The Power of Dedicated Emails: How to Win New Audiences
Dedicated emails are highly personalized messages in a crowded inbox — they typically focus on one offer containing tailored messages that speak directly to the customer.
This means there’s a singular purpose, goal, and CTA for your email marketing campaign. A dedicated email can be anything from welcoming a newcomer to your newsletter community to informing customers about new products or services. It’s an excellent opportunity to move your customers along the sales funnel and maximize sales.
How do dedicated emails optimize your sales and marketing funnel, and how much do they cost? We unpack every detail, including the advantages of sending a dedicated email, how they work, what their features are, and when to send them.
What is a Dedicated Email?
Dedicated emails, also known as ‘custom’ or ‘stand-alone emails,’ are sent to specific target audiences and comply with one piece of information. For instance, you can send a dedicated email to invite subscribers to an event or encourage them to download an e-book.
Typically, a dedicated email contains the following features:
- Customization: A dedicated email allows you to send personalized content addressing the specific interests or needs of the subscriber.
- Focused messaging: Dedicated emails solve a particular purpose and ensure clarity, be it a marketing campaign, internal communication, or customer support.
- Folder and tagging options: You can categorize and organize communication, making it easier to manage different types of correspondences.
- A single CTA: Usually, there’s one CTA strategically placed in a prominent location in a dedicated email.
These exclusive features make it easy to build trust and recognition with subscribers, along with a handful of other advantages.
The Advantages of Dedicated Emails
Dedicated emails offer several benefits across various aspects of email marketing, including nurturing leads and driving conversations.
You could make use of these 8 unique benefits for your business:
- Helps with targeted promotions: Use dedicated emails to promote specific products, services, and offers directly to a segmented audience.
- Aids in Lead nurturing: A dedicated email is usually a part of an automated nurturing workflow, delivering content at various stages of the customer journey.
- Allows easier customer retention: Rewarding loyal customers and providing exclusive access or email coupons for a higher customer retention rate is easy.
- More straightforward to promote events: You can use a dedicated email to convey important details of an event, webinar, or conference. It’s also much simpler to track RSVPs and manage event attendance effectively.
- Helps with behavior-based marketing: A stand-alone email enables you to focus on user behavior and create relevant and timely content.
- A valuable tool for affiliate marketers: Affiliates usually use dedicated emails to promote products or services to their subscriber base and earn commissions.
- Helpful for educational content: A dedicated email can educate your audience and build expertise and credibility with your brand.
- Aids in pushing sales: Focusing on a single message and CTA helps you get the desired outcome from your subscribers without having to repeat the same message.
A dedicated email also makes it easy to track your campaign success without the need for additional monitoring tools. Despite these perks, sending a dedicated email can have its downsides, such as consistency issues and limited content.
The Disadvantages of Dedicated Emails
The potential drawbacks of sending a dedicated email include:
- Email fatigue: Emailing subscribers frequently can lead to email fatigue and loss of interest in your offers.
- Time-consuming: Creating hyper-personalized emails and unique content can take more time and resources.
- Segmentation errors: Outdated subscriber data can lead to sending irrelevant content to recipients, diminishing the impact of the dedicated email.
- Less consistent: The schedule is less defined with a dedicated email — you will only send offers and promotions when you have a unique product or service.
- Account suspension: If your recipients perceive your dedicated email as excessive or irrelevant, they may flag it as spam. Soon, too many complaints can lead to lower sender reputation and, eventually, account suspension.
- Limited reach: A narrower segmentation also means missed opportunities to reach a broader audience and potential sales.
- Limited adaptability: A few dedicated email campaigns may lack adaptability to changes in user behavior and preferences, causing messages to be outdated and irrelevant.
- High competition: With crowded inboxes, dedicated emails may face challenges if not crafted well.
Dedicated emails may closely resemble sponsored emails for various reasons, but they are not the same.
Sponsored Vs. Dedicated Emails: A Comparison
The table below shows the unique characteristics of each.
| Aspect | Sponsored Email | Dedicated Email |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Emails sent to a third-party’s email list where the sponsor pays for the exposure. | Emails are sent to a business’s own or rented list to target specific audiences and promote a single product. |
| Control | Limited control over the content as it is sent to an existing subscriber list. | Complete control over content, design, and branding, tailored to a specific audience. |
| Targeting | Limited targeting options, mostly based on the third-party’s audience. | Highly targeted messaging based on user demographics, preferences, and behavior. |
| Branding | May not fully align with brand elements since the content is handled by a third party. | Consistent with the advertiser’s branding colors, logo, and other elements. |
| Cost structure | Based on the number of emails sent or third-party list size. | Fixed costs or based on the size of the rented list with the potential fee for additional customization. |
| Engagement risks | Potential lower engagement as recipients may not be familiar with the sponsoring business. | Higher engagement ratio as the emails are sent to a more targeted and receptive audience. |
| Long-term impact | Focus is usually on a single campaign, minimizing long-term impact. | Can contribute to long-term relationships as the emails are sent to a more engaged audience. |
The relevance and effectiveness of sponsored and dedicated emails depend on the email list quality and the nature of the campaign. Before choosing an email marketing approach, evaluate your business goals, audience type, and budget.
Which Dedicated Email Performs The Best?
A dedicated email campaign can vary based on the email marketing context. The table below consists of different dedicated email campaign types to monetize and reach more audience segments.
| Dedicated Email Type | Key Features | Performance metrics to track | Best Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| Promotional campaigns | Highlighting special offers, discounts, or promotions. | Conversion rates, click-through rate, and revenue generated. | Best for sales-driven and E-commerce companies. |
| Newsletter updates | Regular updates and information sharing | Open rates, engagement ratio, and subscriber retention. | Important for maintaining customer engagement and brand awareness. |
| Event invitations | Promoting webinars, conferences, and other events. | RSVP rates, attendance rates, post-event feedback. | Helpful for gaining audience attention and driving the attendance rate for the event. |
| Personalized recommendations | Suggesting relevant products based on past purchase history, preferences, and behavior. | Open rates, engagement rate, and conversion rate. | Useful for sending relevant articles, videos, and special offers. |
| Educational campaigns | Introducing educational content to new and existing users. | Email sharing rate, revenue per subscriber, email open rate. | Aids in increasing brand authority through tutorials, helpful tips, and industry news. |
| Re-engagement campaigns | Targeting inactive subscribers with special offers or incentives. | Unsubscribe rates, Spam rate, revenue per email | Helps with highly-targeted messages to encourage disengaged subscribers to return to your brand. |
Note that your dedicated email results can vary based on the audience type, especially if you use a rented email list. Email list rentals and cold emailing are never the same, and we’ll go over both in the next sections.
For optimum campaign results, choose the right type and send it to the relevant audience. You can effortlessly accomplish this when you know how a dedicated email campaign works in the broader context of digital marketing.
How are Dedicated Emails Used in Email Marketing?
Often, marketers create content and send it to the publisher’s subscriber list as a way of borrowing authority. This is why dedicated emails are also called ’email list rental’ — a brand pays to use another company’s email list for a specific period.
For example, if Audi wants to promote a new feature release, it may purchase a dedicated email opportunity from a leading automobile blog platform, let’s call it ‘Car Amaze,’ which would allow it to send dedicated ads to the platform’s subscriber base.
Although Audi borrows an email list from Car Amaze, note that Car Amaze is still the email list owner. The subscribers need to know that Audi is promoting its content on behalf of the list owner (Car Amaze), and it needs to be clearly stated in the email.
Email list rentals can sometimes resemble cold emailing practices. However, cold emailing involves reaching out to people not previously engaged with your company, making it an illicit email marketing practice. The main difference between them is that the recipients of a rented list have opted-in to receive messages from the list owner, while the cold recipients did no such thing. Hence, transparency can save your business if you decide to use this strategy.
Cold emailing is strictly prohibited at Campaign Refinery, and user accounts get terminated without prior notice if a sender attempts to send out a cold email campaign.
Smaller and more web-focused companies commonly use dedicated emails, although certain larger companies leverage this model as part of their overall marketing strategy.
When Should You Use Dedicated Emails?
A dedicated email is effective when you want to achieve specific goals or engage with a target audience in a personalized manner. Always send a dedicated email only when you have a unique offer or event.
Sending too many custom emails can overwhelm subscribers and cause them to unsubscribe from your email campaigns. If you have more than one offer, send them as separate emails at different times. Stick to a long-term email marketing strategy to nurture leads and create everlasting customer relationships.
Additionally, if you have an extensive email list, you can rent it out to brands and make money without putting in extra effort. But only some companies can do this, and it has various downsides, such as ESPs flagging your emails as spam, outdated contacts, and driving poor results.
Stay mindful of your bounce rate and sender reputation — these two aspects are the first to take a hit if you rent out your email list.
How Much to Charge For Dedicated Emails?
Many publishers charge higher rates for dedicated emails because their audience and authority are valuable. Rates can start from $50 for 1,000 recipients. This means you could generate $5000 for an email newsletter list with 100,000 subscribers.
How Dedicated Email Senders Deal with Spam Complaints?
Although the revenue-sharing model sounds productive, a dedicated email opportunity could also mean more spam complaints from your subscribers.
Follow these 4 steps to avoid spam complaints in dedicated emails:
- Take a copy of the dedicated email content from the advertiser well ahead — this gives you more time to review and check for legitimacy.
- Clean your email list regularly to prevent emailing non-existent or uninterested subscribers. Use an an automated tool for bulk cleaning. For instance, Campaign Refinery implements an automatic email list cleaning tool that removes harmful and invalid email addresses from your list.
- Keep your account credentials safe and never share them with third parties, including the advertiser.
- Closely monitor spam complaints and unsubscribe requests pertaining to a dedicated email.
- Most importantly, ensure you don’t send an email to the same recipient more than once.
The primary concern about a dedicated email is the loss of credibility with the email service provider. At Campaign Refinery, cold emailing and similar bad email marketing practices are banned. We have a maximum threshold of 0.1% for spam complaints, and anything higher than this could affect the client’s account activities inside the platform.
Check-in with your ESP before you decide to rent a list or set up a dedicated email campaign.
How to Use Dedicated Emails as Part of Your Email Marketing Strategy
Using dedicated emails as part of your overall marketing strategy can enhance communication, boost revenue, and drive the desired action.
Here’s a step-by-step guide to creating effective dedicated emails:
- Define your goals: Outline your goal for the dedicated email campaign. It can be to increase sales, improve customer communication and engagement, or increase brand awareness. Knowing this will help you deliver more targeted content, eventually increasing your email revenue.
- Identify your target audience: Segment your email list based on demographics, audience preferences, and behavior. This will help you target an interested audience and create personalized content.
- Design engaging emails: While a dedicated email doesn’t require complicated design, a visually appealing and easy-to-read email gets higher opens and click-through rates.
- Use a strategic CTA: Clearly define the desired action you want your recipients to take and align your CTA with the purpose of the email.
- Consider automation: Implement automated workflows to send your dedicated email and schedule it when your audiences are the most receptive.
- A/B test it regularly: Test variations in subject lines, content, images, and CTA and optimize your dedicated email campaigns accordingly.
To ensure a higher ROI from your dedicated email campaign, gather insights, analyze performance, and refine your campaign to meet the evolving needs of your audience.
To do that, you must know the prime time to send emails to gather higher interest and engagement.
The Best Time to Send Dedicated Emails
Determining the best time to send a dedicated email depends on various factors, such as audience engagement, industry type, and the goals of your campaign. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to sending a dedicated email.
However, dedicated emails are closely related to promotional email marketing. This means you can align your email send times with the above campaign type for effective results. The best time to send promotional emails is on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays between 9 am and 3 pm.
The optimal send time for your dedicated email may require ongoing testing and adjustments based on the unique characteristics of your audience. Either way, use these tips to create highly engaging emails.
7 Extra Tips For Creating Standout Dedicated Emails
Follow these tips to create unique dedicated emails:
- Write compelling invitations: Offer a new perspective in your emails and highlight the key takeaways. Whether it’s walking away with increased knowledge or making new connections, make sure your recipients know about it.
- Capitalize on holidays and special occasions: Keep your emails relevant by focusing on special holidays and formal occasions.
- Incorporate storytelling: Communicate the value of your offer through storytelling techniques. Create a narrative that emotionally connects with your audience and moves them to take the desired action.
- Use urgency and scarcity: Use limited-time offers and deals to tap into consumer psychology. Clearly communicate deadlines to encourage prompt action.
- Use a consistent sender name: To establish trust with your audience, use a reliable sender name every time you send a dedicated email campaign. Mention the contact details of the person in charge and motivate people to reply to your emails. In contrast, you can also ask them to whitelist your email or add you to the safe sender list.
- Create a clear value proposition: Mention the value proposition in your emails. Before you get into the details, tell recipients the benefits of attending an event or purchasing a product.
- A clear CTA: Your CTA must demonstrate the effectiveness of your offer; use action-oriented language and persuade the reader to click on it.
Sometimes, even after following the best of tips, you may need help with email deliverability, segmentation strategies, and other aspects of email marketing. We are here to share our knowledge and help you grow in the process.
Send Engaging Dedicated Emails With Campaign Refinery
Dedicated emails are an excellent way to hit your customer acquisition and lead generation goals.
Although stand-alone emails are powerful tools, they come with challenges. Ensuring your emails reach your intended audience without being flagged as spam can be challenging, especially when using rented lists.
The best way to avoid this issue is to follow email best practices, and that includes the use of reputable email service providers, getting recipient consent, and avoiding spammy content.
With Campaign Refinery, you can send any type of dedicated email and reach a bigger audience to maximize your revenue.
Our distinguished tools and features help you:
- Maintain a clean and healthy email list with our automatic, integrated email list cleaning tool,
- Pique curiosity and increase open rates with an engagement rewards feature,
- Create a sense of urgency through the evergreen flash sales,
- Build compelling dedicated emails with a campaign library.
No matter these tools, we know you can’t reach your full potential if your emails don’t reach your subscribers. That’s why we have a gift for you — download the Inbox Formula to uncover the strategies from our decades of experience and experimentation of hitting customer inboxes.
If you want us to take care of your system and boost your revenue while you focus on other aspects of your marketing, apply to become a reputable sender with Campaign Refinery!
