Contrary to popular opinion, email marketing is far from dead. Here are five reasons why a well planned email campaign will benefit your business, no matter the budget.
1. Reach out to potential customers
There is so much competition out there that you can't rely on people coming to you. So you need to get your brand seen. Make people aware of your business and the services it offers. Email campaigns are a great way of doing this.
The first place to start is to build a mailing list.
When a customer purchases a product, ask them if they would like to sign-up. Talk to your suppliers and other contacts and ask them if they would like to join your mailing list. It's always a good idea to give people an incentive to sign-up.
That list of subscribers is invaluable. It's made up of potential customers who want to receive your marketing messages.
2. Everything is measurable
Imagine sending out a traditional print mailer to your contacts. How would you measure its success?
You won't know if the mailer has even been posted through the letterbox of your prospect, let alone if the mailer has actually been read.
Measuring the impact of print campaigns are notoriously difficult. You may see a rise in website hits around the time the mailers go out, but you can't be sure those visits are from a direct result of the print mailer campaign.
With email marketing everything is measurable, from click-through rates to A/B split testing; you can see precisely how effective your campaign has been.
Email campaigns can also be integrated with website analytic tools such as Google Analytics, so that a user can be tracked from the moment they click on a link within the email, all the way through to the conversion goal on your website.
3. Segment your subscriber list and stay relevant
Your subscribers want to hear from you, they have after all signed up to receive your email, but that doesn't mean every email you issue will be relevant for every one of your subscribers.
So why not segment your mailing list to ensure your subscribers are getting the most relevant content.
For instance, if your email is promoting a particular service, send it to your subscribers that have expressed an interest in that service.
Return on investment will be higher and it avoids annoying the other subscribers by bombarding them with irrelevant content
4. Cheaper than traditional marketing
Whether it's print mailers, catalogues, or local radio slots; traditional marketing can be expensive to implement.
In contrast, email marketing is very cost effective.
For instance, once a template has been created you could be sending our regular email campaigns without the need for help from a third party
5. Generate revenue
In 2010 Direct Marketing Association calculated that for every $1 spent on an email campaigns, $42 were generated. A huge return on investment, putting direct mail, catalogues and even internet search marketing into the shade.
There are two reasons for this:
- Email campaigns can be measured very precisely, allowing subsequent campaigns to be fine tuned.
- Compared to other forms of marketing, email marketing is relatively cheap.