Long before social media existed, email dominated the digital landscape as the premier and pretty much only way to communicate with your friends and colleagues on the internet. Email is the grandfather of digital communication and it predates Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and every other social media platform that pops up every other day.
Digital marketing is the biggest trend in marketing these days and it has its roots in email. Despite the times having changed and there being a steady upsurge in social media marketing, email marketing still remains the best way to reach out, nurture and convert new customers.
Dismissing email marketing as a relic of the digital past is a terrible idea. Below, we will look at why investing in an email marketing campaign is a good strategic decision for your business.
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The core of any email marketing campaigns is the list of subscribers. If you’ve not taken a shortcut and bought a list, your list will be comprised of people who signed on for a good reason. No one signs up to receive emails about products or services that they aren’t interested in. This means that the people who receive your emails are people who are more likely to see your emails, open them and engage with your brand.
This also means that you have a higher chance of converting potential customers into actual customers. A well conducted email marketing campaign that takes advantage of segmentation and targeting to send emails that are relevant and useful to each subscriber will find that it is having a direct positive impact on your brand.
Email marketing is also direct. You don’t have to make a post on your Facebook page or Tweet out a promotional offer and hope that a potential customer will come across it. You don’t have to worry about people missing out on the post by having logged in later or worry about having to pay to boost your post in social media feeds.
The emails you send out will land squarely on your subscriber’s inbox. While it still doesn’t necessarily ensure that they will open it, you can count on emails to actually reach your subscriber directly. A well-managed campaign would have already taken steps to boost it’s open rates, so it shouldn’t be too much of a worry.
In a sentence: email marketing is direct and will definitely reach your customers.
Sure, you have to employ a number of ways to make sure you catch your subscriber’s attention, like using clever subject lines and personally addressing them.
But the second of these methods is related to another advantage of email marketing campaign. People like the feeling of businesses treating them like people, instead of potential sources of money. Email marketing campaigns allow you to deeply customize the content you send out. By utilizing the smart tag system that all email marketing clients have, you can automatically add your customers’ names and other relevant details to personalize the emails you send out.
In addition to this, you can use methods like segmentation and targeting to track specific details and send emails that are meaningful to each subscriber. You can monitor the feedback they give, the products they’ve checked out and their previous shopping history and use this information to tailor the emails you send out to them.
You can send your 50% off offer for brand new computers only to people who’ve shown an interest in computers and you can send the promotional information about the new mobile phone you’re selling to people who’ve shown an interest in phones. Email marketing clients allow you an incredibly variety of options to how you want to target your customers and what you want to send out to them.
This ability to personalize and optimize the content you send out is unparalleled. No other form of marketing currently available has anything anywhere close to the depth and complexity that email marketing allows.
The best part of it all is that after some initial set up, you can have most of the process automated, only interfering to make significant changes as needed for your ever adapting strategy.
Speaking of strategy, it goes without saying that any marketing campaign – email or otherwise – should have firm roots in solid numbers, data and analysis. You should always monitor all the data available to you, make sure the metrics of your campaign fall within the industry averages and adapting your strategy as needed.
Email marketing is a highly automated process and all marketing clients out there constantly track all the relevant data. All the metrics and analytics are available to you, hot off the press. You’ll have more data than ever and while that may initially seem overwhelming, you will soon come to realize that all the data is incredibly helpful. You can use the data to develop a data-driven marketing strategy based on the detailed insight you have at hand.
And it’s no joke when we say email allows you to track a whole host of metrics. You aren’t just limited to counting the number of clicks your post has had. You can look at how many people have previewed your email, how many have opened it, how many have clicked on the links in the emails, how many have complained, how many have unsubscribed and many more.
Tracking all these metrics means you can gain a better understanding of your campaign, your subscribers and the possible mistakes you are making. This means you can make informed decisions. You can also easily conduct a number of tests on your campaign and further improve it. A/B testing – also known as split testing – is very useful in figuring out which emails get the best response. You can use the results to further refine your content, images and special offers till you’ve found the perfect combo.
The point is, email marketing is something that has been around for a while and been perfected over time. Today, email marketing clients provide your a smorgasbord of elements to track and analyse so that you can perfect your strategy and help your campaign reach new heights.
The fact that Facebook, Twitter and Instagram cost literally nothing to sign up for and start posting content may lead you to think that because they are free, they are the best route for your marketing. However, this is not so.
The reality is Facebook and Twitter and Instagram all require money if you want your post to be seen by more a significant number of people. It’s not a small amount, either. Depending on the outreach you want, you’ll have to pay a relatively high sum. For the amount they cost, the return on your investment for social media marketing is surprisingly low.
With email marketing, on the other hand, you’ll be earning dollars for every penny you spend. Recent studies have should that the median return on investment for email marketing is a whopping 120%. That is not a percentage to sneer at. It’s higher than any other digital marketing platform available today. This means that while the exact marketing plan you pick will obviously determine the overall cost of your campaign, email marketing is incredible affordable and gives you a high return on investment in the long term.
Let’s be honest, emails aren’t going anywhere. At least, not for the foreseeable future. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, DeviantArt, Vimeo, Snapchat – it doesn’t matter what, everything requires an email account if you want to sign-up. The fact that having an email address is a requirement for pretty much everything on the internet means that everyone has an email account.
This gives email marketing a significant boost straight off the bat. Everyone has an email and you can almost definitely deliver your marketing content to everyone.
In addition, social media platforms are constantly changing. Their popularity and reach ebbs and wanes. People who use one platform today may decide to move to another tomorrow. Or they may just stick to one platform and ignore every other. This means that your content will not be seen by everyone unless you post in every platform and pay to have your posts boosted. You will have to invest heavily in various social media platforms if you want to reach all your customers, unless you have a very niche customer base – with email, you don’t have to worry about this at all.
As another advantage, email marketing campaigns are way better option than social media platforms if your goal is to sustain brand awareness over a long period. Note: sustained brand awareness should be a goal for your campaign no matter what.
Once people go through the process of signing on to be on your emailing list, they will usually stay there for a long period – a period throughout which you can send them your marketing materials. You can and should make sure to send them content that is relevant and meaningful to them and you will find that this method will ultimately get you more conversions than any other.
No. Obviously.
Email marketing is the best way to generate leads, connect with subscribers and retain customers. However, it doesn’t mean that it is the only true way for you to conduct your marketing. Social media marketing is obviously one of the best ways to reach a certain demographic and if you have the means to invest in that, you should. Also, there is no reason to dismiss the old ways like physical marketing, either.
Email marketing is still king, though.
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