In this day and age of IM-ing, DM-ing and SMS-ing, you may wonder if emailing still has any relevance. When it comes to the business world, about four billion people say, YES!
These statistics may surprise you but studies show that email remains one of the top forms of marketing.
- In 2019, there were 3.9 billion email users worldwide and that number is expected to grow to 4.3 billion by 2023.
- Traffic from email campaigns has an average conversion rate of 4.29 percent, which is higher than the averages for traffic from search, direct and social media.
- For every dollar you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $42, which is higher than you can expect from any other form of marketing—digital or otherwise.
Furthermore, 40 percent of B2B marketers say email newsletters are most critical to their content marketing success.
Clearly, email is NOT dead. Here’s why an effective email marketing strategy can help achieve your company’s business goals.
Benefits of Email Marketing & Newsletters
Benefit #1: Communicate with your audience. Eblasts and newsletters are a cost-effective way of communicating important updates, sharing content and building brand awareness with audiences. “It is by far the preferred way to receive updates from brands as 99 percent of consumers check their email every day,” according to HubSpot.
“Email marketing is a useful research tool for gathering data on point-of-purchase and client satisfaction surveys that determine your organization’s Net Promoter Score, which measures the loyalty of customers to a company,” explains Traci Tucker, Vice President, Client Service at Marketing Direction. “It’s also a great way to communicate time sensitive messages such as changes to a phone number or business address or promote a flash sale.”
And don’t forget about communicating important information internally throughout your organization. “Internal eblasts and newsletters keep your entire team in the loop on new products and services, enhancements, operational changes, new team members, new clients and significant new partnerships,” says Traci.
Benefit #2: Drive traffic to your website. Email marketing campaigns help keep potential customers engaged with your brand by sending them to your site which in turn improves your Search Engine Optimization (SEO). “When you’re creating an email that links to your content, keep in mind that each email should contain a call to action so readers can click through to your site,” suggests Rebecca Riserbato at HubSpot.
Benefit #3: Build relationships. Incorporating video into your eblasts helps you build name recognition which leads to making the personal connections that foster relationships and future sales. Internally, use video to build teamwork and loyalty by recognizing team members for outstanding performance or securing an important client. A video is also an engaging way to communicate your annual ‘state of the company’ message.
Choose the Right Service
Choosing the right email marketing service is critical to ensuring your emails actually get delivered, otherwise you wind up paying a lot of money for little results. Features of a good email marketing service should enable you to:
- create highly engaging email newsletters with an easy user interface,
- send bulk emails that are personalized and targeted with ease, aka ‘marketing automation’,
- manage your contact list easily and track the performance of your email marketing.
Most importantly, a good email service provider ensures that your email campaigns do not end up in the spam folder.
Traci recommends selecting a platform based on your needs. For example, if you are using a series of emails to promote ecommerce sales and need automation based on the action recipients take, use a system such as Klaviyo, which allows you to set up decision-tree type campaigns, timelines and transactional emails. If an email is sent out about a sale, the list it was sent to can automatically be split into those who made a purchase, those who clicked but didn’t make a purchase, and those who didn’t click. Each of these groups then receive a customized follow-up email based on the action they took.
Some services offer integration of event management, surveys and sharing on social media, which makes it easy to incorporate these activities with your emails. Whatever service you choose, keep the following in mind:
- Brand your emails to support your branding image and messaging.
- Make sure it looks professional.
- Review the emails to ensure they are free from errors and typos, the formatting looks good on both desktop and mobile devices, that images are appropriate and that all the links function properly.
Manage Your Lists
Keeping your list(s) updated is critical to reducing the number of bounces your email campaign encounters. If there are a lot of email addresses on your list that are out of date, or if you purchased a low-quality email list, you may be sending your eblasts nowhere or to people who have no interest in your content. “Careful list cultivation is key to a successful email program,” states Traci.
Targeted lists—such as a listing of clients segmented according to the product/service they use—can further refine who gets specific messages geared toward their interests or purchase history. It is especially helpful for members of your sales team to develop their own personalized lists to communicate with their clients, prospects and other key contacts.
Note that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has established a specific set of rules to follow when sending out eblasts and newsletters in order to be CAN-SPAM compliant. It is very important to be aware of who you can and can’t send to, how you send messages and that you make sure to give recipients a clear and obvious way to opt out or unsubscribe. Failure to abide by these rules can result in losing your email account altogether and even your website URL being blacklisted.
An astonishing 99 percent of consumers check their email every day and it is by far the preferred way to receive updates from brands. Clearly, eblasts and newsletters remain a viable—and cost-effective—option to include in your marketing toolbox. For help determining the best emailing solution for you, as well as developing valuable content your clients want to see, contact Marketing Direction.
