E-mail Marketing

 E-mail Marketing

E-mail marketing is an online marketing technique that uses e-mail to send

advertisements or commercial information. This is a communication tool used to

attract new customers or make those that one already has loyal to the brand.

E-mail and Internet have gone hand in hand since the Web was created. The

beginning of Internet dates back to 1969 (Arpanet at that time), while the first

e-mail was sent two years later (1971). This first e-mail showed some basic features

that have remained till the present: the use of “@” on the user name, as well as the

fields “To”, “Subject” and “Message”.

In such a volatile environment, e-mail has been one of the Web tools that have

best adapted to change, both in content and in scope and penetration. Therefore,

e-mail marketing becomes one of the main tools in a digital strategy.

At present, e-mail is the first Internet service ahead of social media. In 2015, the

number of e-mail accounts in the world was about 4.353 million users from which

205 billion e-mails were sent [21]. This volume of traffic includes legitimate e-mails

and spam.

The term “spam” refers to those messages we do not request and we do not want

or with an unknown sender, usually sent though mass mailing. Although spam can

be used on other platforms and devices, for example SMS on mobile phones, e-mail

is the most important channel for this practice.

Understanding Digital Marketing—Basics and Actions 53

The line between commercial information sent by e-mail and spam is, in many

cases, a fine one that experts in e-mail marketing must properly identify in order to

avoid making mistakes in their work.

The most common form of e-mail marketing is the newsletter: a publication that

is distributed with a specific periodicity on an interesting topic for all recipients,

called subscribers.

The complexity level of a newsletter shall depend on its goals and content; they

can be simple with mainly plain text as the predominant feature or be enriched with

images, graphs, adverts and/or hyperlinks.

The objectives of e-mail marketing can be multiple and varied; however, all of

them could be grouped around four main goals:

• Diverting traffic to our website: be it the home page or any special section inside

it.

• Promoting a special action: either promotion of new services, special discounts,

sales, download of applications, etc. When the goal is to increase traffic or some

Web-based special promotion, specific websites are usually created. Such pages

are called landing pages.

• Cost savings: e-mail marketing supports order management and information to

the customer regarding the status of such orders, as well as the provision of

customer support services at a lower cost than other communication channels.

• Brand popularity and image: same as for other types of campaigns online, e-mail

marketing is suited to generate popularity and brand image among consumers.

 Advantages of E-mail Marketing

The strong penetration of e-mail in the current context becomes an important reason

to include it any digital strategy, but there are also other important reasons to do so.

This is mass technology that instantly reaches everyone and whose use spans

devices and screens (desktop, laptop, mobile telephones, tablets, etc.).

The system is direct and able to reach individuals in a scalable and targeted way.

This is due to the fact that an e-mail can be sent to a single address or thousands,

while content can target different types of audiences . In fact, the system’s scalability does not hinder customisation; despite its capacity for mass mailing, it can be

highly customised at a cost far lower than that of other types of campaigns.

This is also a multimedia channel that offers the possibility of sending a large

amount of information as text, images (static or moving), sound or hyperlinks, in

any combination.

As this is digital communication, its impact can be quantified through different

metrics that allow for an evaluation of the output of each campaign.

54 T. Piñeiro-Otero and X. Martínez-Rolán

 Disadvantages of E-mail Marketing

Despite the many plus points of this marketing format, starting e-mail campaigns

can be hindered due to some disadvantages inherent to this channel:

The most important enemy of professionals in the sector are antispam filters of

e-mail managers that identify e-mail marketing as spam, thus reducing the effectiveness of campaigns.

Furthermore, explicit authorisation by the end-user to receive ads through mail is

needed. Such actions are regulated by data protection acts and specific e-commerce

laws.

Depending on the country and specific laws, sending unauthorised messages

may result in very high fines for the companies sending them.

This need for prior authorisation to include the person on an e-mail database of a

particular organisation has pushed e-marketing into the group “permission marketing” [22].

 Legal Framework

The legal framework regulating e-mail marketing is important as it can inhibit some

of its features.

On the one hand, legislation protects personal data in order to prevent the illicit

transfer of databases. The relevant legislation forces the company to have a register—

in some cases physical—of user data and makes the company responsible for the

protection of such data.

On the other, each country develops laws to regulate mass mailing, a standard

that influences commercial communications or advertising and those of transnational or relational character.

Despite the fact that the legal framework can vary from one country to the other,

there are some common elements:

Mailing must have explicit authorisation by the recipient. This authorisation

must be prior to the inclusion of the person in the mailing list.

The fact that the message is linked to advertising must be explicit, as well as the

identification of the sender on the e-mail, the subject and the heading of the

message.

In the cases of offers, competitions and promotional games, they must be

identified as such and be clear and explicit about the conditions and participation on

them.

In some countries, the advertising message has to be identified with the word “advertisement” or abbreviation, as well as with a valid postal address for the company.

Simple procedures for the user to withdraw consent are a must.

In the case of multinational companies, the relevant legislation is that of the

country where the company is based and not that of the recipient.

Understanding Digital Marketing—Basics and Actions 55

 The Heart of E-mail Marketing: Subscribers

The success of a marketing campaign lies precisely in target management; therefore, a good strategy to attract and retain subscribers is needed.

The recipient database must be meticulously kept and segmented. The essential

question here is quality over quantity; therefore, purchasing user databases is discouraged—unless this is unavoidable, or unless their usefulness has been proven.

Best practices in e-mail marketing stress the need to generate and maintain the

organisation’s own database. The reason is simple: it is easier to get back a client

than to get a new one.

Getting subscribers is a slow but steady task, although it can be sped up through

online and traditional channels. Registration boxes can be created on a website,

either as pop-ups or in another Web section where registration is required to request

information (e.g. a budget) or in exchange for exclusive content or downloads.

Generally, easy forms must be used, where the compulsory fields include name

and/or e-mail, although the number of fields in the form may be increased depending

on the value of the treat one is offering the user in exchange for their registration.

Another common instance is e-commerce. When a user registers on a particular

online shop and accepts the use and service terms, they are automatically included

in the e-mail marketing database.

Regarding traditional channels, the compilation of e-mails and information

related to the users can be done through competitions, on-street promotion, postcards, loyalty cards or formal information requests through e-mail, phone or postal

mail. Traditional channels demand, however, the digitalisation of the data to be

included in a subscriber list.

Keeping subscribers is a task that needs special attention and that must be

implemented while new users are added. In this process, brands must be especially

careful regarding content and the form e-mail communications take. Content must

be interesting for the user, giving priority to quality instead of periodicity.

In a nutshell, it is about adding value to commercial communications with

complementary information (comparisons, advice, features, etc.) useful for the

consumer.

 Newsletters—Some Key Aspects

Four key aspects are to be considered for effective newsletter design:

• Database. In order to have good content segmentation, the organisation needs to

know the subscriber base of their newsletter as much as possible. This information will allow for specific profiling depending on demographics, geographical data, interests, etc., thus increasing the efficiency of communications.

• The content of the newsletter. The content must be useful and interesting, and

the weight of commercial information must be properly balanced. Subscribers

56 T. Piñeiro-Otero and X. Martínez-Rolán

value content that adds value or is useful to them. In fact, newsletters are one of

the key tools of content marketing.

• The field “from”. In the context of communication saturation, the customer will

look at the field “from” as a filter to recognise the origin and dismiss—or not—

the mail.

• The field “subject”. Same as with a slogan or tagline, the field “subject” must

stand out above the mass of incoming e-mails. Likewise, this field must fulfil the

criteria of usefulness and interest for the user and, above all, honesty about the

content they will find in the mail. Otherwise, the company runs the risk of their

mail becoming invisible and that the subscriber requests to unsubscribe from

their database.

• The field “subject” must not be too long or complex, although it allows for the

inclusion of special characters such as emojis.

There is no exact formula to predict the success of a newsletter. Each campaign

is different and is closely linked to the audience it addresses. In any case, campaigns

may be optimised using A/B tests.

These tests are random experiments with two differential variables. Two different

versions of the newsletter are sent to two subgroups of the database just changing a

single element (the field “subject”, layout or organisation of content, the colour of

the download button, the size of the main image, etc.). This process allows for an

empirical test that reveals which version of the message works better and leads to

higher ratios of opening, clicks, conversions, etc., so that optimisation of future

versions of the newsletter becomes possible.

Basic Metrics to Assess the Efficiency of E-mail

Marketing

There are three elements to assess e-mail marketing: the user database, sending the

newsletter and conversion metrics.

In metrics related to databases, estimating the index of increase in subscribers is

easy or, if that were the case, the rate of unsubscribers. Identifying the cause for any

increase or decrease in subscribers is of essence. As they happen in a timeline, the

cause can be traced back to a particular content item, so that the organisation knows

what content works better.

Regarding sending newsletters, there are four indicators to measure the success

of e-mail marketing:

• Sent index: Percentage of deliveries to the recipient (i.e. where there was no

mistake in sending).

• Opening rate: Percentage of e-mails that have been opened by the recipient.

Some applications provide information about what recipients have received and

opened the e-mail, as well as reception and opening time.

Understanding Digital Marketing—Basics and Actions 57

• Clicks on links: It is possible to determine what are the links that have been

clicked and establish a popularity ranking depending on the number of clicks.

• Unsubscribers per batch sent: Number of people who have cancelled their

subscription to a newsletter after they have received a particular issue.

Finally, a conversion rate can be established between the sending of the

newsletter and the accomplishment of a particular goal, for example downloading a

mobile application, using a discount voucher, registration on another website and

sending additional information by the user.

Applications and Resources for an E-mail Marketing

Campaign

The supply of existing applications around e-mail marketing is wide, with many

applications for different operating systems, such as Windows (G-Lock EasyMail7,

for example) or OSX (Direct Mail, for example), although market trends seem to

focus on the development of Web applications that help manage this kind of online

marketing. The advantages of Web services lie in their mobility and the possibility

of accessing them from different devices.

Thus, we can have a wide array of Web services to implement an e-mail marketing campaign successfully. The features vary a little across platforms, although

there are a series of functionalities that must be present for a proper professional

development of such marketing:

• Contact and list management, with the possibility to import and export, and to

create segmented contact lists.

• Newsletter design, usually HTML based. Many of the tools incorporate visual

editors to make the design aspects of the newsletter as easy as possible, to

include multimedia elements and to distribute the elements in the newsletter.

• Sending campaigns and the possibility of scheduling and automating the

process.

• Statistical analysis of output.

Some tools enable the integration of the newsletter with other services and

platforms regularly used by organisations. Some examples are the incorporation of

a widget on the company’s blog, the integration of social media or tools such as

Google Analytics.

The most widely used newsletter editors are Teenvío, Dopple, MailChimp,

Benchmark, MailRelay, Campaign Monitor, MPZ Mail or SendinBlue.

These kinds of services tend to offer freemium business models, offering a

limited free version that allows to test the service with some restrictions; they are

usually linked to the number of subscribers and/or monthly dispatch of e-mails (see

Table 1). Choosing one platform or the other depends on the needs of the company

and the possibilities they offer on their free or payment versions.

58 T. Piñeiro-Otero and X. Martínez-Rolán

E-mail is a powerful marketing tool that is also easy to combine with other

strategies and platforms, such as social media and e-commerce.