With so many modern marketing strategies like social media marketing, digital marketing, and SMS marketing available today, email marketing may seem quite outdated to many people. But the fact is that email marketing hasn’t lost its charm in all these years; it stood the test of time and is still considered to be one of the most effective marketing tools. So, what is email marketing exactly? It is promoting your products or services by sending emails to people who subscribe to a mailing list or cold emailing. The common forms of emails are:
➽ Welcome Emails
➽ Promotional Emails
➽ Email Newsletters
➽ Lead Generation Emails
➽ Transactional Emails (For Confirming Transactions)
➽ Feedback Or Survey Emails
➽ Milestone Emails (Emails For Wishing Birthday Or Anniversary)
Email Marketing is a popular choice among businessmen. Whether it’s small, mid-range, or big business, email marketing is an integral part of these businesses. You will be surprised to know that email marketing is 40 times more effective in customer acquisition than Facebook and Twitter. Also, statistics show that customers who buy after getting influenced by email marketing spend 138% more than those without. According to Kinsta, 87% of B2B marketers and 79% of B2C marketers use email marketing as a channel for distribution. Here are the main reasons why email marketing is important for your business.
1. Build Relationships With Customers
Email marketing can help develop relationships with customers at all levels of the purchasing process like lead, present customers, and past customers. You can talk directly with them by communicating through email. Unlike SMS or other marketing strategies, the customers won’t feel disturbed as opening the email is their choice. They can read the email at their own convenient time and decide what to do. When you communicate regularly with the customers you can retain your old customers. Retaining loyal customers is cheaper and more profitable than looking for new ones. The emails you send them should be written in such a way that the customers feel that the products or services you are offering will benefit them. For example, you can sometimes send coupons or gift cards.
2. Stay In Touch With The Customers
By sending emails you can keep your customers informed about your new products and campaigns. This gives the feeling that you are thoughtful about your customers. Customers usually sign up to your mailing list to get promotional news. So, they will be happy to read what you have to offer to them. You can boost engagement with the customers by email. You can announce sales, share company news, or send a monthly newsletter.
3. Reach Customers Fast By Email Marketing
As people can now access email using their mobile phones and they are most of the time logged in, they will get a notification about your email on their mobile and can view it immediately. If the email is well-designed then it will produce higher conversion rates.
4. Targeted Messaging Possible
The customers you send emails to are at various stages of their buying cycle. So, you should write messages accordingly. Segment the customers into different groups depending on their buying stage and then send emails tailored for these groups. People like getting personalized messages because it proves that you care. It is possible to send emails using the person’s first name and you will get a higher clickthrough rate if you do that. Your email should be different for a loyal customer from that you sent to a new customer. You can send welcome messages to first-time customers. Sending birthday and anniversary messages along with discounts or coupons can boost customer loyalty. You can offer customers, who purchased similar products, limited-time offers; this would boost sales. If customers abandon the cart then you can send an email asking them to complete their purchase.
5. Improves Brand Awareness Doing Email Marketing
Smaller businesses often look for a way to boost their brand awareness and email marketing is an effective choice for them. On the internet the competition for ad space is high, so email marketing is a convenient tool for them. Email marketing allows direct communication with the customers and this improves brand awareness. You should send product updates, newsletters, and promotions so that they remember your brand.
6. Easy To Measure
You can track the progress of your email marketing campaign easily. You can check the bounce rates, delivery rates, click-through rates, open rates, and unsubscribe rates and then redesign your campaign if necessary. You can conduct A/B tests for emails. This will help to optimize your email campaign by knowing what works with your audience and what doesn’t. You can do an A/B test for various elements of the emails like images, subject lines, and CTAs.
7. Email Marketing Is Affordable
With less amount of money per email, you can reach many customers. Cost per conversion is low, for example, if you use email marketing services like SendGrid then you need to spend only $0.0006 per message; Mail Chimp provides up to 12,000 emails for free every month; Elastic Email provides about 100 free emails per day and 1,000 email contacts. Vertical Response offers free email marketing of up to 4,000 emails a month and 1,000 email contacts. Some of these companies provide subscription services as well. You can use automated service or hire a freelancer or email marketing company to run your email campaign. The ROI of an email marketing campaign is very high $1 email generates $42 revenue.
8. It’s Timely
You can promote your products or services at the right time using email marketing. When people subscribe to the mailing list they provide some personal information like date of birth, date of anniversary, interests, and others. You can offer them special products or services on their special days. If the customer mentioned that he or she likes cooking then you can let them know when your cooking item is on discount. Email campaigns can be created on a shorter notice too which allows timely delivery of emails.
9. Drive Traffic To The Website
Through email marketing, you can get traffic to your website. In all emails, you are likely to include your website address and people will click on it to have a look at your offerings. When you find that a prospective customer has visited your website then you can send him or her an email telling about your products and promotions. Include CTA within the email to increase traffic to your website.
10. Conduct Surveys
The survey is an excellent tool for understanding customers’ needs and designing products accordingly. The survey also helps in decision-making. You can send surveys through emails and improve your products in the future. You can ask them to rate their experience with your brand. You can survey to collect customer information as well for promotional purposes.
11. Email Marketing Is Easy To Maintain
Various email marketing services like MailChimp or ActiveCampaign have made email marketing easily maintainable. These services offer a lot of automation and customization. Using these services will save you time in designing an email marketing campaign.
12. Provides Great Customer Service
Email marketing is a way to provide a wonderful customer experience. You can send an email to customers who have brought your products or services to know whether they are happy with them. This small gesture shows that you care for the customer. If they are finding it difficult to install a product you can send them a help email. Providing the right information they seek is also good customer service. Great customer service helps to retain customers.
13. Effective In Driving Conversion And Improving Sales
Email marketing can drive conversion. It was found that the click-through rate for an email campaign is about 3% whereas that from a tweet is only 0.5%. This statistic shows that email marketing has six times more potential to drive conversion. Email marketing can improve sales as it can feature products and services to customers and provide them with special offers directly. You can also send further content about your products and services to spark their interest in your brand.
Concluding Thoughts
According to the Content Marketing Institute, email marketing is used by 87% of businesses. Email marketing gives the stability, affordability, and control that no other marketing strategy can give. So, businesses of all sizes still rely on email marketing for business growth. In email marketing, you can send emails to people who subscribe to the mailing list or send unsolicited or cold emails. When people subscribe, it is convenient to send them email. But sending unsolicited emails is tricky and the success rate is low if not done properly. Many email programs mark cold emails automatically as scams and this is when email marketing loses its appeal.
When sending emails you should remember not to send too many emails. According to Hubspot, 86% of people like receiving promotional emails from companies with whom they do business or buy products from. Using email marketing you can develop loyal customers. Developing a contact list is the basis of an email marketing campaign. There are many ways you can create the list. You can use a signup form for getting newsletters or a registration form to register on your website. This way people will give their personal information including email addresses. You can also offer freebies to sign up. With so many benefits email marketing is still one of the top marketing strategies today. If you are running a business, you should also incorporate email marketing in your marketing plan.
