Jane Vennersdorf fromoffbeat mediaintroduces you here to email marketing

Have you ever opened an email inviting you to buy something? And have you ever bought anything through those emails? If so, you are like the majority of Danes.

Even though Danes hate emails encouraging us to buy something, we do it anyway. Not every time, but we still hop on every once in a while and add something to our basket.

Whether you like emails or not, it works.

We've put together 5 good reasons to use email marketing here:

1. Although many people see email marketing as an annoyance, it works and is almost always worth the effort.
2. Even if someone doesn't open your email, your business is still exposed to the customer.
3. If you create personalised emails with value-added content, there's a good chance the reader will make a purchase.
4. It's an easy way to connect with your customers without them having to scroll down the Facebook wall.
5. You can build up a large email list relatively quickly if you give people a reason to sign up.

When choosing an email system, make sure you find one that can do exactly what you need it to do - and then some in the future. It is simply so annoying and unnecessary waste of time if you spend a lot of time building something in an email marketing system that does not live up to your expectations.

Heyloyalty, for example, is a Danish system that is easy to use. Other well-known email systems include MailChimp and ActiveCampaign.

All three of these systems allow you to create everything from simple newsletters to advanced automated email flows.

A simplenewsletteris the classic way of sending emails. As the sender, you write a newsletter and send it directly to your recipient list at regular intervals.

Anautomatic e-mail flowis an extension of the classic newsletter. Here, you write a series of e-mail messages in advance and then queue them up to be sent to your recipients at X days intervals. This way you can, for example, retain new email recipients for several weeks without any manual labour (once the flow is set up).

If you want to go even further, you can tweak and customise your email flow even more to maximise targeting and impact. For example, it's possible to set up "triggers" so that people on your list receive a message if they have left items in their basket without completing an order. It's also possible to send automatic messages (possibly with a discount code) to customers who haven't visited your online shop for a long time.