I promised to be back and here we are, with possibly the most important discussion about why email marketing is important for business. Let’s get right into that.
Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets have certainly become important avenues for online marketing campaigns, but good old fashioned email marketing still holds a great deal of value for organizations and businesses of all sizes.
In fact, email marketing even has a number of advantages over some of the more “cutting edge” marketing techniques that some tend to focus on. Here are a few of the top reasons why email marketing is important for businesses today.
Email Marketing is Personal
Email is a personal and direct way of initiating a “one to one” conversation with prospects and existing customers.
Based on the information you request on a sign-up page in addition to the email address, you may be able to make sure you’re targeting that individual most appropriately.
For example, you might ask a prospect to check boxes indicating their areas of interest while signing up, and then use this information to decide what types of email messages to send to them later.
Email Marketing is Trusted
Since reputable businesses only engage in email marketing to individuals who have signed up to receive emails, this marketing channel is inherently trusted by the recipient. The individuals you’re marketing to have already decided that your business is one they’re interested in hearing more from – that’s why they signed up for your email list. (Don’t be tempted to send unsolicited emails to people who haven’t signed up with you; you may find yourself on a spam list, and getting off that list can be very difficult.)
Email Marketing is Measurable
Because the action items in each email generally consist of links back to your website (or to your Facebook page), you can set up special landing pages in order to measure the “click through” rates for each of your communications. On average, click through rates are generally in the 4%-5% range, so being able to measure your response rates and improve performance even slightly can have a significant benefit to your bottom line.
Email Marketing Works
This is perhaps the most important factor for a business to consider when deciding whether to use email marketing is its effectiveness. Industry surveys continue to confirm that email marketing generally has the highest return on investment of all other marketing tactics. Simply put, email marketing works.
Email Marketing is Affordable
In relation to the benefits you’re likely to receive back, email marketing is one of the most affordable methods for marketing your business. If you have a very small list you can consider administering it manually. However, once your list grows to a certain size you may wish to take advantage of a professional email list management service. Most of these services are quite affordable, and provide you with a variety of pricing options.
In the next post we’ll take a closer look at some of the leading services, and the pros and cons of each. It’s not always easy picking the right service (hint: there probably isn’t a perfect autoresponder unless you code it yourself), but at least we’ll cover some of those details so you can make an informed decision.
