Types of Email Marketing—Effective Email Strategies

Businesses use email marketing to reach their existing and potential customers. Email marketing professionals use various types of emails to promote products, build relationships, increase engagement, and encourage brand loyalty. Email marketing is a highly effective marketing technique because it allows businesses to reach customers in a personalized, cost-effective way. 

According to research by Salesforce, 93 percent of people use email marketing messages as their primary digital method for interacting with businesses [1]. This customer preference helps explain why the global email marketing market size continues to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 18.8 percent; industry experts expect the market to reach $18.9 billion in 2028 [2]. 

Discover the types of email marketing messages, how you’ll use them in your marketing strategy, and the best practices for each. 

Types of email marketing

Email marketing is an effective tool for your e-marketing strategy because it helps you reach your customers directly, customizing your content to them personally. You’ll find various types of email marketing that you can utilize depending on your goal. You’ll use email marketing differently depending on whether you want to promote products, provide information, build relationships, or gather customer feedback. 

Your e-marketing strategy will likely include a range of email marketing campaigns with different focuses.

Promotional emails

Promotional emails are the most common type of email marketing. You will send promotional emails to potential customers to get the word out about your company’s products or services. You can use them to announce a special event, provide coupons or discounts, or offer free access to content that you usually keep behind a paywall.

You can create effective promotional emails by: 

• Informing customers about product launches, special offers, discounts, and sales.

• Explaining your product or service’s benefits and how it will provide value to the customer.

• Putting the discount or promotion in the subject of your email to tempt the reader to click.

• Including a call to action after telling your customers about a promotion.

Transactional emails

Transactional emails are emails sent only to customers who make a purchase or engage with a business in another way, including by joining a marketing list or updating their account information. You will generally follow up transactional emails with further emails as part of a sequence. For instance, after your customer makes a purchase, you will send them a series of emails to confirm their order, provide them with their shipping and shipment tracking information, offer coupons for a future purchase, and ask for feedback after their order arrives. Each email builds a relationship with your customer and furthers their journey with your business.

You can create effective transactional emails by:

• Providing order and refund confirmations, shipping notifications, and account updates.

• Personalizing your emails for each customer to enhance connection.

• Keeping your information clear so the customer knows the purpose of the email.

Newsletter emails

Newsletter emails help businesses engage with their current and potential customers, building relationships by keeping them informed about the company and its products or services. To maintain consistent communication with your customers, you will send newsletter emails on a regular schedule, such as weekly, monthly, or quarterly. 

You can create effective newsletter emails by:

• Informing customers about company news, advertisements, industry updates, and blog posts.

• Sending these emails on a regular schedule to maintain regular contact with customers. 

• Including a call to action relating to your content.

Drip emails

Drip emails are a sequence of automated emails sent after a customer takes a specific action, such as buying a product or signing up for an email list. You will use each email in the drip email sequence to build on the information in the previous email to educate the customer and encourage them to take the next step in the process, such as making an initial or repeat purchase. 

You can create drip emails by:

• Generating and nurturing leads, educating new subscribers, and building brand awareness.

• Personalizing your emails by segmenting your list and adding the customer’s name.

• Sending your emails automatically on a preset schedule.

Event invitation and follow-up emails

Event invitation and follow-up emails are emails sent to customers to invite them to online and in-person events and follow up with them after they attend an event. You can use event invitations for live social media events, online seminars, or product launches. You will craft these emails to emphasize the event’s value for your readers and give them information about when and where to attend the event. You will often use photos and graphics to maximize the impact of your event invitations. After the event, you will send a follow-up email to the attendees to engage them further by providing feedback on the event or suggesting other events that might interest them.

You can create effective event invitations and follow-up emails by:

• Inviting customers to events and reminding customers about upcoming events.

• Gathering post-event feedback.

• Include a call to action: signing up for the event or following you on social media.

• Use photos and videos to give a feel for the event and create value.

• Send follow-up emails shortly after events end so they are fresh in the customers’ minds.

Re-engagement emails

Re-engagement emails help regain customers who no longer engage with a brand or buy a company’s products. You might target these inactive subscribers with emails titled “We miss you” to make them feel valued. You can then personalize re-engagement emails with offers specific to each customer or provide them with a discount code to entice them back.

You can create effective re-engagement emails by:

• Encourage customers to re-engage with your business.

• Provide customer-specific discounts and special offers.

• Include a call to action.

• Ask for feedback so you can learn why they no longer engage.

• Remove inactive customers from your email lists.

Survey and feedback emails

Survey and feedback emails help businesses understand whether their email marketing efforts meet their customers’ needs and determine how to improve them. You can build survey and feedback emails into your email marketing campaign to maximize customer feedback by providing customers with a formal survey or giving customers an opportunity to leave a review of your product or service.

You can create effective survey and feedback emails by:

• Gathering customer feedback after purchases.

• Gauging customer interest for future products.

• Keeping your surveys short and simple.

• Offering an incentive for completing your survey, such as an entry into a drawing.

Learn more about email marketing strategies with Coursera

You’ll use various types of emails in your marketing campaigns as part of your overall marketing strategy. 

If you’d like to learn more about marketing and different marketing initiatives, including email marketing, you might consider pursuing Google’s Google Digital Marketing and E-Commerce Professional Certificate on Coursera, a seven-course series designed to help you learn the fundamentals of digital marketing and marketing campaign performance measurement.