Email marketing is crucial in every stage of the sales process. We use it for lead generation, nurturing, and overall customer engagement.
But for those starting, navigating the technical terms might seem a bit confusing. In reality, it’s not. Learning the basics of email marketing is easy! We’re here to help!
By the end of this guide, you’ll understand essential email marketing terms and learn when and where to apply them to your business. First, we need to learn the following:
- The fundamentals of email marketing
- Important email marketing terms every business owner and marketer should learn
- Best practices to follow
Email Marketing Fundamentals
Email marketing enables businesses to create dynamic sales strategies. The reason for that is simple—it’s a strategy you can automate with the right tools.
Let’s say you have a list of leads. You can segment these leads and send different emails to each segment. Then, each recipient gets a unique email, depending on their response.
To create a sequence like this, you must learn the basic email marketing terms applicable across all email tools.
Email Marketing Terms 101
Email marketing jargon is universal. Much like the universe, it’s ever-expanding. New terms are created constantly. But, the tried and true remains the same. Here’s a look at the essentials:
A/B Testing
A/B tests are the comparisons between email campaign strategies. Running A/B tests helps you identify what works, what doesn’t, and what needs improving.
In email marketing, you can A/B test a campaign’s email subject lines, call-to-actions (CTAs), or sales closing techniques. If campaigns perform poorly, it may be due to high bounce rates.
Bounce Rates
Emails that don’t get delivered are “bounced.” It can either be soft-bounced or hard-bounced. Prospect-side issues like a full inbox are usually why emails soft bounce. Hard bounces are issues on your end, such as:
- Unvalidated email lists
- Triggering spam filters
- Getting blocked by recipients
Higher bounce rates can damage your email reputation. It signals email providers that your sending accounts aren’t trustworthy. When your email does reach your prospect’s inbox, make sure to make it count with an optimized CTA.
CTA (Call-to-Action)
Email CTAs must be actionable. Every email should have intent. Are you trying to schedule a meeting? Do you want a prospect to click on a link? Or are you just trying to get a reply?
Try low-effort CTAs. Actions prospects can do that provide high value without being too much of an ask. For example, clicking on a case study or an in-depth guide.
Deliverability Rates
Deliverability is a metric that measures the percentage of emails that landed in a recipient’s inbox. Several factors affect email deliverability; the most important is your email’s reputation.
We can’t calculate our email reputation. Email providers calculate it behind the scenes. They check whether an email is from an actual sender, not a bot made for spammy emails.
Email Campaigns
Businesses can run several types of email campaigns, such as cold email, nurturing, and promotional campaigns. Each of these campaigns supports both marketing and sales efforts.
Every campaign is unique. But manually creating email body copy, subject lines, and CTAs takes too much time. To streamline this process, use personalizable email templates.
Frequency Caps
Sending too many emails too fast results in your accounts being tagged as spam. Prevent this by setting frequency caps on your email campaigns. Setting frequency caps can be automated within your email tools settings.
GDPR(General Data Protection Regulation)
In some regions, strict rules and regulations are imposed on collecting, processing, and using personal data—including email addresses. GDPR is the body that governs these regulations. Ensure you’re compliant with GDPR standards to avoid any legal issues.
HTML Email and Plain Text Formats
HTML emails are the typical emails we send and receive. They can contain images, graphics, and complex designs to engage prospects.
But in some cases, HTML emails can break, rendering the emails unreadable. That’s why some use plain text formatting instead.
Inbox Placement Rate
How many emails are ending up in your prospect’s inbox? More importantly, which inboxes are they landing on? For example, Gmail segments emails based on Promotional, Social, and Forum categories. You want to end up in the Primary inbox instead.
Lead Generation
We use lead generation to find prospects for our email campaigns. We can do lead generation manually or with the help of tools such as Instantly B2B Finder. The best part about this tool is that every lead is automatically verified, so you don’t have downtime on your email campaigns.
Opt-in and Opt-out
Opt-in and Opt-out emails ensure we send to people who want to see our emails. These are primarily used in any form of email subscription. But if subscribers don’t engage with our emails, adding an opt-out option is best to keep our engagement or open rates healthy.
Personalization
Personalization is critical to any successful email campaign. Don’t just personalize a prospect’s name in an email. Do in-depth research. Understand their unique pain points. Then offer tailored solutions. Using Instantly’s {{merge tags}}, personalization can also be automated.
Spam Filter
With billions of emails sent and received daily, email providers created spam filters to ensure the safety of their users. Spam filters trigger when certain words or phrases are used in an email. If you have low deliverability, you also risk triggering spam filters.
Transactional Emails
Transactional emails are automated emails triggered by user activity. For example, customers should automatically receive an invoice or receipt when they buy a product.
Warmup
Warmups are one of the most critical steps in every email campaign. It happens naturally as users send and receive emails. But it can be automated to ensure the highest deliverability.
Tools like Instantly provide users with unlimited email warmups. We recommend warmups for new sending accounts for at least three weeks before starting cold email campaigns.
Key Takeaways
Learning basic email marketing terms provides a clear direction for both sales and marketing teams. Don’t just consider what a term means; instead, focus on how these terms apply to specific tasks. Here are some important notes to consider:
- A/B Testing, bounce rates, and deliverability rates are used for analytics.
- Every email campaign must have a CTA, frequency cap, and GDPR compliance.
- Transactional emails should be automated and integrated with CRMs.
- HTML format can contain graphics. Plain Text cannot.
- Lead generation is the process of finding leads for your email campaigns.
- Inbox placement is the category your emails land on.
- Opt-in and opt-out improve customer experience and prevent spam complaints.
When it comes to personalized email marketing, there’s no better partner than Instantly! With unlimited warmups, you’re sure to get unparalleled deliverability! Start for free today and find more leads, land more meetings, and close more sales!