Aashish Sharma — October 2, 2017 When you subscribe to receive newsletters from your favorite blog or promotional e-mails from your favorite brand, you give that person or company permission to send you e-mails. The sender of the e-mail then becomes responsible for giving you what you subscribed for:
- From a newsletter sent by e-mail,
- Or a limited time sale that you receive in your mailbox.
As you receive emails from this company, you notice that:
- You are closer to the brand,
- You agree with its contents,
- And maybe one day you will buy her one or two products.
E-mail marketing brings together all the techniques to achieve the following 3 objectives:
- Create a strong relationship with your customers and prospects,
- Develop your customer base by conquering new customers,
- Find new opportunities to grow your business.
This is what Mathieu said to me the other day when I was having lunch with him:
Email marketing is certainly the most personalized form of Digital Marketing. Social media comes and goes. If a person subscribes to your newsletter, it is virtually for life. Obviously, it is not about sending spam or buying databases of email addresses. And it’s also more than just sending out commercial emails.
E-mail marketing is about building real links with people who want to hear from you.
It involves communicating with several people (in a way that resembles a one-on-one conversation) and building relationships with them in order to grow your business.
How Can E-Mail Marketing Help Your Business?
For many small business owners, bloggers and contractors, managing day-to-day operations is a full-time job, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Even as an orchestral man, you’ve probably had the unpleasant feeling of never having enough time to do it all. You juggle all these responsibilities. And yet, you leave aside certain missions necessary to develop your business, such as marketing. Today, you barely have time to settle your “priority” tasks. So how to add other actions to your already completed task list?
I reassure you right away. Through e-mail marketing, promoting your business and connecting with your prospects and customers become much simpler. And again, it minimizes the potential of e-mail marketing.
A few years ago, you may have heard that email was declared “dead” by Digital Marketing experts.
With the craze around social media, many of them assumed that email marketing had lost its relevance. He was even committed to joining in the cemetery other marketing tactics such as telephone directories and telemarketing.
But this is false, very false! True, I am the first to say that publishing web content to build relationships with customers is the cornerstone of inbound marketing. But unlike other marketing tools, email marketing has adapted to this trend.
Today, email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to communicate not only with its audience but also to establish your brand permanently.
Here Are Some Statistics That Illustrate the Potential of Email Marketing
Now let’s take a look at all the benefits of email marketing. Which can make you change strategy today.
The return on investment (ROI) of emailing is 28.5% higher compared to conventional mail.
It is even much more profitable than all other Digital Marketing actions. In addition, it will free you time to manage the operation of your business.
Here is a small excerpt that illustrates the potential of email marketing:
- 72% of consumers prefer to receive promotional content by email
- 66% of consumers have already made an online purchase following the receipt of an email marketing.
- 27% of consumers seem to want their favorite companies to invest more in email marketing.
Emailing Also Means Retaining Your Customers
Imagine together this small scenario too classic for my taste.
You have carefully followed all my recommendations to properly referencing your site on the search engines. A surfer, “by the smell “, visits your website after a query on Google “Pull V-neck blue”. He runs through a few pages. But it leaves your site without ordering or wants to go to your store. Why? Because he does not see the sweater he’s been looking for a long time in his favorite color. Maybe he’ll come back in a few days to buy it, but I doubt it, your chances are very slim.
Now imagine that there is a way on your website to stay in touch with you. I want to talk about a simple way to subscribe to your list of subscribers to your newsletter, for example. This is a way to make this customer satisfied because he will finally find this blue night sweater that he dreams of.
In this way, e-mail becomes much more than a basic way to advertise your brand. It is also an effective way to build loyalty for your customers and prospects by building relationships with all those who are interested in your business and its offer.
Contrary to what one might think, the sending of email campaigns does not harm the image of a company. The recipients are annoyed by the excess of emails from the same company and especially by mails without any interest.
By using this means of prospecting in an appropriate manner, ensuring that you write quality content and segmenting your customer file whenever necessary, you are helping to build the image of a serious and measured company.
Still not convinced by the potential of email marketing? Here are other arguments about the importance for your company to have a newsletter.
Most people prefer to communicate with brands from their inbox, which is why email marketing is always a must to maintain your sales.
Before You Get Started, Set Yourself Some Achievable Goals
You have been convinced by the potential of email marketing. You want to jump into the water. So, before you start collecting email addresses from your future subscribers or importing your current list, I advise you first to take a little time to think about your email marketing strategy.
This starts by identifying your expectations and goals.
To identify what you hope to achieve through e-mail marketing, ask yourself the following 5 questions:
- How do you want your email campaigns to help your business?
- How much do you want to increase sales of your product?
- What types of relationships do you want to establish with your subscribers?
- What is the ideal subscriber profile to recruit in your email list?
- How will email integrate with your Digital Marketing strategy?
Obviously, your goals will evolve or change over time. But, it is important to properly define the initial purpose of your email campaigns.
Be Careful To Give You Measurable and Realistic Goals
If you’re starting out with email marketing, your first goal is sure to increase the number of your subscribers.
In this case, a clear objective could be:
” I want to collect 500 email addresses for my newsletter over the next 12 months by implementing actions to facilitate enrollment on my company’s website and in my store .”
Also, you need to make sure your email list must clean, and try to avoid spammy third-party list, which might be scabbed from tools and contain useless entries of email. This can cause harm to your email as many users put it in spam. Having clean email database is always useful and handy for email marketing campaign, sending newsletters to subscribers.
A well-formulated clear objective includes a numerical value, a due date and a general idea of how you plan to reach that number. You can also include specific tactics to achieve it.
I advise you to respect the SMART (intelligent) method which is a mnemonic means to express an objective in the clearest, the simplest to understand and for which the results are realizable.
As you plan these tactics, also identify your target.
To illustrate my point, let’s take the example of a manager of a gym focused on health and well-being in Nice. This manager can define the first target by:
- Men and women,
- Between 30 and 40 years,
- Who lives or works in Nice
- And who begins to train and/or change their diet.
Identifying your “ideal” customers is the best way to communicate and establish a lasting relationship with them. To analyze your target’s needs, I advise you to write personas.
To Conclude On the Potential of Email Marketing for an SME
Finally, to get good results, it is not necessary to invest a lot of money in an email sending software and setting up emailing campaigns is fast and very simple.
My advice, do not delay! Take 15 minutes to answer the questions above. Identify the objectives of your e-mail marketing strategy.
What have statistics on emailing most caught your attention? What goals have you set? How do you plan to adapt your strategy? Let us know in comment section.
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