Email marketing is not dead. In fact, quite the opposite — did you know that 73% of Millennials prefer that communications from businesses come via email, and that 99% of consumers check their email every day, with many feeling that email is the best way to receive updates from brands? These numbers highlight why it’s important to have a strong email marketing strategy.
Email marketing allows brands to build relationships with customers by speaking to them directly through their inbox. With the right content, email can become one of your brand’s most impactful marketing tools. Read on to learn about some of the top benefits of email marketing.
It generates the best results.
Email marketing has the best return on investment (ROI) and the highest conversion rate (66%) for purchases made in response to a promotional message. Compared with social media, email is 40 times more effective in attracting new customers.
You’ll attract and keep customers.
To keep customers coming back, brands need to provide value to their audience. Email allows companies to cultivate loyal customers because it adds value by providing information and resources even when customers aren’t making a purchase. Email also provides an opportunity to reach customers in real time, and can be tailored to be timely and relevant — for example, sending customers a special offer on their birthday, incorporating seasonal offers, or announcing a holiday sale. And with more people accessing email and other information on their mobile devices (54% of all emails are opened on a mobile device), well-designed emails provide a higher rate of conversion on mobile than through any other medium.
It improves brand awareness.
Email marketing can help improve your customers’ understanding of your brand. By communicating directly with your audience about your values, mission, products, and services, they will better understand what your company is about. Regularly featuring your company name and logo, memorable and unique content, and consistent branding in emails will increase brand recognition and attract new customers.
It’s cost-effective.
Email marketing campaigns are very cost-effective. They can be produced relatively quickly and don’t require a huge team of people to create. Email marketing software makes it easy to reach large numbers of customers for a very low cost. With the potential to earn up to $44 for every dollar spent on email marketing, it’s a very worthwhile channel to engage with.
You own your contact list.
When your brand posts on social media, you don’t own the contact list or even the information you post. The social media platform owns your content and follower list, and if that channel shuts down or goes away, you lose all of those followers and customers. That’s why it’s so important to build an email list: It’s a contact list you own, allowing you to communicate with your audience regardless of email provider. You also own all of the content you produce and send.
We recently wrote about Apple’s new privacy policy. Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft are similarly putting protections on user data. This means that email marketers can no longer see who opened emails, on what device, and at what time — which also means it’s definitely time to look at metrics beyond open rates. We know that open rates don’t necessarily correspond to a positive impact or result in a purchase. In fact, at Spodek & Co., we consider an email most effective when a customer clicks on a link in the email to perform the desired action.
Email marketing remains one of the best ways to reach your audience and can help increase sales, brand awareness, and leads. If you have any questions about how to create an effective email marketing strategy, reach out to our team today — we can help.
