Email: The Pioneer of Digital Marketing
Despite numerous claims of its looming death in the face of the evolving digital marketing landscape, the relatively older email marketing system has survived the challenges it has faced in recent years. Not only has it survived, but it has also thrived to remain one of the most important ways for brands to reach their target audience.
Automating personalized emails to extend your market research is nothing new. It has been around since the dawn of the internet, and enterprises around the world realize its potential for improving sales numbers. The first mass marketing email, sent by Gary Thuerk of Digital Equipment Corporation in 1978, netted his company $13 million in sales. Accounting for inflation, this would amount to almost $53.8 million today!
Digital Marketing Today
With advancements in the internet and newer technologies, the digital marketing scene has evolved drastically. Even though email marketing still reigns supreme, there is a new kid on the block to challenge the throne.
We must admit that this statement is not entirely true. Marketing automation has been around for a long while now, but the term is so broad and ever-expanding that we feel it is appropriate to label it newer than email automation. Newer and newer methods of automation are springing up recently, redefining the term “marketing automation” on a daily basis.
This is why the terms “marketing automation” and “email marketing” can often be so confusing. However, the two are very different and you should not confuse marketing automation with email marketing.
Email Marketing
The process of email marketing refers to sending personalized emails to current or prospective clients in a bid to extend your company’s reach and improve sales numbers. The process of personalizing emails is a relatively simple one. You can actually use word processing software from 40 years ago to generate mass personalized emails! However, that software offered limited functionality and the latest methods of email marketing are much more robust and suitable for this era.
Personalizing emails requires you to create an email template that you want to send out in bulk numbers. A few keywords in the template require replacing with another word or phrase to tailor the email to every individual. For example, your template may contain the words “Dear <ClientName>” in the text body.
The phrase “<ClientName>” is a placeholder text replaced with every client’s name that exists in your database. Replacing every placeholder text with the individual’s relevant details generates a customized and tailored email for every person you are trying to reach out to. In the past, you would have to maintain your database with updated and relevant information and link it to the email template to create useful personalized emails. Today, you have the tools to do this for you.
This process of automating email is why many people may confuse email marketing with marketing automation. While it is true that email marketing is a part of marketing automation, the latter term is an extremely broad one that encompasses multiple methods of engagement. Allow us to elaborate.
Marketing Automation
Marketing automation refers to the use of advanced software to automate different marketing activities. Email marketing is part of the process, as are in-app messages and push notifications on smartphones. Those of you who have received an Uber Eats notification around noon informing you about the daily deals you can get on lunch know exactly what we are referring to.
However, that is not the extent of marketing automation. There are various other ways to extend your customer reach, including, but not limited to social media posting and even personalized advertisement campaigns. You can find numerous software and services online providing this functionality.
Using marketing automation software allows your company to generate leads much more efficiently than through traditional methods. You can drastically increase the reach of your company with the same number of employees while making their tasks much easier and less repetitive. With marketing automation, you can make the lives of your employees better, and expand your business at the same time.
