Looking at the statistics and percentages, it would be difficult not to see the benefits that email marketing has for businesses: Over 90% of consumers check their email every day and 86% of consumers actually want to receive promotional emails from brands that they have subscribed to at least once a month. In comparison to Social Media, having the undivided attention of a subscriber that wants to hear from you and know about your latest specials is a pretty powerful thing!
The list of benefits is a rather extensive and long one, so we have summarised it for you to ten that we felt were probably the more prominent benefits:
Top Ten benefits of email marketing:
- Improving leads and traffic to your website – Email campaigns can be created to revolve around products that you know your subscribers would be interested in reading about. By using strong Call-To-Actions (CTAs), you can direct them to your website in order to enquire more or make a purchase.
- Improving Sales – Two thirds of customers have made a purchase as a direct result of an email marketing message. The likelihood of your subscribers purchasing from you tends to be higher due to them being more receptive and having opted into receiving messages from you in the first place.
- Creating personalised content in a congested marketing environment – This can be something as simple as adding the subscriber’s first name to the email, making it feel like you are talking to them one-on-one.
- You ‘own’ the channel and your database – Unlike social media where you don’t own your advertising target audience, with an email database you do own that contact list, and the content that you send to them.
- Creating a loyal following – Nowadays, brand loyalty is everything. By ensuring that you are continuously providing value to your audience through your email marketing, you can ensure that it will help keep your subscribers coming back to you.
- Having a forum for self-promotion – Promoting and ‘selling’ your brand to an audience who have opted into hearing from you is a great way to build credibility amongst them. Sending emails about new products/ services, general company news and updates etc. wont be seen as disruptive, and will allow you to also build better brand awareness.
- Producing cost-effective campaigns – Minimal resources are required to create a campaign. All you need is some good visuals and copy and you’re good to go! Creating and sending a campaign to thousands of people (depending on the size of your database) can all be done within a day!
- Reaching the right people, with the right message at the right time – Adding as much info about your subscribers enables you to segment your database according to their different needs and interests. This allows you to send targeted messages with different content that different groups of your audience would be interested to read about, adjusting the message to suit the different groups accordingly.
- Collecting constant feedback – This is done by sending customer satisfaction surveys and reviews. This ensures that you always know how your customers feel about the brand and its products/ services. If you notice a dip in sales, a quick survey would allow you to find out why that could be.
- Reach people on any device – When was the last time you checked your emails on your phone? Chances are that it was within the last couple days, if not hours ago. Having marketing content that can reach your subscribers on any type of screen or mobile device is hugely beneficial as more and more people start using mobile technology. Ensure you use an email service provider that can guarantee your emails will look great no matter what the screen size!
As you can see, the benefits to email marketing far outweigh any possible concerns you may have and it would make sense to add it to your multi-channel marketing strategy. What the most important thing to remember is to always ensure that you are communicating the RIGHT message to the right group of segmented customers. Not sure what to write about? Click here for some ideas. By always providing value to your subscribers and answering their needs, you will be achieving your own goals in the long run and reaping in all the benefits.
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