What are the benefits of email marketing?
So you’ve heard that email marketing isn’t as powerful as it once was… Maybe you’ve heard that millennials hate email and prefer social media. Maybe you’ve even heard that everyone hates being spammed. That makes it sound like an unwise strategy for your business, right? Maybe not so fast. While some businesses may have discovered some negativity around email marketing, it remains an effective way to reach potential customers and drive sales at a relatively low cost. In fact, the primary reason why email marketing has become less effective for some businesses is that they have not continued to develop new email marketing strategies. If your business is struggling to see returns from your email marketing efforts—or if you aren’t doing any—then here are three reasons why now is the time to get back on track:
The Basics of Email Marketing.
Email marketing is the process of using email to send promotional materials to customers or potential customers in order to build a customer base and increase sales. Email marketing campaigns can be sent to an existing customer base or sent to a list of potential customers who have given their permission to receive communications from your business. Email marketing can be an extremely effective tool for building your business, but it does have some specific requirements and challenges that must be kept in mind. The key is to find the right balance between frequency and relevance to avoid annoying your readers, while still driving them towards a purchase. Email marketing campaigns can take many forms. Some businesses send out a weekly or daily newsletter that shares helpful information. Some businesses use an autoresponder series to follow up with anyone who does not purchase from them. There are many tools available for managing these campaigns, Klayvio is great for eCommerce sites, and ActiveCampaign is the industry leader when it comes to marketing automation. ConstantContact has been around for years and they continue to improve their offerings while providing top-notch customer support.
You Own The Customer Relationship.
Many people believe that social media is more engaging than email, so they prefer to use platforms like Twitter and Facebook to communicate with customers. The thing is, the customer relationship isn’t just about engaging with your followers. It’s also about getting those followers to engage with your business. While social media is perfect for building a brand, it isn’t so great at driving sales. Email, on the other hand, is perfect for driving sales. If you own the email address, you can send marketing communications at any time and end the conversation whenever you want to. A social media conversation is far less controllable. You can’t send the customer a coupon to close the sale; you can’t prompt them to buy right away. On social media, the only way to drive sales is to ask for the sale directly, which can make some customers uncomfortable. Email marketing is a far more controllable and flexible tool for getting customers to buy.
It’s Still Effective for Driving Sales.
Although email marketing has always been effective in driving sales, it is even more so now that its popularity has waned. The bad news is that your email list likely isn’t as big as it once was. The good news is that it’s probably far more targeted than it once was. Chances are that many people who signed up for your email list years ago have either opted out or forgotten about you. This means that the people who were once on your list are now even more engaged than they were before. They are more likely to open your emails because they feel as though they are being “ignored” by you as a business. They are more likely to purchase from you because they are hungry for the attention and advice that you used to provide.
Summing it up.
No matter how society may change, email marketing is a great tool for businesses to use to build and retain customers. If you are currently using email marketing, then you are doing the right thing. If you aren’t using email marketing, you really should consider getting started. Email marketing is still a very effective way to build and retain customers at a relatively low cost.
