7 reasons using email marketing to grow your business

Today’s marketers need to do more with less. They needs to connect with their audience in a highly personalized way, while staying on budget. Marketers that can do this—connect with their prospects and customers in a highly targeted way—will be successful in delivering ROI and revenue back to the business.

As the VentureBeat report illustrates, no marketing category has the longevity of email marketing. While some marketing trends come and go, email remains the most powerful channel available to the modern marketer.

Here are 7 reasons why:

1. Email has larger reach.

With Facebook boasting over 1 billion active users and Twitter boasting 255 million, it’s tempting to believe that social media is the most effective way to reach the masses. These are impressive numbers, but what isn’t so frequently shared are the statistics on email usage.

The total number of worldwide email accounts was 3.9 billion in 2013, and projected to reach 4.9 billion by 2017, according to Radicati.

While this might seem surprising at first, think about your own online behavior: When you sign up for a website (like an online store), you have to enter your email address to create the account. You even need an email address to create a Facebook or Twitter account. What’s more, Facebook and Twitter email to notify users of activity, like when someone is tagged in a photo.

Email is the currency of the web, and anybody who’s online has an active email address. And while Facebook and Twitter might seem pretty ubiquitous, the ongoing struggle over data breaches and privacy means plenty of people are exiting some social media channels.

So when it comes to connecting with your prospects and customers, there’s no channel with a wider reach than email.

2. Email delivers your message.

If marketers have to choose between adding a subscriber to their email list, or gaining a new Facebook fan, they should go for the email subscriber every time.

There are two key reasons why:

First, 90% of email gets delivered to the intended recipient’s inbox, whereas only 2% of your Facebook fans see your posts in their News Feed. This is because Facebook limits the number of times your posts appear in the News Feed in an attempt to drive brands towards their paid advertising options.

This is a big deal when it comes to getting your messages in front of your desired audience.

On Facebook, if you post an update to your 10,000 fans only about 200 of them will even have a chance of seeing it in their News Feed. Alternatively, if you send an email campaign to 10,000 subscribers at least 9,000 of them will receive it in their inbox.

This means your message is 45 times more likely to be seen using email than Facebook.

Secondly, your email subscribers have explicitly told you they want to hear from you when they signed up for your email list.

There are strict laws and regulations around SPAM laws, so if you’re emailing a prospect or customer, it’s because they gave you their permission. Now think about the ads in your Facebook News Feed – did you ask those companies to market to you?

Probably not. More than likely, you performed a Google search or visited their website. That’s decidedly different than proactively signing up from an email newsletter.

Email is proven to ensure your audience gets your message.

3. Email drives conversions.

Most marketers are laser focused on driving conversions. Regardless of whether they do so in the form of leads, sales, memberships, or a metric unique to your business strategy, the ultimate goal for marketers is to turn potential customers into paying customers.

And when it comes to conversions, there isn’t a more powerful channel than email.

In fact, the average click-through rate of an email campaign is around 3% (of total recipients), whereas the average click-through rate from a tweet is around 0.5%.

This means you are 6x more likely to get someone to click through to your website via email than you are from Twitter. As discussed earlier, your email subscribers have told you they want to hear from you and this isn’t typically the case with social.

4.24% of visitors from email marketing buy something as compared to 2.49% of visitors from search engines and 0.59% from social media, according to a survey conducted by Monetate.

What’s more, email is highly measurable. Campaign Monitor customers have real-time access to metrics like opens, clicks, bounces, forwards, social shares, and more.

Additionally, those who integrate their email marketing into a CRM like Salesforce can see firsthand how their email marketing impacts business opportunities and deals.

As a marketer focused on nurturing leads and driving conversions—as most marketers are—email marketing trumps all other communication channels for business.

4. Email has a higher ROI.

Given email’s unmatched ability to drive conversions, it makes sense that email is also the most effective marketing channel to drive ROI for your company. In fact, email marketing yields an average 3,800% return on investment for businesses and for every $1 spent on email marketing, the average return on investment is $38.

It’s clear from these statistics that email is a cost-effective channel for marketers, but why does it outperform other channels so significantly when it comes to ROI?

It comes down to delivering highly personalized and relevant messages. Unlike social networks where you send status updates to every follower regardless of their location, interests & purchase history, email allows you to be hyper-targeted with your communications.

The more data you have about your customers in an email marketing tool like Campaign Monitor—including insights pulled in from integrated systems like your CRM, customer service solution, etc—the more targeted you can be.

Campaign Monitor customer Rip Curl utilized segmentation and dynamic content to deliver the right message to the right person. For example, they know the gender of their subscribers and where they are located geographically, so they can ensure that females in the United States receive a promotion about bathing suits during the summer months and males in Australia receive an email about wetsuits during the winter months.

This use of segmentation and dynamic content helps to ensure the content they send is relevant to every individual recipient and that relevance drives people to click-through, make purchases – and increase the ROI of their email marketing campaigns.

5. Email is the preferred communication channel.

For many, social networks are a personal form of communication used to keep up to date with friends & family. When people log in to their social media accounts, they’re there to see photos and updates from people they know and care about.

Email, on the contrary, is a much more professional medium and people expect to receive information about products and services through that channel.

In fact, studies show 72% people prefer to receive promotional content through email, compared to 17% who prefer social media.

6. Email is an open platform.

Over the past few years, many brands have invested millions of dollars into buying large social followings in order to be able to communicate and engage with an audience.

But while businesses are investing in various social media platforms, Facebook has frequently updated its algorithm to reduce the amount of followers who will see a brand’s post, unless those posts are paid advertisements.

This practice has become so prevalent that 98% of brand followers will never see the posts in their News Feeds. Twitter seems to be moving in a similar direction with the announcement it will introduce an algorithm-controlled feed as well.

The issue with channels like Facebook and Twitter is they’re owned and controlled by third parties which means marketers are at the mercy of changes the platforms make to their platform.

Meanwhile, email isn’t owned or controlled by any one particular entity. It’s an open communication platform and there are a multitude of services that provide access to send and receive email.

The diverse array of companies involved in email marketing ensures that no one party can make changes that would have a widespread effect, and unlike Facebook or Twitter, if you invest the time and money into building and cultivating a great email list, your subscriber list will be an asset you own. Thus you’ll be able to leverage your list without the threat of someone limiting its effectiveness.

7. Email will be around forever.

Remember MySpace? What?

The once-hot site was the largest social networking site in the world between 2005 and 2008, and in June 2006 surpassed Google as the most visited website in the United States. Yet where is MySpace now? All those users eventually moved on to other social networks, and the site is now the 1,500th most popular website in the United States.

Imagine investing significant amounts of time and money to build an audience on a platform only to find it a ghost town just a year or two later. The impact on your ability to reach and engage potential customers would be catastrophic.

On the other hand, email has a long history of stability. The first promotional email campaign was sent in 1978 to a total of 400 people and email has been growing consistently since.

Interestingly, the email space itself has evolved from a time where you needed a developer to build an email to today, where tools like Campaign Monitor empower the modern marketer to create and send beautiful branded emails with ease. This shift has put the power of business email into the hands of more people.

Building your email list, unlike building a social media following, is a stable long-term investment that will pay off for many years to come.

You can find out more email marketing plan here.

source: https://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/guides/why-email/

Why Email Marketing Today

Remember the movie, You’ve Got Mail? You know the one where Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan fall in love with each other after exchanging emails? Though that film hit theaters in 1998, it still demonstrates why email marketing remains one of the most important communication tools in today’s society.

AOL may be obsolete, but email sure isn’t!

Though small business owners may not be looking for love online, they certainly are looking for ways to connect and build relationships with their leads and customers. And if you’re not using email marketing to do that, you may be missing out on a powerful opportunity.

But you may be wondering, can email marketing really make a difference in your business?

Well, to answer that question, we’ve put together a list of just a few reasons why email marketing is one of the best digital marketing tactics that a small business can invest in.

Consumers Prefer Email

The number one reason why email marketing is a no-brainer for companies is because consumers prefer email. Most small businesses are working with limited marketing budgets, which means that they can’t waste time with marketing tactics that won’t resonate well with their target market. While social media has become a popular way for small businesses to communicate with their audience, brands sometimes just can’t get the organic reach they are looking for through these channels. However, social media isn’t the only answer. Email also provides a professional and direct medium that allows businesses to reach out to their leads and customers.

What’s more is that most consumers actually prefer to communicate with brands through email. The most probable reason is because it is permission based. The people on your list actually signed up because they want to get updates from you. They’re interested in learning more about your brand including your promotions and discounts. And that alone makes email marketing such an effective strategy to reach your consumers. In fact, one study from Marketing Sherpa reports that 72% of consumers prefer to receive promotional messages through email.

When it comes to business promotional content, consumers prefer to be contacted through email.

You may be wondering why consumers prefer receiving updates from brands through email. Here are just a few reasons why we think email marketing works so well with the modern consumer:

• It’s convenient. With access to email right on their smartphone, most consumers find this type of communication very convenient. Not only can consumers stay connected with their favorite brands wherever they are, but they can easily redeem any coupon codes or other special offers right from their phone.
• It’s personal. Today’s consumer is bombarded with marketing messages, and they tend to respond best to those that are personalized and relevant. With this marketing strategy, you can personalize your messages and content based on the subscribers preferences and buying patterns. Email segmentation makes it easy to deliver the most relevant offers and content to the consumer.
• It’s instant. Consumers like the ability to get information about exclusive offers and last minute deals. Sending email campaigns allows your small business to instantly and directly get the word out about these sales and promotions so that your consumers can take advantage of the opportunity to save.  

Now that you know why email marketing is so popular with consumers, it’s important to understand how often they prefer to receive email communications and what types of email communications you should deliver. Many studies have shown that email users prefer to receive marketing emails just once a week. This frequency allows you to communicate consistently without overwhelming your subscribers.

When it comes to the types of email messages that consumers like to receive, there are a few different reasons why consumers generally sign up for email communications from brands:

• Coupons and Sales Promotions
• Loyalty or Rewards Programs
• Company News and Updates
• Contests and Sweepstakes
• Free Content like E-Books
• Products or Service Information
• Exclusive Peeks at New Products

The only way to know for sure what types of content resonate with your unique target audience is to track the success of your email campaigns over time. Track metrics such as open rates, click through rates, and conversions to see which types of content your subscribers respond to best. Unsubscribe rate patterns can also help you better understand what types of content your audience is not so interested in.  

Email Helps You Reach More Mobile Consumers

It’s no secret that today’s consumer has become increasingly more mobile, proving yet another reason why email marketing is ideal for reaching your customer. Though not all consumers shop from their smartphone, many will check their email from these devices. In fact, reading and sending emails is one of the most popular activities for smartphone users, beating out web browsing, the Facebook app, and even apps for maps or directions.

Mobile device users tend to use their devices often to check their email, including marketing messages from brands like yours!

The popularity of email on mobile devices makes email marketing the ideal tactic for small businesses that want to reach their mobile consumers. Unlike creating an app or SMS marketing, this kind of online marketing does not require small businesses to invest a significant amount in new technology or different types of software. In addition, it allows your business to reach beyond smartphones to connect with consumers on other types of mobile devices like tablets.

Now that you know why email marketing is essential for reaching mobile customers, let’s talk about optimizing your emails for these devices. As you can see from the infographic below, 48% of emails are opened on mobile devices, and 69% of mobile users will delete emails that aren’t optimized for their device. This means that if you are not working to optimize your marketing emails for mobile then you may be missing out on the opportunity to reach these mobile consumers.

If you want to get the most out of your marketing emails and know why email marketing works, then it’s vital that your email content is optimized for mobile devices.

There are a few things that you should keep in mind when developing mobile-friendly emails:

• Keep it simple. Use a clean and simple email design that translates well to a smaller screen. Start with a responsive template that you know subscribers will be able to read on their mobile devices.
• Limit your images. Images are a great way to engage your audience. However, you should be limit the amount of images in your email messages. Too many images can take a long time to load, and larger images may not be viewable on a smaller screen without excessive scrolling.
• Optimize your text. Not only do you need to pay attention to the images that you use in your email messages, but you will also have to be conscious about your text. You want it to be easy to read and scroll through on a smaller device screen. Make sure the message gets to the point right away and avoid using long paragraphs.
• Use CTA buttons. When it comes to your email call-to-action, use a button instead of a link. Buttons are easier to click on a touchscreen device than links. Make the button large enough for those with larger fingers to easily click and navigate to the next step in the buyers journey.

More and more consumers are going mobile every day. If you want to catch the attention of this growing audience, your small business should invest in email marketing that’s optimized for mobile device users.

Email Marketing has More Features

Social media marketing may be a hit now but we can’t deny the fact that it has its own limitations. For instance, social media posts and ads have limited characters and fields. You need to convey your message in a short, concise manner so as not to violate the social media ads’ requirement.

On the other hand, emails are more interactive. You can use the full features of HTML. And you can also personalize the content. Plus, the media that you can include is unlimited.

Email Marketing is Affordable

Most small businesses are working with a limited budget, which means that they need to find the most affordable ways to reach and engage their audience. Email marketing is a cost-effective digital marketing tactic that takes very little investment to get started. Additionally, it is also relatively inexpensive to maintain over time, allowing small businesses to get more for their marketing spend.

It’s no surprise why so many small business owners are eager to start developing email marketing campaigns.

While traditional marketing tactics like print and TV ads or direct mail can cost thousands of dollars over the course of a year, email marketing allows small businesses to reach a wide audience for just pennies per recipient. Such a significant ROI allows you to do more with less, which why email marketing is great for small businesses that are working with smaller budgets.

The costs involved with this marketing strategy are relatively few. That being said, the exact costs of your campaigns will depend on a few different factors, including what resources you have in-house. In addition to creating an email strategy and identifying campaign opportunities, you will also need to decide on who will create the marketing content and implement your campaigns.

Businesses Achieve High Email Marketing ROI

Now that you know how affordable email marketing can be for your organization, let’s talk about ROI. One of the top reasons why email marketing is so effective for small businesses is that it provides a strong return on investment. No matter how tight your small business marketing budget may be, you can still take advantage of the immense benefits that email marketing provides.

Consumers who receive marketing emails tend to spend more, providing an attractive ROI for small businesses.

Though the actual percentage of email marketing ROI will vary from business to business, there are a number of ways why email marketing provides value for small business owners:

• Email marketing increases company revenue. The most obvious way that email marketing helps provide a positive ROI for small businesses is by helping to increase revenue. Email allows you to reach a wide and willing audience while also keeping costs relatively low, leading to positive revenues.
• Email drives more traffic to your company website. Another way that email provides a return on investment is by helping drive more traffic to your company’s website. Email subscribers are more likely to be qualified leads, which means that this traffic is relevant, increasing the chances of conversion.
• Email marketing can improve sales conversions. Marketing emails work well as part of your lead nurturing campaigns as they can help move leads through the marketing funnel quickly and effectively. This means that email marketing is an effective way to improve sales conversions.
• Email helps you improve brand awareness. Increasing visibility and building relationships with your target consumers is an important part of not only landing new sales but sustaining repeat sales over time. Email campaigns like email marketing newsletters help you build brand awareness, which contributes to sustainable growth over time.

When you are working with a limited marketing budget, it’s important that you get the most for your marketing spend. Email marketing helps small businesses get a significant return on their marketing investment, no matter how limited their budget may be.  

Email Integrates Well with Other Tactics

Yet another one of the top benefits of email marketing for small businesses is that it integrates well with other marketing tactics. Email does not have to be used in a vacuum. Small businesses can create marketing emails to meet a variety of marketing goals and use email to support a number of other campaigns. This allows them to get the most out of their marketing spend.

For example, email marketing integrates well with social media marketing. If you are running a social media contest or giveaway, you can drum up excitement for the campaign through email. Additionally, you can use email marketing to grow your social media audience by including social share buttons and CTAs within your email content.

Email marketing is versatile, allowing small business owners to integrate this tactic into their other digital marketing campaigns like social media.

Another way that email marketing can be integrated with other tactics is by offering your business a platform for promoting new content. Content marketing is a vital part of any digital marketing strategy as it allows your business to educate, entertain, and connect with your leads and customers. However, your content marketing is only effective if you have a way of getting your content assets in front of your leads. Email is an effective way to promote this content across your target market, allowing you to get more eyes on your content and drive more traffic back to your site.

Don’t let the intricacies of email marketing hold you back from using this tactic to grow your business.

Has email marketing got you scratching your head?  check out email marketing services page. Still have a question? Leave it in the comments below, and one of our experts will be happy to answer you.

source: https://www.lyfemarketing.com/blog/why-email-marketing/