As the overall marketing industry and digital marketing landscape continue to evolve, oftentimes, business owners wonder about the role that email marketing plays in their business. These advances are incredibly exciting for marketers who now can reach customers in new ways. However, these changes can also create feelings of uncertainty. A key area of concern for business owners and their marketing teams focuses on the role that email marketing plays in reaching today’s customers and prospective customers.
If customers are spending nine or more hours a day engaging with the internet for both personal and professional use, and two hours of that is spent on social media, is there even time for consumers to engage in their email? Research states that people spend over two hours per day, checking personal emails at work. Though this might be a problem for some employers, it bodes quite well for marketers who have worried that email was landing in the dump bin.
Email marketing is still essential for your business
Email marketing continues to play a very personal role in getting in front of your target customers. Email messages from friends and family are coming in the right alongside the email updates that are coming in from your company. So, email that can be customized to your target customer’s actions, and when you can genuinely personalize an email message, will be highly effective. And there are so many ways that you can talk to customers via email, so your list of email opportunities is truly endless.
- Email marketing is more effective for new customer acquisition than social media – If you are trying to convert someone into a customer, email marketing is the place to start. Let’s face it; people prefer to conduct business with brands and others that they know. Because email is so direct, it creates a more personal feeling and is more personal than social media. Plus, email provides an easy way for customers to interact with your brand directly to ask questions or get more information.
- Email is easy to execute, is highly effective, and relatively inexpensive – for small business owners that need to watch their marketing budget closely, email can provide a great option in comparison to television, radio, and direct mail. Compared to those more traditional marketing efforts, with email you can use the same imagery and videography in your email and on your website, which makes it easy to create visual consistency in email and online. Further, if you can maintain your email list, your ROI will increase as you stay in front of customers with the information they want to see.
- Email marketing is highly personal and easily customizable – Email marketing makes it very easy to segment your audience and then tailor messages so that they will resonate with your prospective customers. When using social media, messages are addressed to your target audience as a whole. Therefore, targeted emails can generate 36% of email marketing revenue. These targeted emails can help marketers to develop brand relationships with prospects, leads, current customers, and even customers that have left the brand. And customers love that the email will be in their inbox when they are ready to read it whereas if they are not engaging in social media at the time of a brand post, they may miss the message altogether.
- Emails are unbelievably action-oriented – Most business people today expect that they need to take some action for emails that they receive. They are used to responding right away, clicking a link to learn more, and sometimes, they even make a purchase straight away. And for this reason, we know that email is transactional just by nature, and it can be used as a traffic driver to your website. So, when you give a customer an opportunity to take action, you will drive more engagement. The longer the customer spends interacting with your brand, the more likely that they will be to convert.
- Email is super measurable – You can track how many emails you sent out, how many opened your email, how many recipients unsubscribed, how many clicked, etc. Email marketing dashboards are relatively easy to construct because you can gain so much of your insight directly from your Email Service Provider (ESP). With this ease in measurement, you can analyze campaign performance, make the necessary adjustment, and then improve your campaign effectiveness. Further, many marketers like to monitor their email campaigns in comparison to their other campaigns (social media and traditional efforts) and compare to web traffic for the applicable days or weeks to see how those campaigns are impacting visits.
- Today’s customers open promotional emails on their mobile devices – Marketers appreciate the flexibility that email provides to their customers. With smartphones saturating the market, today’s customers can easily open mobile-friendly and responsive emails directly from their mobile devices. It is estimated that almost 62% of emails are opened on mobile devices as opposed to on desktop or a webmail client site.
Most businesses send email marketing messages at least once per week
While frequency and cadence can vary significantly based on your business, most businesses send customers at least one email per week. Marketers that take the time to truly understand their customer preferences can build an email marketing program that doesn’t inundate customers (which can cause annoyance and turn they away) and that ensures that content is relevant and engaging without being too much.
When customers receive emails every day, they often discover that the emails don’t contain new information. When this happens, they are far more likely to send the content to their delete bin, especially if this occurs on repeat occasions. Even worse, this type of behavior can create additional annoyance and can lead to customer unsubscribes. In the event of an unsubscribe, it can be challenging to get a customer back.
Marketers need to take the time to do their homework and need to be willing to adjust as more information is gained. Sending the right content to the right customers at the right time via email will work wonders to increase customer acquisition and to grow revenue ultimately. And that’s every marketer’s dream.
