When you are creating your content marketing strategy, it’s important to think about every possible way to reach your audience. How you promote your brand and reach your targeted audience will make all the difference when determining your ROI and figuring out what content performs best.
Many businesses rely on email marketing to share coupons which increases in-store and online sales – emails generate 50% more sales than other marketing efforts. Customers are more willing to sign up for an email list from a brand they trust because it’s private and they are interested in ways to save money. In fact, 91% of adults say they like to receive promotional emails from companies they love.
Other than your customers loving email, there are a few other reasons you should love email, too.
The Benefits of Email Marketing
1. It’s mobile
Email marketing is one of the easiest ways to reach your customers on-the-go. A report from the Pew Research Center says that 52% of U.S. cellphone users access their email from their phone. That drastically increases your chances to reach a larger audience at the click of a button.
The average person receives 121 emails a day, and 91% of consumers check their email on their phones, at least once a day. That automatically makes your chances of
Emails can be opened on all mobile devices, not just smartphones, which is why email promotional material is much more effective than sending a text or SMS message. Sometimes, texts can incur charges on a customer’s phone, and the last thing you want to do when promoting your business is rack up their phone bill.
Sticking to email lets you create quality marketing pieces and reach a larger audience. You have the ability to deliver your brand right to the hand of your subscriber. It doesn’t get much better than that.
2. It’s inexpensive
One of the best things about email marketing is that you can reach thousands of people for only pennies per message. If you are just starting to develop a marketing strategy and you’re working with a limited budget, email marketing is your safest bet.
Emails let you have the same creativity as creating traditional marketing products (fliers, mailers, etc) but for a fraction of the cost. It allows you to get better responses at a much lower cost. That should be enough to sell you on email marketing.
Because it’s a low cost marketing platform, you will see much higher returns on investments. Email marketing sees an ROI of around 4,300%. For every dollar you spend on emails, you will see approximately $44 in profit. Emails direct traffic to your website and that will ultimately drive sales. In 2013, approximately 44% of email recipients made at least one purchase based on a promotional email.
It’s truly a win-win for you and your customers. They get marketing material they actually want, and you see higher profits.
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3. It’s effective
Email marketing is more effective than social media. Actually, it’s almost 40 times more effective than Facebook and Twitter combined in helping businesses get new customers.
The difference between email and social media is that even if 22% of emails get lost in cyberspace, there’s a higher potential of your audience seeing your message than posting on social media, where up to 75% of messages are missed. This is because emails have the longer life-span, making their effectiveness exponentially higher than social media posts, which have the average shelf life of 2.5 hours.
Emails require a definitive action, so your subscribers are more likely to open the emails. Your messages get delivered to the right people – it’s their choice whether they open the email or not. Humans are trained like Pavlov’s dogs. We must do something with the emails sitting in our inbox: reply, forward, click-through, sign-up, or even delete.
Because an email is easy to send to thousands of subscribers, it can also be seen as the gateway drug of your marketing campaigns. Emails will lead your audience to your other, more substantial marketing efforts and into your sales funnel.
4. It’s personal
Instead of seeing a general social post about thanking loyal customers, emails give your business the ability to personalize each email with the name of the recipient. Even if the same email goes to thousands of other subscribers, each person will feel like it was written just for them.
Emails with personalized subject lines are 22.2% more likely to be opened as opposed to emails with a general greeting. This makes your message seem more thoughtful and helps to build brand loyalty and trust from your customers.
If your customers feel like they can respond to your emails, they will feel even more trusting of your brand – they like the personal attention they feel like they receive. Make sure to set up your email so it doesn’t come from a “NOREPLY” email address. Have someone monitor that email account once or twice a week, just to make sure that each customer continues to have personalized treatment.
Keep in mind that while email is easily personalized, it’s also the only form of communication between you and your customer that is private. The opt-in to receive emails is the purest form of Permission Marketing – 77% of consumers prefer to receive permission-based email communication.
5. It’s measurable
It might be hard to convince your boss or investors that email marketing is the smartest marketing platform for your business, especially if you haven’t tried it before. However, email marketing is measurable and if offers immediate results.
Email marketing platforms have reached the level of sophistication to the point where everything can be tracked and measured. You can see who opened it, which links were clicked, how many people unsubscribed, etc. If you know your conversion rates, you’ll even be able to determine whether your email marketing budget is bringing in a profitable return, or if it needs to be adjusted.
Like other forms of marketing, email campaigns can be split-tested. Split testing can reveal a lot of data about your subscribers and your customers. This data can then be used to learn about what tactics work better than others. Constantly tweaking your marketing methods ensure that your customers get the best content for them.
Monitoring traffic on social media can get complicated, but email has a specific set of metrics that have been the standard for years (and isn’t going anywhere). You can even find out the monetary value of each email subscriber – good luck figuring out the value of every Facebook follower!
Along with those reasons (as if they aren’t enough!), there are many other practical reasons to incorporate email marketing into your marketing strategy. If you feel like there are too many things on your plate, and managing a marketing strategy is too time-consuming, there are agencies that will help you create a marketing strategy that will be best for your business.
Partnering with professionals, like the team at PDR Web Solutions, who have experience building email lists, content, and email campaigns will make your life simpler, and you’ll see the results start to increase your conversion rates and sales. Give us a call to get started on your next marketing campaign!