There’s More to Email Marketing Than Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the most popular marketing channels. And for good reason - it’s cheap, effective, and easy to measure. But many marketers stop there, thinking that blasting their list with promotional messages is all there is to email marketing. In reality, there are things you can do with email that goes well beyond that tactic. Things that you probably have not heard of but if you did, you’d wonder, “how did I not think of this?!”

In today’s unpredictable world, it's more important than ever to think creatively and holistically about your marketing strategies and the channels you use. We’re going to help you do just that. But before we do, let’s take a look at what’s not working in traditional email marketing…

The woes of traditional email marketing

Email marketing is not without drawbacks and challenges, naturally. 

Email marketing initiatives can feel impersonal at times - yes, even if you’re leveraging personalization tags. At the end of the day, you and every other brand out there are emailing the contacts in your list. And while many people have grown to appreciate emails from their favorite brands, email fatigue is still very real. Between working from home, burnout, and other variables, if your audience is feeling rundown, your emails might push them directly into ‘unsubscribe’ territory. In fact, you probably experienced this firsthand yourself. 

Worse yet - your recipients unsubscribing to your content can actually be a good thing. The alternative is being marked as spam. Nowadays, that’s something that happens way too often. Because as technology evolves, it seems those dreaded spam filters are still stuck in the early 2000s, chewing up your valuable emails and condemning them straight into the black hole called inbox trash cans. 

Struggling to get your emails out of recipient spam folders can feel like a losing battle, and on some occasions, isn’t even worth the time, energy, or funds needed to fix the problem. If you’re facing challenges like this, we wouldn’t be shocked to hear that traditional email marketing just isn’t your jam. Luckily, there are ways to navigate these challenges and email marketing in general that will have you excited to dig back into email once again. 

Enter, the ad channel you never knew you had

If someone told you that there was an inexpensive and impactful way to leverage your employees and their relationships to promote your company initiatives, deliver value, and amplify your brand, would you be first in line? Of course, you would, you’re a marketer - you’ve got a fast-food budget but a Michelin star appetite. 

The best part? You already own and use the channel. At Opensense, we call this channel everyday email. You may know it as corporate email. Consider the fact that your employees collectively send thousands if not millions of emails every year to customers, leads, partners, and general contacts. What if every single time an email was sent from someone in your team, your latest campaigns and initiatives were appended in a beautiful display ad right below the email signature. We call this an email ad banner - it’s a balance of email marketing and display advertising (pssst here's why you're burning money on display ads).

It's the highest form of personalization you can offer in email marketing - check out where it falls on the email value pyramid. You’ll see that this channel feels more like a two-way street vs. the one-to-many feel of the traditional approach. 

By incorporating email ad campaigns into your campaigns, you’ll never miss an opportunity to drive more value and brand awareness by delivering compelling, relevant offers in every email. Email ad campaigns can be aligned to current offers, change based on audience or recipient, and rotate on a regular basis without too much fuss. 

How to leverage email ad campaigns to engage your prospects and customers

Now that you’re up to speed on this powerful secret marketing weapon, you’re probably starting to imagine all the ways that your business can leverage it effectively. Consider working any of these ideas into your plans for 2022: 
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1. Sales and promotional offers to prospect

Probably the most obvious use of email ad campaigns but still worth mentioning.

Consider using email ad campaigns to promote upcoming or current offers to ensure that everybody in your network is made aware. If you’re using an email tool like Opensense, you can easily group up your employees by department and launch different promotional offers. In the example below, the QuickLending's marketing team launched a referral email ad campaign that offers up a gift card to encourage prospects to refer their friends.

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2. Boost revenue from existing customers and partners

With an average CTR of 4 - 7%, email ad campaigns bring home some serious engagement. Leverage this channel to share new offers, upsell or cross-sell (check out in-depth examples of revenue-boosting email ad campaigns here), or share news related to your business. From rebranding initiatives and app updates to new offers and referral campaigns,  this channel can be used to keep customers in the loop.

Check out the example below that encourages customers in the starter plan to move up to pro!
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3. Internal Communications to your team 

Sometimes it’s crucial to get everybody within your organization onboard.

While this may not directly increase your sales or bottom line, email ad campaigns can be a terrific way to ensure that your teaM looped in on internal changes, updates, or announcements. If you’re feeling super creative, build out some banners that celebrate milestone events like anniversaries or employee birthdays or schedule a banner that welcomes a new employee on his first day in office!

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You can set up multiple groups - HR, Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, and IT to have their own banners rotating. 

There you have it! 

We know that email marketing is a powerful tool. But it can be tricky to make sure you’re engaging your prospects and customers in the best possible way. That’s where email ad campaigns can help.  Whether you are using it to drive new sales, improve customer loyalty from existing customers, or for internal comms, the possibilities are truly endless.

If this sounds like something you want help with, be sure to reach out to our team for a demo. We’ll show you exactly how leading businesses are leveraging everyday email to amplify their brand with impactful email ad campaigns.