By 2025, there will be 4.6 billion email users worldwide, according to Statista.
The reach of email marketing is immense, and it keeps growing year after year.
Email is a cheap way to reach a large audience, especially when you target a segmented audience based on age, location, or industry.
However, because the email market is so saturated, recipients receive hundreds of emails every day, which makes them less likely to open your email.
If you're looking how to enhance your marketing strategy, you want to start by establishing direct email marketing. That includes a direct email strategy, email list, and tactics you will use.
This article will guide you through direct email marketing so you can nail it in 2024 and turn your emails into conversions.
What is direct email marketing?
Direct email marketing is the most popular digital marketing tactic where emails are sent directly to a targeted group of people to promote products, services, or events.
When used the right way, direct email marketing is a powerful tool for businesses to reach and engage their target audience directly.
This approach allows businesses to communicate with their audience in a personalized way, aiming to drive engagement, conversions, and customer retention.
Usually, direct email marketing involves sending emails that are designed to encourage a certain action, such as making a purchase, signing up for a subscription, or attending an event.
Effective direct email marketing campaigns are characterized by their relevance to the recipient, timely delivery, and clear call-to-action (CTA).
The goal of direct emailing is to increase your conversion rate, helping you maximize the return on your investment. To do so, you have to implement the right email marketing strategy and follow a consistent action plan.
Direct email is more powerful than standard email
Email refers to any electronic correspondence, but direct email means that your email message correlates with a marketing intent.
Contrary to emails, direct emails are sent to a targeted list of recipients as part of a broader digital marketing strategy.
Moreover, direct email content is promotional and crafted to encourage a specific action, such as making a purchase, signing up for a service, or attending an event.
Standard email content, on the other hand, can be anything from personal messages to business communications without any promotional intent.
Today, most of the recipients expect to receive personalized emails. They often include their name, a tailored offer, or name a subject matter they have been working on lately.
The research shows that direct emails are more powerful than generic emails: 4.4% of people respond to direct mail while only 0.12% respond to emails.
Moreover, McKinsey & Company study revealed that 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions. And 76% get frustrated when this doesn’t happen.
Personalization in direct email marketing drives performance and better customer outcomes.
The same study from McKinsey & Company showed that companies that grow faster drive 40% more of their revenue from personalization than their slower-growing counterparts.
Direct email marketing: Key terms you need to know
There are many related terms that are as important than talking about direct email marketing.
Here are the most relevant terms and definitions that marketers are using:
1. Email List: A collection of email addresses that a business has gathered from visitors/customers who opted in to receive email communication from the company.
2. Opt-In: The process by which a recipient consents to receive email marketing messages. This is often done through a subscription form on a website, ensuring that communications are sent only to those who have explicitly requested them.
3. Open Rate: A metric in email marketing that measures the percentage of email recipients who open a specific email out of the total number of emails sent. It indicates the initial level of engagement with an email campaign.
4. Click-Through Rate (CTR): The percentage of email recipients who click on one or more links contained in an email campaign. This metric is crucial for understanding how engaging an email is and how well it drives recipients to take a desired action.
5. Conversion Rate: The percentage of email recipients who take a specific action that an email intends to drive, such as making a purchase or signing up for a service. This metric measures the effectiveness of an email in achieving its ultimate goal.
6. Bounce Rate: The rate at which emailed messages are not delivered to the recipient's inbox. Bounces can be classified as either "hard" (permanent failures, such as a nonexistent email address) or "soft" (temporary issues, such as a full inbox).
8. Segmentation: The practice of dividing an email list into smaller, more targeted groups based on specific criteria like demographics, purchasing behavior, or engagement levels. Segmentation is used to personalize emails and increase their relevance to different segments of an audience.
9. Personalization: The customization of email messages for individual recipients. Personalization techniques might include using the recipient's name, tailoring content to their interests, or sending offers based on their past behaviors.
10. Call-to-Action (CTA): A prompt in an email that urges the reader to take a specific action, such as "Buy Now," "Sign Up Today," or "Learn More." A clear and compelling CTA is critical for driving conversions from an email campaign.
11. Spam: Unsolicited email messages, often of a commercial nature, sent in bulk to people who have not agreed to receive them. Email marketing campaigns must navigate spam filters and regulations to reach their intended recipients effectively.
12. Deliverability: The ability of an email to reach the recipient's inbox. It is influenced by factors like sender reputation, recipient engagement, and adherence to email marketing best practices.
The main benefits of direct email marketing
Direct email marketing can bring numerous benefits, including:
1. Cost-Effectiveness: Direct email marketing offers a high ROI compared to other marketing channels due to lower operational costs.
Compared to traditional marketing channels like TV, print, or billboard advertising, email marketing required very little investment for design, execution, and distribution.
This affordability translates directly into a higher ROI as the expenditure to reach each recipient is minimal. In fact, email generates $42 for every $1 spent, according to Litmus.
2. Better Customer Relationships: Regular and relevant email communication builds loyalty and trust between you and your customers.
3. Highly Targeted Campaigns: Email marketing allows for precise segmentation of your audience based on demographics, purchase history, and user behavior.
By tailoring messages specifically to the interests and needs of different segments, businesses can significantly increase conversion rates, as targeted messages are more likely to resonate with recipients.
4. Global Reach and Immediate Impact: Direct email marketing can reach recipients worldwide, expanding your potential customer base with minimal effort.
No marketing strategy can be done as quickly as sending out direct emails to your recipients. They allow you to send timely promotions and quick updates to your audience.
5. Measurable Results: With advanced analytics, you can track open rates, click-through rates, and conversions to measure campaign effectiveness.
What are the limitations of direct email marketing?
1. Email Overload
The biggest disadvantage to direct emails comes down to the same fact that makes them so effective and it's email overload.
Many consumers receive a large volume of emails daily, making it challenging for your message to stand out.
Email overload can lead to lower open and engagement rates as recipients may overlook or delete messages without reading them.
2. Spam Filters
Spam filters can also be one of the limiting factors. Modern email systems have sophisticated spam filters designed to catch unsolicited emails.
In order to avoid that, you need to make sure you warm-up your email account, and use a warm-up tool to boost and maintain your deliverability.
Deliverability can be affected by various factors, including sender reputation, the amount of emails you sent and email content.
If an email service provider flags your content as spam or if your messages contain too many images or sales-oriented language, your emails may not be delivered.
Make sure you follow the email deliverability checklist when sending out direct emails to your prospects.
3. Unkept Email List
Maintaining a clean and engaged email list requires your ongoing efforts, and if neglected, it can become a huge drawback to your direct email campaign.
Factors like email list decay, where email addresses become obsolete, or the churn rate of subscribers can impact the effectiveness of your campaigns over time.
4. Average Content
Lastly, make sure the content in your email stands out.
With our limited attention spans and the abundance of information available online, capturing and retaining your audience through email is more challenging than ever.
To make sure your direct emails are effective, follow some crucial strategic steps, such as:
How do you create a direct email marketing strategy that actually works?
Creating a direct email marketing strategy that delivers results involves careful planning, execution, and optimization.
Below are five key steps to develop an effective strategy:
1 step: Identify and Segment Your Audience
Before deploying any campaign, it's crucial to understand whom you're trying to reach.
After you identify your target audience, you should segment your email list accordingly.
Separate your leads considering their demographics, needs, or behaviors.
Make sure you send out targeted campaigns so that your prospects will receive direct emails that are relevant to their paint points.
Follow our in-depth guide on defining your B2B target audience.
2 Step: Set Clear Goals
Determine what you want to achieve with your email marketing campaign.
Objectives can range depending on your email marketing strategy, like increasing product awareness, generating leads, or driving sales.
When using lemlist, set a goal for each campaign, such as achieving a 33% open rate or a 20% click-through rate for an email series promoting a new feature.
3 Step: Personalize your emails
Personalization goes beyond addressing a recipient by their name.
These days, recipients expect much more advanced personalization techniques.
Think of the subject line, a closing line, a personalized image, a structure of your direct email, a picture (or no image.)
Make sure you pack a lot of value inside. Don't forget a clear and captivating CTA that makes your message impossible to resist.
Use our proven personalization checklist for the best direct email campaign results:
- [ ] Your CTA is less than 7 words
- [ ] You address the prospects' pain points
- [ ] You use line breaks after every sentence
- [ ] Your cold emails contain 50-100 words
- [ ] There's an apparent reason why you got in touch
- [ ] Your subject lines are all lowercase, and up to 2 words
- [ ] Your language is so simple a 10-year-old would understand it
- [ ] You show what impact an action will have on your prospect's key metric
- [ ] There aren't "fluff" sentences such as "Hope you're well" that don't bring value
- [ ] There are enough days between each follow-up to give your leads time to answer
4 Step: Deploy all the best practices at once with lemlist AI sequence generator
If you don't want to miss on sales prospecting opportunities, take advantage of AI. Because most of your competitors are already using it.
With lemlist AI sequence generator, you can boost your direct email marketing strategy and increase your outreach efficiency. That equals to 3x more reply rates.
This is how you do it:
- Define your best multichannel sequence steps
- Write hyper-personalized and human-like messages
- Save hours of manual work (1 hour saved per 1 campaign creation)
If you follow these best practices, you will increase your open rate three times and boost conversions with minimal effort.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between cold emails and direct emails?
Cold emails are sent on a one-time basis and are designed to start a conversation with potential prospects who have no prior relationship with the sender.
Email marketing typically involves sending a series of targeted direct emails over time to build a relationship with the recipient.
However, direct emails and cold emails are closely intertwined, and many people use them synonymously.
Do people still use direct email?
Absolutely. Direct emails establish a tangible connection with a recipient unlike online ads and standard emails that are impersonal, generic, and temporary.
Is direct email marketing effective?
Very effective. Direct mail marketing statistics show that the average ROI for direct mail campaigns ranges between 18% to 20%.
What is a major disadvantage of direct mail?
Response rates for direct emails can be low, and some recipients can lump direct mail with spam.
Do you want to know if your emails land in spam? Take our free email deliverability test now.
Since, on average, only 23 out of a 100 cold emails ever get opened, it's recommended to use cold outreach tool that will make your direct emails reach inboxes and get replies.
With lemlist, an all-in-one outreach tool, you can easily build your lead list with verified emails, write and personalize at scale, and send cold emails that actually get customers.
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