Email marketing is one of the main pillars of your success. This is a direct channel to people who already expressed their interest in your product, service, or content. Anyone who willingly gives you their email is interested, at least to a degree, in what you have to offer. Thus, emails allow you to send customized messages to your audience without competing for their attention. It’s like a private conversation, eye to eye. Only it’s over the Internet. 

Moreover, this outstanding channel gives you the opportunity to segment your audience based on the action they have taken. For example, if someone subscribed to your Newsletter, they are interested in what you have to offer but are not yet ready to purchase. Naturally, they require a different marketing strategy than those who left their email after purchase. 

Moreover, emails get much higher views and CTR than any social media. For example, emails reach three times more users than Facebook posts, and you don’t have to spend a dime on promotions. Not to mention that email campaigns can generate almost 4,000% ROI on average. 

So, as it seems, emails are highly cost-effective, a great way to communicate with your customers, allow for customization, and offer advanced scalability. Thus, using emails should be a no-brainer. But what emails should you send to your audience? Well, there are at least 10 types of emails you would want to mix in your overall email marketing strategy. 

Welcome email

The Welcome email is often underestimated, but that’s one of the most essential emails you will ever send to your audience members. This email is by far the highest opening rate among all emails, with more than 80% of receivers clicking on the email. This is your first interaction with the user, and it will set the tone and dynamic of your communication. There should be no errors, typos, or graphic mishaps. 

The Welcome email should be short and to the point. It must convey a simple message – the user made the right choice. The subject line should be straight to the point. Make sure to acknowledge this is a welcome email, although you don’t have to use “Welcome email” as your headline. Be more creative and capture the user’s attention from the very get-go. In the future, your subject lines will be the difference between a deleted and an open email. So start strong from the very beginning. 

It’s essential to restrain yourself from promoting your products or services just yet. There will be time for that later. Adding promotions in your very first email will show you as pushy or needy, something you don’t want to be. 

Also, make sure to underline that the user will receive the thing he signed up for. For example, if you’ve promised a coupon or a discount code for a subscription, you must add it to the Welcome Email.

Finally, give your new audience members the opportunity to personalize what emails they should receive. For example, let them complete a survey about what products they are interested in, what content they want to see, and how many emails they want to receive weekly. This lets you actively segment your audience and personalize their future emails better.

Newsletter emails

Newsletters are the easiest way to keep your audience engaged weekly or bi-weekly. This email is essential for websites that rely heavily on content marketing. With email, they can distribute their content to audiences that have already expressed interest in them via a subscription. Moreover, it’s a great way to spread brand awareness and product awareness. 

For example, the Newsletter is the perfect place to brag about your accomplishments. Have you received an award for your product or service? Let your audience know. Do you have a new design? Ask your audience what they think. Did someone from your team get married or have a child? Let your audience know and congratulate the happy couple. You may think this last example is a bit pointless, but it’s not. In fact, this simple yet appealing email is what will make your audience feel like part of your family and will inspire loyalty and trust. 

Newsletters are precisely that – you are giving news. You can share your new blog posts, guides, achievements, milestones, and recommendations, extend gratitude or even implement interactive elements. 

Newsletters are most commonly a weekly email, but only if you have something to share. Don’t waste your audience’s time with “news” stitched together at the last moment. If you don’t have anything to share, better make your Newsletter bimonthly. Most importantly, though, remember the main goal of this email. It’s to promote trust, inspire loyalty, and make your audience feel like a part of your success. The main point is to promote your brand, not a product. So refrain from sending promotional materials directly in your Newsletter. You may mention that your autumn collection is on sale now, but don’t push for a sale. This is the next email’s task.

Promotional emails

So, finally, it’s time to promote your products and services. These emails aim to sell as many of your products as possible. They often include discounts, coupons, offer free upgrades, or any other method to increase your sales. Make sure to target your audience precisely. For example, if someone has been interested in shoes recently and they marked this on their email survey, you can still show them socks, but you must show them what they are actually interested in. 

A recent survey has shown that, on average, half of all email subscribers want to receive promotional emails. This means your email audience is not just warm but hot. Thus, your content should reflect their readiness to buy. Give them the extra push they need. 

In the realm of promotional emails, what works best depends on your product and audience. You need to find the right content and marketing tools with a lot of testing, but there are two things that you should definitely avoid. First, don’t send promo emails too often. Once a week is more than enough. It’s even better to make it once a month. This way, you can build up some hype through your newsletter emails and make the promotion even more successful and awaited. 

Secondly, don’t oversell your promotion. You don’t want to look desperate. 

Still, you can go a step further and offer some of your most loyal customers an even better offer. However, this is an entirely different email.

Special offer emails

Special offer emails are practically enhanced promotional emails. What separates them from the latter is their targeting, content, and personalization. Specialized emails can offer exclusive offers to some of your audience members based on an action they have made previously. For example, if someone has bought a product, you can offer them a special incentive, like a huge discount, to make a second purchase. 

Special offers can include prizes, invitations to join a webinar, or even a free sample of a product or service. 

These emails should be sent only to your most loyal customers to enhance their brand loyalty and turn them into brand managers. The subject line should be highly personalized and even include the recipient’s name. Moreover, it’s a good idea to send the email from a dedicated manager or another higher-up email. This will add additional value to your email and enhance the feeling of inclusivity in your customers. 

Make sure to underline that this is an exclusive offer, and only a few people will have the opportunity to take advantage. Make it truly special. Don’t be tempted to send a mass email after the initial success of the special offer. This will destroy the trust the email has built. Moreover, such an email will be pointless if it reaches someone who is not ready yet to buy. They need to be nurtured with another type of email first. 

Educational emails

While 50% of your audience will be happy to receive promotional emails, another half still needs to be nurtured. While it’s OK to send them promotional emails occasionally just to check if they have moved down the sales funnel, you must also encourage their interest in your product. Educational emails often include an answer to a Frequently asked question, an explanation of how a product or service has solved a problem, a case study, or anything else that gives extra value to the interested person.

For example, if you receive this blog post in an email, this has nothing to do with our main product. This is strictly educational content that strives to better your online business. A better online business means you will need better hosting. This will eventually drive our profits higher. Usually, successful businesses flourish on the success of their clients. Thus, they strive to give them as much valuable information about their problem as possible. 

When sending educational emails, make sure to include the problem and hint you have a solution in the subject line. Start by introducing the problem and empathizing with the customer. Then, offer a solution. Avoid fluff and fillings. Be as straightforward as possible. You don’t need to give lengthy explanations. Instead, provide a link to a blog post if the material needs extensive argumentation. 

Most importantly, make sure to fact-check your claims and not mislead your audience. This can ruin your reputation and credibility like nothing else can. 

The more educational emails you provide, the higher your authority will become. Finally, a huge portion of your audience will move along the sales funnel and finally convert. As they do so, your email marketing journey is just halfway done. 

Abandon cart emails

Before we get to the emails your customers need to receive after they finish a purchase, let’s address one common case many e-commerce websites deal with daily. It’s not uncommon for customers to fill their shopping cart with products and leave before they end the purchase. There are many reasons behind this behavior. They might have been distracted, they might have seen a promotion during working hours and wanted to finish after work, or they might have forgotten or changed their mind. Regardless, you must remind them there are some items in their cart, waiting to be bought. 

An abandoned cart email is a great way to make sure your potential customer will come back and finish the deed. A great tactic is to use humor in these emails. Humor defuses tension, and you won’t sound desperate or preachy. Don’t incentivize them further just yet. Otherwise, you will find yourself sending these types of emails quite often. Why would anyone finish their order on the first attempt when they know they will receive a generous discount if they finish it later? 

This email is just a reminder. Still, make sure to add a call to action that conveys urgency. For example, you may say a product they’ve added to their cart is almost out of stock. 

Make sure to send these emails when most people are off work, and they will be able to dedicate their time to spend some money on themselves. Moreover, if they disregard your first email, send a second one. You may even try a third one but don’t go beyond that. If they don’t take action after the third reminder, they have simply abandoned their cart for good, and you start sounding desperate. 

Conformational emails

If a customer finalizes a purchase, you must send them a confirmation email. There’s nothing more disturbing for a customer than spending a bunch of money and not having any reply from the vendor immediately. Even if you are going to send them the product, the lack of a confirmation email will instantly hinder your credibility, and you will lose this customer forever. 

Confirmation emails should be short, to the point, and devoid of any fluff or creativity. You need to clearly state in your subject line that the payment has been received, that the product or service is on its way, when the customer should expect them, what additional actions they should take, and how to contact customer support if something goes wrong. It’s also a good idea to provide a link to your delivery terms and return policies. 

Ensure to send confirmation emails from support to sales emails to enhance the customer’s trust. This is essential since these types of emails usually contain private information about the customer. Thus, they must know that their personal data is in good hands. 

Review request emails

As we’ve already discussed in length, reviews are essential for your website’s success, and one of the best ways to get them is through a post-purchase email. This email should push customers to leave their honest opinions about your product or service on a third-party website. Whether it would be Google Reviews, Glassdoor, TripAdvisor, or anything in between, reviews are vital to your success. If you want to increase the number of reviews, you can also offer an incentive, like a coupon for a subsequent purchase or a small present. 

However, ensure this email is sent at the proper time to be most effective. On the one hand, if you are offering services, the best time to ask for a review is right after the service has been completed. This way, the customer’s recollection, and experience are fresh. On the other hand, you can’t expect a customer to have any opinion about a product they’ve just received. So, you need to send this email when the customer has tried your product and formed an opinion. What you can send right after the purchase is a Cross-sell email. 

Cross-sell emails

A cross-sell email acts upon your clients’ euphoria about their new purchase and offers them complimentary products that can enhance the benefits of the product they purchased. This email can also show products others have bought after or with the same item the customer acquired. This is basically like the candy bars at the checkout in a store. They should be inexpensive enough to be impulsive purchases since if the investment is significant, the customer will decline. 

The more specific the targeting, the better the results will be. For example, if a customer buys a vacuum cleaner, you might want to offer some accessories, filters, and spare parts. Compared to the purchase, they will be inexpensive, and when the hype of the purchase starts fading away, this can be an opportunity to enhance their euphoric feeling. 

So, cross-sell emails should be part of the after-purchase email sequence. There are several strategies, and what works best depends on your product or service. Still, sending one of these emails right after the confirmation while the customer is still on your website is a good idea. Make sure, however, to send it about a minute after the Confirmation email. The customer must have seen their order confirmed before considering another purchase. Still, it needs to be close enough for the customer not to shut down their email and move on with their day. You’d want to get them while they are still in the purchasing mood. 

On the other hand, you can send some additional cross-sell emails over time, but not more than three in total. 

This number of emails is precisely how much you should bother your customers with anything requiring action.

Re-engagement emails

About 40% of users have at least 50 unread emails in their inboxes. This means that some subscribers simply drift away from your funnel and lose interest in your product. They may have found a better solution to their problem, or they may have purchased your product and simply lost interest in anything else you have to offer. It doesn’t matter. If they are not interested in your product, they are just cluttering your email list and creating false analytics results. 

The best way to determine if the customer is still interested in your product or emails is to send them a personalized re-engagement email. This email is targeting only inactive subscribers. Ultimately, it aims to either re-involve them in your brand or strike them off your subscription list. 

You can go a step further and ask them what’s the reason behind their subsided interest. You should even provide them with quick links to other channels if that’s their preferred method of communication. 

The subject line should be attention-grabbing, infused with a sense of guilt. Many brands use sad baby animals as an image, which is terrible but extremely effective. 

What email should you use?

Using Gmail, Yahoo, or other prominent mail platforms might sound like a good idea, but not having your own email hinders your credibility and authority. Creating an email with your website and sending all your communication through it is essential. It’s a good idea to create a name with which you will sign your emails. This makes them much more personal. Instead of communicating with a faceless corporation, your customers will actually have the opportunity to communicate with a person. This increases engagement. Still, when sending special offers, you might want to use a different name and sign it with its position. For example, the Marketing manager or head of VIP customer support. This will instantly make the recipient feel special. 

Some hosting companies charge extra for creating emails. Not us. With HostArmada, you can create as many emails as you need. Moreover, we guarantee that whenever you send the correct link in an email, your customers will get to your website lightning fast. We guarantee 99.9% uptime and ensure your customers dwell in the safest environment possible. This is essential when you expect them to share their private and most sensitive information online. These factors play a crucial role in your email marketing campaign’s success. So, don’t hesitate to hop on our website and see all the benefits a website hosting plan with HostArmada will bring you. Check out our plans, and if you have any doubts about which one will fit your business goals, contact our team, and they will gladly assist you.