notifications
  • progress emails

Promotional Emails

To promote your business and its services or products, you can use promotional emails. They’re the go-to method to drive subscriptions and sales, as well as advertise your new services or products. 

You can also deploy promotional emails when you want to reward engagement with special offers, drive sales of your new service/product, and cross-sell related or complementary services/products. 

Examples include:

  • event announcements
  • new services or products
  • limited time offers
  • subscriber- or client-exclusive deals
  • other special offers and discounts
  • contests and giveaways
  • free content (e-books, guides, infographics)
  • sale emails
  • gift ideas
  • upgrade emails
  • did-you-know emails
  • invitation emails
  • apology emails (if there’s anything your clients might be upset about)

How to write a successful marketing email

Just knowing the major email marketing categories isn’t enough. You still need to draft a compelling marketing email that will help you meet your marketing goals. These are the general things you need to be mindful of when writing any type of marketing email:

  • Subject line: To write a strong marketing email, you’ll need to think of an attention-grabbing yet relevant and concise subject line. After all, many email recipients decide whether or not to open and read the entire email message depending solely on its subject line. The length of the subject line also plays an important line, as numerous researches have found a correlation between subject line length and open rates. On average, anywhere between 40 – 50 characters, or 6 – 10 words, should work well. Also, incorporate words like “reserve”, “schedule”, “ask”, “buy”, “don’t miss”, and so on, that urge the reader to act.
  • Personalization: Making your email marketing more personal will resonate better with your target audience. This means using their first names and writing in the second person (e.g. “you”, “your”, “yours) wherever possible. It also means providing them with content relating to them specifically, such as their location, interests, previously purchased services, and so on. Your reader should feel like you’re speaking directly to them and not your entire client base.
  • Be likable: The primary purpose of email marketing is to inform, but it also gives you a space to demonstrate your brand’s charming personality, establishing stronger bonds with your target audience. You’ll accomplish this by using concise and personable words, speaking “directly from the heart”, and giving the impression of trust and honesty. 

Writing a specific type of marketing email

How to write successful marketing emails
You should know marketing email best practices before starting to write

In addition to these general rules, there are some best practices to stick with when deploying each of the above email marketing categories:

1) How to write a successful email newsletter

To create more engaging email newsletters, make sure they are:

  • Relevant: This means relating directly to the recipient’s industry, interests, hobbies, location, and topics close to them.
  • Interesting and entertaining: It goes without saying – you need to grab your reader’s attention with content they find interesting and/or entertaining.
  • Valuable: Your reader needs to be able to walk away from your email feeling like they gained new and useful knowledge or experience.
  • Unique: Make sure your content and visuals are different from your competition’s, but also provide something your readers can’t get from your other channels, such as a social media digest.
  • Connecting with trending topics or events: Sometimes it may be possible to connect your newsletter’s content to trending events of topics, providing your own commentary and weaving in the mention of your brand.

2) How to write a successful acquisition email

Best practices in writing acquisition emails include:

  • Growing your email list: Look for prospects who have shown an interest in what you offer and want to receive communications from you.
  • Short and clear: Modern attention span makes no room for lengthy emails and most of your readers don’t have the time to read them anyway. The best acquisition emails offer a short hello, then go straight to the point, encouraging a single specific action through only a picture, a few sentences, and a call-to-action. Unless it helps the reader take this action, it’s pointless and a mere distraction.
  • Simplifying the sign-up process: Make the forms eye-catching and to the point.
  • Avoiding sporadic and generic emails: Don’t send the same email to everyone on your list, personalize content as much as you can, and be consistent in sending your emails.

3) How to write a successful retention email

The best retention emails have some things in common, including:

  • Later client education: When reminding your clients you still exist, provide them with information on the bigger, better things your service or product does, besides what is listed among its features. Explain how it will help them accomplish their goals. 
  • Personality: Establish a tone and use the wording that humanizes your brand and expresses its individuality, even just when reminding your clients they have items left in their shopping cart.

4) How to write a successful promotional email

The write an efficient promotional email, there are a few rules of thumb to adhere to, whenever possible:

  • Focus on the value instead of features: For the email message to drive the point home, you’ll need to explain what benefits this feature entails for the recipient. Make it clear to them what goals it aims to help fulfill for the recipient.
  • Send from a person: Sometimes you may try replacing your business name with your own (or an employee’s) name to add a more personal feeling. This little trick allows you to sound warmer and more relatable to the client, unlike the business account emails that may sound a bit impersonal. However, this may not be suitable for all businesses and audiences.
  • Make use of the preheader: Preheader text shows up next to your subject line in the recipient’s inbox. Use it to provide additional details about the promotion that will make it clearer to the reader. You’ll increase your chances of your recipients opening and reading the message.

How to start sending out marketing emails for a small business

Now that you understand the basics, your small business is ready to start sending out its marketing emails! The best way to do this is using a business management platform such as vcita’s email marketing software. 

Such a platform provides you with all the tools you need to make the best out of your email marketing. These include effective CTA and scheduling buttons, mobile access, customer segmentation, coupon promotions, and real-time analytics – just to name a few (there’s a lot more!).

As a result, you’ll create killer email marketing campaigns in no time, with absolutely no design skills required. So don’t wait, start creating and sending beautiful marketing emails as early as today!