EDM Marketing: What It Is and How to Get It Right

• What is EDM marketing?
• How does EDM marketing work?
• Modern EDM marketing vs. traditional email marketing
• 6 essential benefits of EDM marketing
• How to create an EDM campaign
• The different types of EDM marketing strategies
• Combining EDM with broader marketing strategies
• Successful EDM starts with tools that make the process easy
• How Salesforce makes your EDM marketing strategy simple
• FAQs

Electronic direct mail (EDM) marketing is a digital marketing strategy that involves sending targeted emails to current and potential customers who’ve opted in to receive your communications.

Rather than sending one-off messages, modern EDM marketing uses data to personalise emails and nurture engagement across several touchpoints. For instance, a business might send a welcome package to someone who has recently made a purchase, a personalised offer to a loyal customer and a re-engagement email to a subscriber who hasn’t interacted recently.

Ultimately, the goal of EDM is to target interested customers with tailored messages based on their preferences, habits and stage in the buyer journey. This makes it one of the most effective ways to boost conversions, strengthen loyalty and deliver measurable ROI for your business.

EDM marketing uses a data-led approach to attract, engage and retain customers across multiple channels. Let’s look at how it works for a business:

1. Gathering leads: The first step is building a high-quality email list. This involves gathering contacts, often via lead magnets and marketing campaigns, to build a catalogue of customers who’ve opted in to receive communications.
2. Segmenting audiences: Next, the list needs to be broken down into smaller groups. This might be based on demographics, interests, location or any other audience segmentation method. This lays the groundwork for targeted outreach.
3. Personalised messaging: The business creates targeted content for each group, such as providing localised offers to different regions or exclusive offers to disengaged customers.
4. Automations: At this stage, the company will set up autoresponders to automatically send out emails based on triggers. For instance, an automated system might send out an abandoned cart reminder to users who leave their basket unattended for a fixed time.
5. Analytics: After sending out initial emails, the company will collect data that reveals how different customers interact with the content. These insights enable businesses to make continuous improvements to their messaging over time.
6. Multi-channel reinforcement: Along the way, the business will also reinforce its email messaging through other channels, such as social media, SMS and retargeted ads, ensuring the brand stays top of mind for customers.

Ultimately, this process creates a continuous feedback loop. Organisations send out a targeted email, gather performance metrics and continually refine their approach based on data. All of this helps to drive trust, build strong relationships and turn subscribers into loyal customers.

EDM and email marketing may seem similar since both rely on opt-in email lists and prioritise nurturing leads. But there are key differences. Let’s sum them up with a table:

Think of EDM as a more advanced, holistic version of email marketing. It takes the concept of opt-in email and amplifies it with data, multi-channel integration and personalisation to connect with audiences on a much deeper level than traditional approaches can achieve.

Before we explain how you can make your own strategy, let’s recap the benefits of EDM. Here’s why moving beyond traditional email strategies is worth the effort:

• Personalisation and targeted outreach: Using data to segment your audience lets you craft tailored messages for each group. This helps you connect with your audience on a more personal level.
• Data-driven marketing insights: EDM campaigns provide actionable data on things like open rates, clicks, conversions and more, giving you insights that help you continually optimise your campaign to better connect with customers.
• Stronger relationships and customer retention: EDM lets you deliver dynamic content that aligns with each subscriber’s needs and interests, making it one of the best ways to build trust and keep customers engaged over the long term.
• Long-term growth and scalability: EDM gets better over time. The more data you gather, the better you’re able to fine-tune segmentation and optimise your content. This makes it easier to scale campaigns and grow your business.
• Cost-effectiveness and ROI: As EDM provides a continuous feedback loop, it doesn’t require additional investment to gather external data once you’re underway. This makes it surprisingly affordable compared to traditional marketing channels.
• Wide reach and integration: Unlike email marketing, EDM isn’t exclusively tied to email. It can be integrated with social media, SMS and even traditional marketing channels to reach customers across a much broader range of touchpoints.

All of this leads to a consistent way to engage audiences and improve your CLV over time, leading to measurable ROI and scalability with minimal ongoing costs.

Let’s dive into the main portion of this guide. Here’s how to build an EDM campaign in seven steps.

An email service provider (ESP) is the backbone of a successful EDM campaign. It’ll allow you to build your list and send out automatic emails based on the parameters you set. The best ESPs also offer features for audience segmentation — ideal for more targeted personalisation.

Search for an ESP that best aligns with your business objectives. It’s also handy if they include analytics so you can track the success of your EDM marketing campaign.

Salesforce’s Agentforce Marketing has a suite of email marketing tools with all of the EDM features you need to deliver personal, engaging content to your audience. With easy scalability, unlimited content creation and AI-powered support, our platform can help you connect with your customers and get the most out of your marketing spend.

Pro tip: Choose an ESP that already integrates with your CRM and analytics tools to make personalisation and performance tracking easier.

With your provider selected, it’s time to create your subscriber list. This is the list of leads that you’ll segment and eventually create tailored strategies for. If you already have an email list, review it to ensure it’s free of illegitimate names. Your ESP should be able to help with this.

If you’re building from scratch, the easiest way to get started is with a lead magnet, a request for users to enter their email to receive something in return. For instance, to get people to opt-in to your subscriber list, you could offer:

• A free eBook, guide, whitepaper or templates
• A quiz that delivers results through email
• Exclusive videos, case studies, infographics or blog resources
• Access to a course or webinar
• Free delivery, discounts or coupons
• Free consultations or product samples

Don’t underestimate the power of targeting here. Know your buyer personas inside out and take the time to understand what each customer is looking for. This will let you employ highly personalised CTAs, forms and benefits that encourage your target audience to opt in.

Pro tip: Remember to offer your audience multiple ways to opt in. The more unique ways you can provide for people to sign up, the easier lead capturing becomes.

Next, it’s time to segment your list. This is the key process for effective EDM marketing campaigns. It will allow you to divide your audience into groups and consequently tailor your marketing efforts for each segment’s needs.

Four types of segmentation work best:

• Demographic: Segmenting your audience by quantitative factors, such as gender, age, family status, occupation and income levels.
• Psychographic: Grouping individuals based on shared characteristics, beliefs, motivations, personality traits and interests.
• Geographical: Separating individuals by their geographic location, either by country, region, city or even neighbourhood.
• Behavioural: Segmenting consumers based on their behaviour towards your brand. This complex method includes metrics like customer loyalty, purchasing behaviour, engagement level and browsing habits.

Combining these segmentation methods lets you create highly targeted subsets, making it easier to build an email campaign that resonates with each group.

Pro tip: Be as precise as possible with your audience segmentation; it will make your personalised marketing materials more effective.

While EDM can include different types of media, it’s always best to start with emails.

Not sure where to begin? Kick things off with a simple introduction to your brand, a product announcement or a special offer. It’s okay to send a batch email at this stage, though if you prefer, you can also design tailored emails for each audience segment.

As for the process of crafting a great email, we won’t get into too many details in this guide, but there are a few general tips to follow:

• Keep it concise and conversational.
• Make sure your emails are consistent with your brand.
• Let your audience know they can unsubscribe at any time.
• Make the subject line a focal point.
• Add engaging visuals to make your content more appealing.

This is where Salesforce’s Email Marketing tools can help. They give you the ability to create personalised email content from scratch with no coding experience needed. You can add images, A/B test different variations and even generate content with the help of Agentforce, all from a single dashboard. It gives you the ability to produce professional emails for different segments in less time.

Pro tip: This is a preliminary stage, so be willing to use trial and error here. Ultimately, the goal is to test different options for various demographics. AI can help with this process. You can then refine your approach as you gather more data over time.

Autoresponders are emails that are sent out automatically to subscribers based on specific triggers your audience initiates. You can use them in conjunction with AI to automate customer service.

These triggers could be specific actions, such as someone making a purchase or unsubscribing from the email list. They could also be set up in specific timeframes, such as 10 minutes after someone abandons their basket or three months after they join the email list. As always, your chosen email marketing platform can help you establish these useful automatic responses.

Agentforce Marketing lets you set up personalised journeys for every customer. You can establish triggers for behaviours, actions, interactions or outcomes and send the perfect email for every event. This ensures consistent, timely communication with less manual effort.

The beauty of EDM is that it gets more effective as you feed more data into the strategy. Analysing the insights you receive from your initial email blasts will let you refine your strategy going forward. Here are some common metrics to track:

• Open rates: The number of recipients who open your email
• Click-through rates: The percentage of people who click a link within the email
• Unsubscribe rates: The percentage of people who have unsubscribed
• Sharing rates: The percentage of recipients who forward the email
• Conversion rates: The percentage of people who complete a desired action

One of the best things about Agentforce Marketing is that it will automatically track all of these metrics for every communication you send, giving you a complete overview of how different email chains perform in a single dashboard. You can then leverage AI to determine things like optimal send times, message frequency and tone of voice, all powered by real insights.

Pro tip: Once you have data at your disposal, experiment with more targeted approaches for different segments via A/B testing. The more you test and assess, the more refined your email targeting will become.

Introduce new arrivals to your brand with helpful information, an engaging story or a coupon. For instance, you could offer someone 15% off for subscribing.

Got a new product on the way? Re-releasing an old favourite? Let your email list know, especially if they’ve already bought from you. This can encourage new and repeat sales.

Testimonials and case studies add credibility to your brand. Send these to middle-of-the-funnel consumers who are deciding whether your product is for them.

Have an autoresponder send a reminder when a customer leaves their basket without finishing the purchase. These reminders can include discounts or product suggestions to encourage conversions.

Similarly, when a customer makes that purchase, send them a confirmation email with shipping updates, receipts or a thank-you note. These emails also offer opportunities for upselling.

Target customers who haven’t engaged with your brand for a while with a re-engagement email chain. Offer personalised messages, curated content or a discount to bring them back on board.

Set up a birthday email for customers who’ve signed up to your website, or you can thank them for their continued support when they earn enough loyalty points.

Regularly update subscribers with company news or recent blog highlights. Newsletters like these can help maintain engagement and establish your brand as a thought leader.

Set up flash sales for limited-time offers to convince hesitant customers to take action, or you can run holiday promotions to capitalise on seasonal trends.

Send out event or webinar invitations to get people invested in your brand story. This can convince hesitant customers to engage with your brand directly.

Automatically send out emails based on user actions, such as visiting a page or clicking a link. For instance, you could send a discount to a customer who viewed a particular product page.

Send subscribers links to recent blogs, guides, videos and infographics. This is an excellent way to encourage deeper exploration of relevant content.

Encourage your audience to check out a specific post on social media that backs up your email marketing content.

Run regular surveys that request customer opinions or reviews. Aside from showing customers that you value their input, this also gives you valuable insights you can use for future campaigns.

Provide tips and guides related to recent product purchases. These help your business build authority and reduce the likelihood of customer support requests.

On top of email chains, there’s also a wealth of other methods available. Here are a few to consider:

• You could set up a content marketing campaign to release to consumers who have expressed interest in your product. This campaign could include blogs, social media posts, and infographics that support your email content.
• You might use SMS messaging to your advantage. For instance, you could follow up a new product launch or an event invitation with a quick text to remind consumers to take action.
• Print ads can be hugely successful, too, depending on your audience. For instance, if your target audience includes local customers, placing ads in magazines or community newspapers can reinforce your digital messaging.

The most important part of this cross-channel marketing strategy is timing. All of these media types have their place; when you choose to send them is what matters. Set up a campaign for each of your segments and be willing to adapt it as new data comes in.

EDM marketing is the ideal long-term strategy for engaging and connecting with customers. With enough time and data, you can tailor a personalised campaign that helps you reach your marketing objectives and drive significant results for your brand.

The best place to start any successful EDM campaign is with a marketing platform that can handle all of your segmentation, content creation, marketing automation and analytics under one roof. Let’s take a look at how Salesforce can help.

Agentforce Marketing will help you construct a high-quality email list, segment your audience into targeted groups, build personalised emails from scratch, tweak messaging for every subscriber and track the performance of every communication — all in one place. This makes it easy to scale, refine and optimise your EDM campaign with every send.

And, with the support of AI, you’ll have the tools to produce better content faster, automate key tasks and receive recommendations on how often, when and which emails to send to make the biggest impact. This ensures your emails always reach the right people at the right time.

Take a look at Reece for an example of how this works. The hardware brand used Agentforce Marketing to replace a single welcome email with a series of communications educating customers about products and services they can access within their local branch and online.