The popularity of social media, content and SEO for marketing has led to a strong belief that emails as a marketing tool are dying and they are increasingly becoming redundant in the marketing mix of small businesses. But nothing could be further from the truth. Email still remains the most effective way of acquiring customers as compared to social media, and is 40 times more effective than Facebook and Twitter combined. Small businesses ignore email marketing at their own risk. Let’s take a look at a few reasons why this is the case.
Your marketing message has more chances of getting seen
Yes, email is no longer a consumer’s preferred channel for personal communication; that spot has been usurped by social media networks. But don’t say RIP email just yet, because a massive 91% of people still use their email at least once daily.
This means a large percentage of your target consumers can come across your marketing message when they check their inbox. And the inbox gives you an equal opportunity to make an impact on the target consumer. It plays no favorites. If your email grabs attention, it will be opened; your email will compete with other marketing emails that are vying for consumer attention and it all boils down to the quality of your emails.
Reaching the Target Audience
If you only focus on a social media marketing strategy, what you are benefitting from is the ‘potential reach‘ of your marketing message. For example, if your business’s Facebook page has an ‘X’ amount of likes this doesn’t mean the marketing message you post will reach X amount of people. The truth is, it only has the potential to reach that many people.
On the other hand, when you send an email, you know it will reach the consumer it is intended to reach. No doubt, the recipient has the option not to open the email; there will also be a percentage of email messages that will be delivered to junk folder or will be blocked by the user.
But considering 66% of online consumers have made a purchase based on the commercial emails they receive, there is no doubt there is a bigger chance of your email being opened rather than not being opened.
Some Solid ROI
What small businesses are usually worried about is the returns-on-investment and this is where e-mail marketing doesn’t disappoint. A Direct Marketing Association survey puts the returns of email marketing at 4300%.
That’s some massive ROI that you are losing out on, if you are not using email marketing. One argument that is put forward in order to ignore email marketing for an option like social media is that the latter is free and therefore the ROI is much bigger. No, social media marketing is not free. Both forms of marketing require investment and will only deliver returns if you go about them the right way.
There is absolutely no doubt email marketing is an effective way of generating leads, but this won’t happen if you are unable to have a reliable and effective email marketing strategy in place.
The contours of this strategy include:
- You will first need to build an email opt-in page that works. An easy sign-up process and telling consumers about the benefits of signing up for your email list will boost the opt-in rates.
- The email needs to hook the reader with its subject line. Getting your subject line wrong will mean the email makes its way to the target reader’s spam folder. Avoiding the spam filters is a must if you want to ensure your email doesn’t end up in spam.
- Make sure that the most important call-to-action content/buttons are placed above the fold, in your email. Don’t make the reader scroll down to read the most important message.
- The content of your email must make the reader want to go through the entire email. Right at the onset, tell him/her why they are receiving the email. Readers must be given a reason to go through the email, at the start; otherwise you lose their attention quickly.
- The message in the email must be clear and concise. Your consumer is impatient and doesn’t have the time to go through a lengthy email. Make it as short and actionable as possible.
- Adopt a personal approach while addressing the recipient. If you know their name, address them by their name and if possible, your content must have a sentence or two that shows you actually know the user.
Wrapping it up
Email marketing is a ‘must use’ marketing tactic for small businesses purely because of the rich dividends it brings to the table. There is very little ambiguity about email marketing as you know it, more often than not, will reach the intended recipient and if you’ve used the best practices of email creation, there is very little reason why it won’t be opened. All in all, email marketing has every chance of being alive and kicking long after other email marketing tactics have kicked the bucket.
Small businesses will do well to trust email marketing because 60% of marketers believe it is producing ROI and 32% marketers believe it will eventually produce ROI (Marketing Sherpa). Ignoring it is simply not an option.
Author: Lori Wagoner is a community manager at MoneyMailerSeattle.com – A Direct Mail Advertising Company. She’s involved in corporate efforts to help businesses get more customers from the internet and mobile and keep them for longer. You can reach her @LoriDWagoner on Twitter.
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