I was talking to a business colleague of mine who is in the high end residential real estate business about his marketing. He creates beautiful brochures for the million dollar plus homes he sells. I asked him what else he did for marketing. He said that he used to spend a lot of time and resources doing online marketing especially with social media and was disappointed with the results. The only online marketing that seemed to work for him was email marketing. While I didn’t explore why his social media marketing didn’t work, I do find many businesses have a lot of success with email marketing just like my colleague. While some experts may say that email marketing is going away I would have to disagree. I’ve been using email marketing since I started my business in 2007 and have found it to be extremely valuable. Along the way, I’ve used industry leading marketing agencies like Web Presence Ltd and seen the power of email marketing with my own eyes.
Here are five reasons why I’m believe that email marketing should be a valuable tool in your arsenal as well.
1. Your Online Driver’s License
Everybody has an email account. As matter of fact most people have several email accounts. I personally have over six email accounts (it’s tough to keep track of them all!). Regardless how many you have, no one can register for an online account without one. It is your online driver’s license. For us a business owners, we can’t market to somebody unless we have their contact information and that starts with an email account. While we don’t need a lot of information we need at a minimum an email address to market online. The key is to exchange something of value like a free e-book or coupon in exchange for a prospect’s email address.
2. Email Marketing is Legit
Email service providers (ESPs) monitor their users to make sure that no one abuses the integrity of the system. If someone one is using an ESP to spam people then their accounts are immediately suspended. If the prospect or customer no longer wants to receive your email then they can easily remove themselves off your list within a few seconds. You can use web to lead Salesforce to keep customers up to date with new products, which will hopefully result in a sale. Since we want to target only those who are interested in our products and services we should be happy when folks opt-out. All of this works because systems, processes, and tools are in place. Using a customer data platform will help you with your marketing, and keep your customers engaged with you.
3. Metrics That Matter
Email marketing can provide very useful statistics on open rates and click through rates. Knowing what people are interested when sending out offers newsletters. We typically see open rates from 15 to 25% or more. Click through rates are even more valuable since it shows us what really interests and engages subscribers. This is valuable feedback that we can use to improve our product and service offerings through product improvement or better marketing.
4. Robust Technology That Integrates Your Online Presence
There are many full-featured email marketing solutions such as AWeber, MaleChimp, Infusionsoft, Vertical Response and Constant Contact [Full disclosure: I’m an Authorized Local Expert for Constant Contact and a user]. Advances in email marketing allow you to integrate it with your website, blog, and social media. These solutions continue to get better and easier to use.
5. It’s Affordable and Effective
If you compare the cost of email marketing to any other marketing tools you’ll find that it’s very cost effective, much like social media marketing, check out https://www.onlinerockershub.com/social-media-marketing-tips-business.html
for specific tips on how best to utilise social media for your business. A business can send newsletters or offers to thousands of prospects for less than $50 a month. Compare that to direct mail which costs you $.40 per individual and doesn’t even taking account the cost of printing the materials. More importantly, those emails get opened by 15 to 25% of the recipients. According to the Direct Marketing Association, The ROI on email is $28.50 compared to direct mail which is $7.
In summary, email marketing needs to be a vital part of your marketing system and integrated into your total online presence. While some may consider it old school, it is still an excellent and affordable marketing tool for any size business.