Lauren Meeker — May 13, 2018 — May 13, 2018
geralt / Pixabay
With so many different marketing channels to choose from, it can be hard to figure out which will work best for your business. This article outlines the key benefits of using email as a marketing tool, and how it can help you to accomplish your business goals.
Generate New Leads
Email marketing has been shown to be one of the most effective ways of acquiring and keeping customers, with 80 percent of professionals reporting that email drives stronger customer acquisition and retention than any other channel. Sending the right email is an excellent way to target people who have actively expressed interest in your company by opting in to your mailing list. From here, you can sell them on your services either by offering more information, demonstrating your unique selling point, or offering special promotions.
Customer Retention
Once you’ve got a customer, you need to hang on to them. Sending regular emails allows you to stay “top of mind” and increases the chance that customers will buy from you again. It’s also a great way to convey your brand values, encourage engagement and build credibility through sharing interesting and valuable information. Your emails don’t always have to be sales-focused!
Drive Conversions
Email marketing has been shown to have a higher conversion rate than both direct mail and social media. That’s right – on top of being extremely cost effective and easy to implement, email marketing also gets better results than most other channels. There’s very little to lose and a lot to gain by building email marketing into your business!
Cost Effectiveness
One of the greatest benefits of email marketing is that it doesn’t cost a lot to implement. Many email marketing tools are free to use and easy to automate, meaning that you won’t need to spend hours manually sending out emails. Unlike direct mail, there’s no need to spend money on printing or mailing out flyers. You also have the benefit of already having a list of interested people, so that you don’t have to spend advertising budget bringing people into your marketing funnel. Overall, email marketing has been proven to provide strong results with just a fraction of the cost of most other marketing channels.
Personalized Experience
Email marketing can be integrated with existing customer databases and CRM tools to create highly personalized experiences. By segmenting your mailing list, you can craft emails tailored to different customers’ needs, their stage in the buyer’s journey and other variables like age, gender and location. Customers are more likely to open emails that speak directly to them!
Measurable
Unlike strategies like direct mail, email marketing is easily measurable. You can track open rates, click rates and purchases as a result of email clicks, which will show you what works and what doesn’t. You can also carry out A/B testing that allows you to compare different approaches side by side, and measure their effectiveness through unique discount codes to be used on your website.
Easy to Integrate
Email marketing is easy to integrate with your other marketing efforts. For example, by embedding links in your emails, you could use your email newsletter to encourage customers to follow you on social media or check out your latest blog. On top of that, you can integrate your email marketing with your existing analytics and CRM tools, giving you access to powerful, in-depth insights.
Good Email Marketing ROI
Between the low cost of operation and the highly targeted audience, email marketing ROI can be very impressive. In fact, studies have shown that effective email marketing can deliver an average ROI of $ 38 for each $ 1 spent!
One of the most attractive aspects of using email marketing is that it isn’t as limited by internal budget constraints as other channels are. It’s possible to execute a successful email marketing campaign with a very small budget, meaning it’s accessible to businesses of all sizes and life stages.
How to Accomplish Your Business Goals With Email Marketing
As outlined above, email marketing is an extremely flexible channel that can help you to achieve a huge variety of business goals.
To get started with your own email marketing, here’s a simple process to follow:
- Create a SMART goal for your business (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-sensitive).
- Design an email marketing campaign that will help you achieve this goal. Build your email list from your existing customer database.
- Integrate the campaign with other channels if necessary.
- Execute the campaign.
- Use analytics to track the success of the campaign.
- Make changes and use A/B testing to improve the campaign if needed.
Here’s a simplified example of what the process might look like:
- Goal: Increase holiday sales by 10 percent.
- Create emails offering personalized special offers to customers.
- Integrate with CRM tools to personalize emails correctly.
- Send emails during the holiday season.
- Look at sales analytics for the period of the campaign.
- Analyze the success of the different emails and decipher what worked best.
Achieving your goals with email marketing is all about setting clear goals, executing a targeted campaign, integrating with other tools and using analytics to track success and make improvements.
How to Increase Email Marketing ROI and Boost Email Marketing Effectiveness
Your email marketing ROI depends on how large your mailing list is, how engaging and effective your emails are, and how closely you’re tracking your results.
Use the following tips to help you to maximize your email marketing ROI:
- Grow your email list. Use freebies and lead magnets to encourage people to opt-in.
- Use automatically triggered retargeting emails, e.g. send out an abandoned cart email when customers fail to checkout on your website.
- Segment your list and personalize emails for each segment.
- Carry out A/B testing. Track your results and make changes accordingly. Learn what works best and continue to build on the techniques that work as you optimize your campaigns.
- Optimize your emails for mobile viewing.
- Optimize your emails for deliverability.
As with any marketing, the more effort you put into email marketing, the better your ROI will be. One noteworthy study showed that 77 percent of ROI comes from segmented, targeted and triggered campaigns, so these are smart places to focus your attention.
Overall, we’ve outlined how email marketing can be an incredibly cost-effective, segmentable, ROI-positive marketing tool. If you’re looking to generate more leads, drive conversions and automate key parts of your marketing process, then it is time to start taking advantage of the many benefits of this very powerful tool.
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