Why Email Marketing Matters?
Photo courtesy of Unsplash
I made my first email id in 2005. I never knew email marketing will reach such great heights. Back then, I felt like a cool kid to even have an email id. Believe me! It was cool. My classmates asked me to create one for them.
But it was all a play for me. It’s very ironic that today it has become an important marketing tool that a business must employ.
Earlier, businesses were more drawn to putting their product out in the market and hoped for people to buy it. But now, businesses are placing their customers in the center and giving them the power to choose. From employing a product-driven approach, somehow, businesses have shifted to a customer-centric approach.
People believe in numbers and it’s a wonderful opportunity to mention that:
“Consumers check personal email for an average of 2.5 hours each weekday while at work”. (Source)
Okay, one more.
“Consumers believe email is more likely to be around in 10 years than Facebook, Twitter, and cable television”. (Source)
Don’t hold your breath. I know you hold the same belief. But do you know over the years, why email marketing has gained trust among customers and marketers? Does it really matter in today’s scenario?
Yes, it does. Here’s why:
1. For a Top-notch Deliverability:
Getting a new follower on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook is very different from gaining a new lead or subscriber. For instance: if you send a marketing message to your new follower, let’s say on Facebook, will that follower even get your message?
There’s no guarantee.
A report states that “E-mail remains a significantly more effective way to acquire customers than social media—nearly 40 times that of Facebook and Twitter combined”.
Facebook has already made changes in the times of your post appearing in any of your followers' News Feed in the wake of paid advertising options back in 2014! And the fact that email id is required everywhere to sign up, says a lot.
By sending emails, you have the power to track deliverability and ensure that all your subscribers get your message in their inbox. The second reason for “why email marketing matters” is connected to this one. Read on.
Photo courtesy of Unsplash
2. From Capturing Leads to Customer Conversions
Each subscriber behaves in a certain way and is somewhere, a potential customer. Needless to say, but each marketer focuses to drive conversions. They develop unique strategies, personalized messages, creative designs, specialized offers, and incorporate everything into one single email.
All this for what? They do it to nurture the lead into a paying customer.
Marketers take extra care of their potential customer’s journeys. They use different ESPs to create sales campaigns, drip campaigns, automation sequences, and what not to provide a unique experience to all their potential customers.
In fact, “Email marketing drives more conversions than any other marketing channel, including search and social” (Source)
Moreover, “4.24% of visitors from email marketing buy something compared to only 2.49% of visitors from search engines and .59% from social media.” (Source)
It is a well-known fact that emails are measurable. Any good email service provider provides a detailed metric of open rates, click-through-rates, bounce rates, and more. So, along with being measurable, it is also a highly preferred mode of communication by the customers.
There are many email marketing tools that have game up their business. They have come up with a more intuitive approach and affordable pricing to give businesses a better chance to generate leads and conversions. The key touchpoint to remember is finding the tool that aligns with your business needs and budget.
For instance, everyone is aware of Mailchimp for its huge customer base but it might not be the best fit for a small or medium sized business as it is a costly tool. Finding a tool that is in sync with your needs is what you should focus on. There are many other alternatives in the market. Just go and explore.
Lastly, email marketing is surely a trump card to generate leads and increase conversions. Our friends at Pixpa has written a great guide on marketing tips for Ecommerce site. Check it out.
3. The Art of Personalization
You have personal email ids of each of your subscribers. It gives you the edge over other distribution platforms and marketing channels. With so many brilliant and intuitive email service providers (ESPs) in the market, one can leverage it to create personalized emails for your target audience.
Besides providing amazing email templates and ensuring email deliverability, these ESPs are a great asset for segmenting your contact base into target groups. Email marketing equals smart and personalized marketing.
Now imagine, you are an eCommerce retailer who sells different fashion accessories and apparel. You segmented your email contact base into five different target groups according to age, geography, or gender. Now you may design and create your email according to the target groups.
Will you be willing to run different personalized ads on different platforms for different target audiences? If yes, then either you are a billionaire or it will leave holes in your pocket.
My next reason is based on the fact that people who subscribe to your emails have agreed and given you their permission to hear exclusively from you.
Photo courtesy of Unsplash
4. Strict Laws - Diminishing the Number of Spammers
Email marketing is not a piece of cake. If you are running a business and leveraging email marketing to communicate with your customers, then you are required to follow all the rules and fulfill the compliances of SPAM laws, according to the geographies.
If any spammer tries to dupe customers by sending deceitful emails, then they have to pay hefty penalties. So the emails that customers receive in their inbox are quite legit or because they signed up for it.
Let’s take a detour here and do a quick comparison of why email marketing is more legit.
Suppose you are into a fashion merchandising business and you choose to go for email marketing. Your customers join your email list and agree to receive all updates and information regarding your business through emails.
The customers know that they will receive all promotional materials, advertisements, deals, coupons, etc. because they signed up for it. And now if you choose any other marketing technique and they see your advertisement on their social media handle, they will be bewildered. When did they sign up to see the ads?
Understood what I am talking about?
Anyway, back to the SPAM laws. So any commercial business has to follow different laws like CAN-SPAM Act followed in the US, General Data Protection Regulation followed in EU, Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation, and many more, depending on their customer’s location.
It just doesn’t end at complying with the laws. Each commercial or promotional email has to go through several authentication tests to prove that they are not spam.
Enough about the laws. Let’s talk about money.
5. The ROI Factor
Marketers are aware of the fact that emails are the best way to drive conversions. You want numbers again? Here you go.
According to a report, “Email has an average ROI of $38 for each $1 spent. A big increase over the 24.93 reported in 2013”.
Surprised? It is quite evident that this marketing channel is the most efficient for driving the business forward. Do you know why is that so?
The answer boils down to the personalized messages. Businesses take email marketing as a very important tool to generate positive ROI. They put in a lot of effort into curating and creating highly personalized messages for their target audience.
Moreover, they use intuitive email service providers to track, observe, and analyze their subscriber’s behavior so that they could nurture each lead and convert them to their customers.
To give you an example, many marketers are going in for different ESPs to execute their email marketing operations. I know the first thought that comes to people’s mind when thinking about an email service provider is Mailchimp.
No doubt, it’s an amazing tool to work with but I personally find Mailchimp’s pricing quite high and out of my budget. Yes, that’s right. I am not rich. But if you don’t have any budget issues, you may go for this tool. An advice: If you want a positive ROI, you need to look after the choices you make.
Well enough of my personal experience. I would just suggest you to take free trials for the email marketing tools that you are interested in and then decide for yourself.
Photo courtesy of Unsplash
In Conclusion
So are you convinced?
Creating unique and personalized messages for hyper segmented audiences has surely become a task. Marketers are burning midnight lamps to come up with an effective and ROI driven email marketing strategy.
And those who think email marketing is not prevalent, I request them to see the statistics that prove the opposite. Customers are more driven to value-based messages and businesses are providing that value through the art of effective email marketing.
________________________________________________________________________
Written by Shivani Srivastava. A content marketer by heart, Shivani is passionate about writing anything in the field of the technological landscape. She’s written this guest blog for SendX: Email Marketing Software.
No comments:
Post a Comment