Email marketing has been around for a long time. Some companies wouldn’t consider using email marketing, assuming it’s old.
Email marketing may be old, but it is still one of the most popular forms of marketing to this day.
It is said that 99% of email users check their email every day, some as much as 20 times a day! It’s often the first thing people do online. (1)
77% of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement over the last 12 months. (2)
As a marketer, this is something you can’t ignore. Let’s have a look at some of the benefits of email marketing, to show you why it is worth having in your strategy.
Improving Sales
Email marketing campaigns can show potential buyers your products in the email. You can push sales by including a discount code and offers. Often you can trigger an abandoned cart email if they don’t purchase.
Improves Website Traffic
Creating a campaign for an email can be great for improving website traffic. This campaign can be anything from a welcome email with a discount code, product promotion, abandoned cart, etc – anything promoting and sending traffic to your website. You can keep track of the bounce rate, clicks, and conversion rate to see if your emails are converting people to buy.
Maximise the emails where you get good engagement and analysis the ones where you don’t.
Reaching your audience
When it comes to marketing, it can be difficult to know when to post. Not everyone manages to see your marketing content, especially if they don’t visit social media often.
With email marketing, many of us check our emails multiple times a day. Getting your content/product/service into that inbox means you will be directly in front of your audience, just ensure you have a catchy subject, to get that email opened.
Cost effective
Email marketing is more cost effective than other marketing methods to target an interested audience.
All you need is an email marketing tool that can securely store your contact data as well as safely send emails with the correct legal compliance information; add in good copywriting and imagery and you can create a successful campaign.
There are several tools including free options, which makes your email marketing virtually cost free (except for time). Most tools, even at the free level, come with a nice looking email template, so you don’t have to spend lots of time building something. Most also enable some level of tracking so you can see what works and what doesn’t.
Whilst the benefits of email marketing seem clear there are some legal compliance issues you must be aware of. To be 100% sure you are emailing interested parties, you will need their consent to be emailed – usually, this is obtained from a sign up form on your website. This sign up form is often functionality included with your email marketing software.
There are other instances where you can send email marketing called ‘soft opt-in’, but consent is the clearest way to ensure you are following UK and European Laws.
In addition, you must allow those signed up, to easily unsubscribe from your email updates and there are other rules you must follow with regard to an individual’s data.
The Information Commissioners Office (ICO) are an independent UK body set to uphold information right and they lay out the laws and your responsibility when sending emails under them. You can find out more on their website page: Electronic mail marketing.
A tip for when you are creating those emails is to ensure you personalise the content where you can. This can be as simple as using a first name. Emails that include the first name of the recipient in their subject line have a higher clickthrough rate than those that don’t (2).
Alternatively, you can group your audience, called segmenting your audience, so the email is aimed at certain people with some similarity, for example, all those that have bought a certain product, have a particular interest, etc. You can then send an email personalised with the content just for that group but you’ll need to ensure you capturing this data on sign up. Sending emails with content your recipients are already interested it will always lead to better engagement and ultimately conversion.
Email marketing is one of the best ways to reach your audience personally and cost effectively, whilst being able to keep track of your audience and their insights. Email is where people go to check information more than once a day, so it’s worth using!
If you are thinking of using email marketing for your business, or need some extra help, don’t hesitate to get in contact with us.
