Some businesses undervalue the use of email marketing. Email marketing is estimated to be around 40 times more effective than modern forms of advertising on social media sites like Facebook. When done right, it can boost traffic to your business’s website and draw more public attention.
What is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is a tactic used by many businesses that involves the sending of commercial messages to a subscribed audience. These businesses will provide a subscription option on their website for those who want to stay in the know about the business, the availability of products, or to better explain a variety of services that they offer. Typically, businesses utilize email marketing for the following purposes:
- To send advertisements
- To promote sales
- As a business request
- To get donations
The purpose of email marketing is to entice customers and subscribers enough to close a sale on a product or service. When done effectively it can boost a business’s revenue and allow them to reach financial milestones.
What Are The Benefits of Email Marketing?
Email marketing tactics may seem dated in comparison to more modern marketing tactics, however, email marketing is a tried-and-true method that provides many benefits to businesses. Some of the benefits of email marketing are:
- It generates more traffic to your website– By using effective SEO strategies in your email marketing, you can appeal to clients and drive them to your website.
- It’s extremely profitable– According to a 2019 study conducted by the Data and Marketing Association, or DMA, for every $1 spent on email marketing, $42 is returned to the business as a result. That creates a massive profit for the businesses that choose to invest in email marketing.
- It allows you to connect with your customers– Connecting with your customers and understanding their buying habits, wants, and needs can help strengthen your email marketing. Through email marketing, you can further reach and engage with your customers
- It gets the word out about sales and discounts– Sending emails when you are having a sale or promotion will not only entice past customers but, it will also drive more viewers to your site and improve your SEO.
- It’s a productive self-promotion tactic– Oftentimes, business owners may feel a little shy promoting their own business. Email marketing makes this act simple and less pushy. The customers who opt-in for emails from your business already love your services or products so promoting new products and services to them will be easy and less nerve-wracking than promoting your business to those who may not be interested.
If you are interested in email marketing or want to know how to get started or grow your email list, this article goes into depth about what every business needs to know about email marketing before they begin utilizing it.
Useful Email Marketing Trends
Email marketing has evolved tremendously since it was first implemented by businesses. While trends are always subject to change, email marketing is only expected to grow as a viable marketing tactic in the next few years. Some current email marketing trends that will help grow your business are:
Personalization– Creating personal content for your customers can make them feel valued and can promote a positive response to your business. There are a variety of ways that you can utilize personalization in your email marketing tactics such as using subscriber’s names in the contents of the email, reminding customers about items that they were looking at or are in their cart, asking them how they liked their past purchase, and creating emails for certain customers like one-time customers, new customers, and returning customers.
Optimizing mobile emails– Although email marketing began when most consumers accessed their emails on a desktop or laptop, it is estimated that over 20% more people check their email on their mobile devices. When your subscribers open your email on their mobile device, your message, image, and overall display should be optimized to fit their device’s screen and should not buffer or fail to load. The best way to ensure that your emails are professional and accessible, hiring an email editor may prove to be profitable and overall beneficial for your business.
Making use of customer feedback– Positive customer reviews are a wonderful way for potential customers to see that your business has quality products or services. It may be beneficial to utilize those good reviews in your email marketing tactics. For example, if you notice that there is a group of potential buyers checking out a similar product but haven’t purchased it yet, you could create a specific email targeted towards them and include customer reviews of the product down below. This may be enough to convince the potential buyer to complete their purchase.
Showing your customers that you appreciate their business– After a customer purchases something from your business, sending an automated ‘thank you’ message can make them feel as though their business is much appreciated. It is also a good idea to email customers on their birthday and to send them a discount that they can put to use. You may also want to notify subscribed customers of future sales or product launches to thank them for their subscription.
Applying creativity– Some marketing emails can come across as boring or very cut-and-dry when their goal is to grab the attention of their subscribers. To help ensure that your marketing emails stand out from your competitors, hiring a graphic designer to create custom images, gifs, videos, and other creative media to implement in your emails will be a massive game-changer. Not only will it make your company seem more approachable, relatable, and modern, but it will also allow customers to be visually enticed to visit your website.
Current email marketing trends tend to focus on personalization and making the content appealing to particular customers instead of their entire customer base as a whole. Correctly implementing these email marketing trends and adapting to new trends that come out will guarantee that your business gets a ROI, or return on investment, for all the money you’ve put into this type of marketing.