With social media becoming so ubiquitous and popular nowadays, most people seem to believe that email marketing is no longer needed. In fact, this has been a common concern for most marketers currently. However, this is not necessarily true. Surprisingly, email marketing is still going strong; according to HubSpot, 40% of B2B marketers say that email newsletters are critical to their content marketing success. Whereas 73% of millennials say they prefer communications from companies to come via email. This makes sense, as around 99% of consumers check their emails daily. As such, even with social media taking the world by storm, marketers still cannot avoid using email, which is why it is essential businesses develop a robust email marketing strategy.
Below, here are a few advantages and benefits of email marketing, and why people should continue to use this tactic. Understanding the ins and outs of email marketing is also vital if you are a full service digital marketing agency looking to keep ahead of the competition. So, keep reading on to learn about this marketing method.
Allows you to send personalised content
One thing that makes email marketing unique is how businesses can customise their campaigns and create personalised content for their target audience. This is great because personalised marketing is a growing trend these days. Doing so allows companies to increase their chances of converting their audiences, usually by delivering them relevant and valuable content that meets their audience’s needs. Personalised emails can take a variety of different forms. It can be as simple as including a contact’s name in the address or subject line of the email. You can also create personalised content by sending the right kinds of emails to the right audience. For example, it can be a birthday email offering a discount, or have variations of images and copy to increase engagement. Other ways to segment your audience can be through region, geography, or even engagement levels.
Create brand awareness
One way consumers can learn more about your brand story aside from your website is through email marketing and communications. Considering how much time we spend checking our emails, this is not surprising. Additionally, most customers enjoy receiving professional emails from their favourite brands, making it a great opportunity for marketers. With email allowing such in-depth personalisation, it can better target the correct audience member, leading to them viewing the brand in a more personable way. The more your customer connects with your brand and its assets, and its message, the more your customer will think about it subconsciously. All of this can lead to a boost in conversion and engagement rates.
Improving sales
Recent studies have also shown that email marketing can also improve sales as well. According to 59% of marketers, they say email is the biggest source of ROI, with those who used segmented campaigns seeing as much as a 760% increase in their bottom line. Email marketing campaigns can run a large gamut, ranging from featuring products or services, delivering special offers or discounts, or even teaching customers about a certain topic. Therefore, email marketing campaigns can easily fit messages to encourage customers to make a purchase, and these targeted audiences are more likely to buy from you directly. Email marketing can also be used to automate a part of the sales process, helping you to increase sales too.
Automation can save time
Unlike social media platforms, email marketing allows for automation. This can save businesses a lot of time and trouble, making their work more efficient. For instance, you can choose to automate transactional or welcome emails, which allows you to reach certain subscribers at the right time without you needing to worry about it. This also helps increase the chances of converting them.
For example, aside from setting up a welcome email for new customers, you can also set up emails that will be automatically triggered after specific actions have been taken by certain customers. Or you can schedule certain drip campaigns to happen and the right time and dates.
Owning contact list
One of the most important things when it comes to marketing is owning your content list. If you are just promoting everything on social media, it can be difficult to take charge of your followers or contacts there. This is because each platform has its own rules which you must follow. So, if your social media gets taken down, then you run the risk of losing all your contacts and followers, which means you have to start brand building all over again – wasting your time, effort and resources.
However, with email, things are different. You can directly collect the addresses of your audience at the same time you are building your following and have ownership over your contacts. So even if you end up changing your email provider, you can still take this list with you. If you take full charge of your email list, this means all your content will be delivered directly to your audience – you no longer need to worry about algorithms not showcasing your content.
Learn about your audience
Email marketing also gives businesses the ability to find out more about their audience and their behaviours. This is mainly done through analytics. Some metrics to keep a close eye on include:
- Click-through rate (CTR): Shows how many readers have clicked on the email.
- Open rate: Shows how many people have opened your email.
- Bounce rate: This shows the number of email addresses that did not receive the email campaign.
- Conversion rate: This shows the number of subscribers that have completed your desired action.
Most email marketing providers provide you with analytics and reporting tools that help track these key metrics (and more) especially in real time. These metrics can help tell you what works, what needs to be changed, which of your products or services are popular, and how to inform your marketing decisions.
Collect customer feedback
Customer feedback is invaluable to your business, as it can tell you what you are doing well, and what things you may need to improve on. In addition, it is wise to stay in touch with your audience, so you understand their needs and wants, which makes you seem more personable and relatable. While it can be somewhat difficult to get feedback from your fans on social media, email is a great platform to do so. You can create and launch customer surveys to send to your subscribers, in order to gather information. That being said, if your survey is very long and extensive, it is best you offer an incentive in exchange for your audience’s time. For instance, Amazon sometimes offers coupons for lucky participants.
