Did you know that there are almost 150,000 emails sent per minute? This emphasizes the fact that email is alive and well in spite of the increasing numbers of reliable communication platforms.
This is also why email marketing was and still is an important strategy for every business. It’s great at converting leads into consumers, and it’s a great way to reach consumers right where they are looking.
If you’re not convinced about the importance of email marketing, keep on reading. Learn to get better at it, too, and see your conversions shot up.
The Importance of Email Marketing and Why You Need It
Marketers are turning their attention to SEO, SMM, and other ways to reach consumers. Does that mean, however, that email marketing is now obsolete?
On the contrary, it’s still going strong as it has unique advantages. See below what it can do for your business.
1. Email is the Preferred Communication Channel
Did you know that 77% of people getting marketing messages through email? This means they’re less likely to ignore an email from you versus an ad on social media, for example. For this reason, email conversion rates are at least 3 times higher than that of social media posts.
2. It Increases Brand Awareness
Each time you appear on their inbox, you increase the customer’s awareness of you even if they don’t click that email. You stay on top of their minds, and if you pair your efforts with a catchy subject and valuable content, you build value and relationship with the customer over time.
Don’t worry if they don’t buy or use a service at once. With a constant stream of valuable emails from you, your leads will turn into loyal customers in no time.
3. It’s a Cost-Effective Strategy
What’s great about email marketing is that you don’t need much to start your campaign. All you need are quality content, a great subject, and good graphics to attract customers. Even though you’ll need to pay for a person to do these things, it’s still cheaper than having to pay for ad space on Google or Facebook, printing posters and flyers, and mail delivery fees.
Because of the low costs, its return on investment is quite attractive. In general, businesses get back as much as $38 for every dollar they spend on email marketing.
4. It Provides Precise Metrics
To know whether your campaign is working or not, you have to look at the metrics. You’ll have to see what has changed for the better and what hasn’t. In email marketing, in particular, you’ll have to look at the visits through email, click-through rate, conversions, open rates, and unsubscribe rates.
The good news is that these are pretty easy to track. This is unlike other strategies that only provide estimated data, hence estimated results. You can then use the data you get from your campaign to learn your customers’ likes, dislikes, and behavior.
Best Practices for Email Marketing
Now that you why email marketing is important for your business, it’s time to get started. Here are the email campaigns best practices.
1. Grow Your Email List
The first step is to build an email list with leads who want to hear from you. Some businesses buy a list to make this step shorter, but this isn’t recommended. Your email provider can penalize you for this and you won’t build a valuable relationship this way.
You can get email address using 2 reputable ways, both of which are free. One is offering an attractive and valuable lead magnet, such as an ebook, report, checklist, and such, in exchange for their email address. Another is by having them fill up an opt-in form.
Then, make sure to keep your email list fresh by removing inactive subscribers once in a while. You may also use a Bulk Email Verifier to clean email addresses.
2. Personalize Your Emails Using Segmentation
There’s no email that’s perfect for everybody, yet it’s too time-consuming to personalize each email. One way to target specific people is to use segmentation, in which you break down your list into groups. This allows you to send a personalized email related to them in one way or another.
You can divide them according to age, location, occupation, gender, interests, and other segments you can think of. You can even send different emails according to their activity or inactivity.
3. Time Your Emails
Even if you have an attention-grabbing subject line paired with well-written content and a clear CTA, none of this will matter if the timing is wrong. At certain times of the day, your subscribers may be too busy to open a marketing email. Your email may be too early or too late for your email list, too, which will push it further down the inbox.
How do you know what day and what time to send an email? There’s only one way to find out, and that is to test by sending out the same email at different times of the day. After which, you can gather and study the data to see the optimum time for your subscribers to read your email.
4. Talk to One Person
When you send out an email, you send it out to a large group of people, but you don’t need to make it seem that way. When writing out an email copy, write as if you’re talking to only one person. Address the recipient by name, which is now possible using a handful of tools.
For this to work, you have to know and understand your buyer persona. This allows you to send an email that speaks to them on a more personal level, building trust and increasing your conversion rate.
Use Email Marketing in Tandem with Other Campaigns
While the importance of email marketing is evident, you shouldn’t stick to only it and disregard other marketing strategies.
Not sure which ones to rely on? Uncertain which ones suit your business?
We’ve got you covered! Feel free to read our guide today. Keep up with the ever-changing trends and make sure to keep yourself updated with the latest digital marketing ideas here.