You had this wonderful dream of building your own empire; to build a business that just by mentioning its name will immediately make someone think of its reputable and famous products and services selling just about every customer, anywhere in the world.
So, you started to build your business from scratch and put every effort possible in order to make it grow like the ones in your dream. You spent time, energy, and every possible marketing ideas to make it work and pull customers in.
However, if you really wish to have more customers and get your name out of the world in order to drive more traffic to your business store and ultimately generate sales, then you will need to invest on effective digital marketing.
There are various digital marketing channels that can help grow your business online. With the massive rise of social media marketing, affiliates, and content marketing, you might have probably forgotten about the old way of digital marketing - Email.
Here's how email is still one of the most crucial marketing channels that you should not be ignored for your business to succeed:
Everyone (Almost) Uses Email
A survey by Hubspot revealed that there are 91% of consumers who use email. That statistic alone should be enough in order to convince you to go and explore the tool. Lest your industry accounts for the remaining 9% of consumers who do not use email (which I doubt is not), email presents an amazing opportunity in order to reach clients. Not only can you provide your customers with new products, specials, discounts and more, but they can also forward and share those emails with anyone they would like. Remember that a good email marketing encourages clients to share your offers as much as possible, thus creating brand awareness.
An Effective Way to Inform Customers
Email marketing is not something that most marketers execute just because they can and it is quite easy. Rather, the strategy is quite effective in helping consumers and business owners to stay connected.
As a matter of fact, consumers usually seek out email marketing campaigns from their local store and favorite brands. A report by Nielsen stated that 28% of online shoppers from the US subscribe to product or store emails to stay informed. Another study from Loyalty 360 said that 59% of US moms sign up for email updates from their favorite brands if there are rewards that have been offered.
There is a real value in staying connected with your customers and email marketing makes that quite easy to do.
Reach Mobile Customers
Another reason why email marketing provides value to every business owner is that it is an easy way to reach customers on mobile without having to invest in new software or technology. Pew Research Center, according to their April report, stated that 52% of US cell phone owners check and access their email from their mobile phones.
Moreover, email marketing works perfectly with other mobile devices. Forrester Research released a study in July, suggesting that 17% of email messages from retailers were opened by customers on their tablets and 42% were opened on their smartphones. This only means that almost 3 out of 5 messages from email marketing double as a mobile marketing message.
Furthermore, email is much better to use than SMS for mobile marketing because:
- It works on other devices other than phones
- Emails have far more space for contents that text messages which allows for better marketing pieces
- Emails are free of charge for the consumers, while texting may require a charge
Email Is Action-Oriented
Whether you know it or not, everyone is trained to do something with a received email- forward, reply, sign-up, click-through, or even go to straight buying.
Think about this:
An email is transactional by nature and you can use that to direct traffic to your site and amazingly drive sales. As you are still developing your startup or small business marketing strategy as a whole, using email can give you results right away.
More Effective than Social Media Marketing
Don't get me wrong in here:
Social media marketing is a very important step in any marketing strategy. IT is a great digital channel for interacting with your customers and strengthening your business' relationships with them. Thus, it is a crucial step towards reaching your very goal- the conversion.
However, when it comes to converting prospects into supporters, customers or members, email marketing is the best way to go. Last 2013, Custora conducted a study and found out that customer acquisition through email marketing has increased four times in the last four years preceding 2013. Email marketing was then already accounted for around 7% of all customer acquisitions which occurred online.
Easy to Personalize and Incorporate with Other Marketing Tactics
Email marketing is quite versatile- making it another reason for marketers to keep this channel in their marketing toolbox. Email marketing messages can range from complex to very simple ones depending on the skill of the crafter and the depth of email database.
Emails can be customized or personalized to include the user's name and more. Retention Science conducted a small study of 139 marketers and found out that websites can use a few kinds of personalization tactics which can be easily applied to email:
Almost half (44.9%) of online retailers in the US use personalized product recommendations, around a third (31.5%) added the name of the customer and/or a unique welcoming message, and a quarter (27.6%) of the respondent reported adding reminders for shopping carts in order to cover all of their personalization bases.
Moreover, email marketing can be utilized with just about any other marketing strategies, making email a vital part of any integrated marketing campaigns.
Email Marketing is Cheap
The best reason why email is a vital channel for any business is that is quite cheap. Email marketing allows a business to reach a huge number of consumers in just a few pennies per messages. This makes it very affordable for budget-conscious owners than traditional marketing channels such as direct mail, radio or TV.
Forrester Research and Shop.org made a joint study and found out that 85% of retailers from the US consider email marketing as one of the most effective tactics for customer acquisition.
Email Marketing is Very Easy to Measure
After an exhaustive campaign, the last thing you want is guessing if people actually take an effort in considering or looking into your marketing efforts. Well, email marketing offers you that very advantage. Most email marketing tools provide you with the ability to track what happens to the emails you have sent after an email campaign.
You can track the open rates, click through rates, unsubscribe rates, bounce rates, and track delivery rates. This will give you a better understanding or idea of how your email campaigns are working and know which once need to get rid of and the ones that only require a few tweaks.
These metrics are very important and should never be ignored since they play a crucial role in the success of your marketing campaign as a whole. It gives you a better understanding of your consumers and provides them with what they want. For instance, if your clients do not only want but also expect daily emails from you, then you need to provide it to them. But, sending too many emails to clients who do not want more than one email in a week, then you will likely see an increase in your unsubscribe rate.
Allows for Targeted Messaging
Let us talk about the crucial role of email marketing in terms of lead nurturing- also known as email lead marketing. The idea behind this strategy is that your potential clients are at different stages of the buying cycle. There are some who might be at the consideration stage; others may be at the comparing and research stage, and then there are some who are already in the ready-to-purchase stage.
By creating different buyer personas, you can determine what kind of email content you will create for every step. Dividing these clients into an appropriate email marketing lists can help business to target each group more effectively. Clients need information in order for them to move on to the next buying cycle stage- and pushing the right content can do just that. It is all about moving these potential clients down your sales funnel although not as quickly as possible but as efficiently as needed.
The Bottom Line
Email might be an old strategy; however, it remains a very important digital channel for any business who wishes to connect with their customer base. It is relatively easy to do and with the right email response management, your business will have overflowing customers in no time.