If you would like to start building your email marketing strategy but aren’t sure where to begin, these are some types of emails that we recommend you send, depending on where your contact is in the communication cycle.

We know how frustrating it can be to spend a lot of time creating beautiful emails and then feeling like you don’t get a lot of results. Don’t worry, we’re here to help you put your best efforts into the most effective email campaigns by listing 5 most popular email types you should know about.

1. Welcome mail

Everyone likes a warm welcome – it’s confirmation that they’ve successfully signed up for your mail, in addition, it can provide a recipient with instant gratification. It doesn’t have to be complicated though, keep it simple, fresh, energizing and easy to read. If possible, be sure to personalize your message and remember that you want to invite this real person into your business or organizational information exchange.

And don’t forget to tell your subscriber about the next step. Think about something like ‘Getting started with…’ or ‘See how you can use … to grow your business’. It’s simple, but it works.

2. Newsletter

As you know, there can be quite a few steps involved in order to send a good email. You’re probably familiar with the weekly or monthly email newsletter – this is a tried and true way to keep contacts engaged with your brand, products, service or group. It’s also a way to ensure that your contacts are getting a lot of value for free.

Start with the plan and make sure you choose a frequency that you can maintain. Consider some important dates, events, and information that is relevant to your subject matter then create newsletters based on those themes.

Follow up with a review of your campaign statistics. Take a look at your data,  Open Rates, Bounce Rates, Click Rates and so on. Then use this data to update your newsletter sending practices.

3. Announcement email

The third kind of email is the announcement. Announcements about new products, software updates or about important changes at your company are great ways to ensure your customers and contacts stay informed.  

Most people don’t seek out updates or new information in general, it’s better if it just shows up in their inbox!

Announcement emails provide a great opportunity to show that you want to solve problems for your customers and help them make their businesses bigger and better using the solutions you provide. Announcements can drive real traffic, consider the links you add, calls to action and general format before sending to help you get great results.

4. Educational email

One of the easiest ways to gain your subscriber’s love and respect is to provide them with real value. Providing solutions to problems is what people are looking for and why people buy services or products. Inform your contacts, teach them about how best to use your tools.  Use photos, videos, and links to supporting content to round out your offering. This email type is crucial now, in an era where content is king.

5. Win-back email type

The win-back email is one you might choose to send to a subscriber who has never bought your product or service but for some reason, they visited your website at some point or they subscribe to your newsletters.

You want to help this contact become an active customer. One way to do this is to target them with a special offer – Take time creating your email because every single word will be very important. You want to find the tipping point that will help this subscriber take the next step in their customer journey.

Consider automating these campaigns so you can maintain a consistent pattern of communication. Once you’ve got these campaigns in place you’ll no doubt start to see the positive results of your efforts show up in your Elastic Email dashboard reports.