There has always been a debate within the marketing industry over the success of e-mail marketing as many individuals believe that this tool outshines its competitors whilst others believe it has failed from the get-go. However, the statistics speak for themselves. 4.6 billion users are expected to use emails by 2025 and it is quite possible to get $36 (R651,09) ROI for every dollar spent on email marketing. In addition, 64% of small businesses make use of email marketing.
Although there are many competitive marketing channels that each offer a wide variety of tools and opportunities, emails have their own share of benefits and are still seen as one of the most powerful forms of communication for businesses.
What is email marketing?
Email marketing is one of the oldest tools of digital marketing and as the name suggests, it is a form of communication that happens over emails where marketers target their potential and existing customers in hopes of making a sale or encouraging customers to continue buying their products. The usual process to achieve this starts by creating an email list of potential recipients and sending them information about a company’s latest offers, value-add content and other insightful information.
The benefits of email marketing
- Cost-effective and great ROI
- Shareable and measurable
- Communicate with target demographics
- Customer retention
- Increase website traffic with CTAs
There have been many studies done on the benefits of email marketing and they have all produced many differing and interesting results. However, the one common factor found in each study is the benefit of ROI. E-mail marketing has a better return on investment when compared to any other marketing channel and this alone is an immense benefit for any type of business. Within the last few years, there has been an uprising of various social media channels that have proven great success but email users have been growing just as progressively due to the fact that they can be personalised based on the interests and demands of consumers whereas this may be less achievable on social media.
Another great benefit of e-mail marketing is that it is easily shareable and measurable. As soon as a user receives an email they can effortlessly forward it to anyone they please, making it an effective method of sharing large amounts of informative content. The initial setting up of an email list and sharing content through emails is not a complicated task and marketing automation software acts as a great tool to assist in creating and customising emails whilst segregating email lists.
When it comes to email marketing, the results are almost instantaneous and easy to measure. The most common type of metric used to measure the success of an email marketing campaign is click-through rate (CTR). This highlights the percentage of people who have clicked on the links mentioned in the emails. Other metrics of measurement include unsubscribe rate, open rate, bounce rate, conversation rate and list growth rate.
Email marketing has an immensely unique benefit when compared to other platforms since the entire email list is permission-based which means customers are receiving your content willingly. In addition, this allows for reaching a wide variety of audiences at a time that suits their busy schedules.
Email segmentation allows you to segment the audience and schedule emails to arrive at a time when the receivers are likely to be active online in order to read them in order to obtain a better chance for interaction as opposed to sending emails across the globe without careful consideration of time zones. In addition, email marketing gives companies the flexibility of reaching audiences on multiple devices because emails are just as accessible on phones and tablets as they are on desktops.
A comprehensive email strategy empowers a business to not only acquire new customers but to also gain customer retention. Once a business has targeted established customers by sharing valuable content, running retargeting campaigns and personalised messaging based on customer preferences, it may be possible that customers are not interested in buying the products for a second time. However, if a business continues to interact with these customers they will become loyal to the brand and recommend the business to other prospects.
Additionally, you can gain feedback by targeting existing customers in order to tweak the marketing campaign to attract new customers by leveraging possible pain points mentioned by previous customers.
Email marketing offers an excellent opportunity to increase website traffic by including a CTA at the end of every email sent out. This will drive prospects to click the link as they are taken directly to your website which ultimately boosts traffic. The most effective way to increase click-through rates is by producing great content and presenting great offers whilst making sure to create landing pages that are relevant to offers mentioned in emails.
Now that we have established the importance and effectiveness of email marketing if your business is interested in adopting this approach, your next step is to contact your trusted advisors in customer communication management. Communication Genetics is here to assist you with the entire process, ensuring that your business stays ahead of its competitors.
