The Different Types of Email Communication

Company newsletters are a great way to update your customers about your business, providing reliable, regularly delivered, quality information on relevant and interesting topics. By their very nature, newsletter communications are sent regularly. Newletters are usually scheduled to mail your subscribers weekly, bi-monthly, or monthly, enabling the company to regularly promote its news and events in a timely way. In terms of newsletter content, your options are limitless; offer small history lessons about your business, talk about upcoming events, highlight employees, or offer industry-specific news and tips or offer free downloads and information guides.

Nothing entices a customer more than a great deal. Your customer saves money and your bottom line gets a boost. Not bad, right? Keep in mind, promotional emails aren’t reserved for only things like, “Don’t miss our 50% off sale.” A promotional email can offer other perks too, like free shipping or a free product trial.

Although they sound like announcements, press releases are more public relations than sales. Companies from all industries prepare press releases around corporate and governance developments, product or service launches and upgrades, community contribution and involvement, and so on.

Press Releases can help you establish authority in your field. You demonstrate to customers that you know your business inside and out. Through creative emails you can showcase your knowledge without bragging. The best way to do that is to send emails that provide value to your customers.

Plus, emails that provide value get shared. It’s like virtual word of mouth. When you send your customer’s an email that’s helpful, they may forward it on to their friends. You’re establishing your business as a leader in the industry and gaining customers.

If you sell products or services through your website, you may need to prepare emails that support or augment the purchase process. If you accept any sort of user sign-up through your website—for a newsletter, for competitions, or even from visitors who want to register their interest in an activity that your company is undertaking—there’s the potential for you to add value.

DeskMail can help your company plan an email sequence, design and create email templates and create unique landing pages to support the sales or sign-up process. A landing page is the first page of a site that a visitor sees after clicking through from an email. With DeskMail there is also the ability to set the messages to mail through an email autoresponder, and to test the sequences before they’re made live. Although sales process emails may seem cut and dried, there’s a lot of scope for creativity and impact here, especially when the results can be tracked with with real-time reporting where you can assess the success of each email.

Announcement and Notification emails are usually commissioned and produced on an ad hoc basis, when your company has time-critical information to impart to it’s customer’s. Perhaps your company has a limited-time offer that you want to promote. You might have been invited at the last minute to speak at a conference or industry event, and want to encourage clients and customers to attend. A host of possibilities can spark the need to send an announcement email.

One-off announcement emails are usually short and contain just one call to action. Often, there’ll be minimal lead time for the announcement, so there’s a need to turn the job around quickly. If your company believes that you are likely to use announcement emails often, we can prepare a suitable template in advance and upload it to your DeskMail account; this will reduce the time it will take to get your announcements out to subscribers.

Catalogue emails are the electronic newsletters of the online retailer. Where a service orientated company might send an email newsletter, if your company sells products you may prefer mailing an electronic catalogue to subscribers on a regular basis.

Depending on your retailer requirements, the catalogue can contain the same sections each time, or each issue might vary from the last. In building a catalogue email, you should consider a set number of items to include in each issue, as you would in an email newsletter. This will keep the preparation of the creative as straightforward as possible each time, while keeping your email budget on track. Bear in mind though that laying out catalogs can be more time-consuming work than producing a simple electronic newsletter, but that this is something DeskMail can do for you.

Use email marketing to share customer reviews. By sharing a testimonial you reaffirm your customers’ choice in your business. That’s helpful when you’re nurturing a relationship.

When a holiday rolls around, you can send your customers a holiday email. It can be a three-sentence email that wishes everyone a Happy New Year, or a colorful banner that celebrates Freedom Day and offers customers a discount. It can be a nontraditional holiday, too. Either way, a holiday is a good reason to reach out to your customers.

When a customer has fallen off the sales grid for a while, you can send an email that encourages them to come back. The email can say something as simple as, “We miss you.” You might include a discount to entice your customer to come back again.