What is Email Marketing and what is the difference with Newsletter?

Email marketing is a form of direct marketing (DEM or direct email marketing)

It is based on email communications that aim to raise brand awareness or send information and updates of a promotional nature. It is a key tool in the marketing mix of the company that wants to increase its revenue.

Key features:
DEM: i.e., commercial communications that aim at direct contact with recipients through promotions, coupons and discounts.
TARGETING: segments at the outset the audience to whom the offer will be proposed, e.g., men’s products are sent only to men, women’s products only to women.
OCCASIONAL: it does not aim to be a periodic appointment, but an occasional communication, which has as its main objective to inform the recipient of a company news; such as a new product, a new service, a discount, etc.
The newsletter is primarily an information tool.
A newsletter is a kind of newspaper that a company, business or association sends by email to its contacts to keep them updated on news, initiatives, promotions. It serves to increase customer loyalty through periodic information that may be of interest to the customer.

Main features:

• Brand awareness: promotes and improves the image of the company and its brand resulting in an increase in awareness. An effective newsletter feeds customers with information about the company’s products or news
• Generates traffic: Headlines and texts serve to stimulate the reader’s interest, which through a call to action (buttons, links, images, etc..) will be projected to the website, thus increasing its monthly visits and indexing.
• Builds loyalty: sending periodic, (but non-invasive) emails increases audience engagement and raises esteem for the company.
• Can convey a viral message: Has as a secondary goal, to promote the company’s products or offers of the moment and be viral. This goes hand in hand with certain social media marketing strategies that can increase user engagement and correlation between newsletter page, social page and website.
• Lead Generation: it is possible to acquire new customers.

How to increase or get subscribers?

• Sign-up forms on your website: the form can be placed in different places on the page (headers, footers, sidebars and pop-ups), consider your choice carefully, perhaps with an A/B test.
• Free content: offer an informative document, tool, coupon or other incentive in exchange for an email address, users will appreciate it.
• Links and forms on Social Media: Facebook and other social are powerful tools in a digital marketing strategy.
• Contests and sweepstakes, both online and offline: consider legal and organizational aspects carefully
• Existing customers: add customers to your email list when they make a purchase, online or offline; your satisfied customers can become your first sponsors.
• Loyalty cards and loyalty programs.

What about the GDPR privacy issue?
Inform users about data processing activities.
In most cases, the regulations require that your privacy policy informs users about the data processing activities performed in language that is easy to understand and unambiguous.

Your policy should include details about:

• data processed;
• methods of processing;
• purposes of processing (e.g., sending newsletters or market analysis);
• third-party services used;
• users’ rights in relation to their data;
• how you handle users’ requests regarding the exercise of their rights;
• actual communication tools used (email, mail etc.);
• what security measures you take.