Master These 7 Bulk Email Types to Improve Subscriber Engagement

Before we delve in, it’s important to note that email marketing is more effective when it’s part of a wider content strategy. For example, your initial email to a new subscriber could be the first in a series that guides them towards buying your product or subscribing to your services. The following email types can all contribute to a prospect making the move from subscriber to customer in differing degrees and include:

1. Welcome Emails

A welcome email sets the tone for future conversations and helps clarify expectations around the purpose, content, and frequency of your emails. Brands often use them as the first touchpoint in an email series that educates prospects about their products and services. You can optimise your welcome emails by:

• Using attractive imagery
• Showcasing your brand
• Personalising the copy
• Using friendly language
• Adding a single call to action
• Prioritising mobile users

2. Newsletter Emails

This is a convenient way to share news, updates, and relevant content with your subscribers and is a staple of content marketing. When you use newsletters correctly, they add value and remind subscribers that your emails are worth reading.

They work best when focused on a specific theme that your audience, or an important portion of them, finds useful. You can make these emails more engaging by segmenting your audience and identifying who can benefit most from receiving them.

Lastly, don’t pitch your products too heavily in newsletter emails. Rather discuss topics that your customers will find relevant or valuable as part of a lead-nurturing strategy (see below) and use promotional emails to do the hard selling.

3. Promotional Emails

These are classic direct marketing emails. We recently covered best practices for effective bulk email marketing, but here are some important points to remember for promotional emails:

• Use compelling but accurate subject lines to hook prospects
• Keep your copy clear and concise
• Include non-demanding CTAs that gently nudge prospects
• Track email effectiveness for continuous improvement
• Remain POPIA compliant and maintain good deliverability

Work in retail? Discover actionable insights for improving your retail-oriented promotional emails in our guide to Behavioural Linguistics in Retail.

4. Survey Emails

Survey emails are a great way to get insights from your customers, and they show you’re open to feedback and suggestions. Consider using behavioural triggers like exclusivity, loss aversion, and convenience to get your audience to complete them.

Next, you’ll need to reduce the number of questions in the survey to the bare minimum and keep them short and simple. Guide your audience by offering only a handful of convenient ways to answer, like multiple choice or responding on a scale from 1 to 10. Doing this will make the survey quick and painless for your audience, normalise the data you get from the survey, and make subsequent number crunching easier.

Also, make the purpose, terms, incentive, and closing date of your survey crystal clear from the start so subscribers know exactly what to expect when participating.

5. Milestone Emails

Use these emails to build stronger relationships with customers by celebrating business anniversaries and important life events, or by highlighting memorable points in their customer journey. Common milestone emails include:

• Birthday and anniversary wishes
• Platform usage reviews
• Progress notifications
• Date-dependent promotions
• Account upgrade messages

The most important point here is to focus on the subscriber and make them feel appreciated. You can do this by using personal information to customise the message – also known as personalisation.

Despite being a more advanced email marketing tactic that typically builds on bulk communication, message personalisation can add value at any point in your email campaign and is a lot more accessible (and straightforward) than you might think. For more on the topic, view this replay of a presentation on personalisation best practices by email marketing thought leader, Kath Pay.

Want to weave personalisation into your bulk email campaigns, but not sure where to start? Get our Guide to Message Personalisation and learn more.

6. Abandoned Cart Emails

According to Statista, up to 88% of online carts are regularly abandoned. To win back lost business, ecommerce operators use abandoned-cart emails. These nudge prospects to resume their abandoned shopping session.

Abandoned-cart emails are typically used in an automated email series that progresses from an initial notification to an incentive, and then finally an action-prompting closing email.

Adding an engaging subject line and quality images of the items in the prospect’s cart can help boost engagement. Furthermore, these emails should give prospects a convenient way to slot back into the buying journey or reach out to you for additional info.

7. Lead Nurturing Emails

Transforming subscribers into leads can take real effort, and lead-nurturing emails help you do this by slowly orienting prospects towards a buying decision.

These emails are typically used as a series that meets prospects when they’re still weighing their options and looking for a product or service that best suits their needs. You can accelerate this journey by giving them content that answers their questions quicker, like case studies, testimonials, and webinars. In fact, any content type can be used in a lead-nurturing series if it adds value and strengthens your position as someone who can solve the prospect’s pain points.

Get our Guide to B2B Lead Nurturing with Email and learn which phases prospects go through before making a buying decision.

You can set up bulk email strategies that deliver measurable business results using the types discussed above. Mastering them will help you make the move towards campaigns adapted to the specific needs of your audience. Some of these emails touch on techniques like automated workflows and hyper-personalisation too – which are more advanced email marketing tactics that you can progress through in Everlytic’s Growth Journey.