Do you feel out of touch with your current customers? Do you get the feeling there might be a better way to earn new business and keep the clients you already have? If you have never considered using email marketing to grow your business, I recommend you keep reading.
Your competitors are considering it and some are actually using it right now to drive revenue and create top-of-mind awareness. The benefits far outweigh the cost considering email returned a staggering $43.62 for every dollar spent according to a study by the Direct Marketing Association.
While there are numerous benefits to using email marketing to stimulate growth, I decided to focus on four that are commonly overlooked.
Front Door Delivery
With the advent of social media, advertising has lost some if its “interrupt” power. That is to say, social media is much more of a passive marketing tool to engage your audience. I think this is actually a good thing. Who likes to be interrupted anyway? Pop-up ads, expanding banners, unsolicited audio and video… It only succeeds in tormenting people.
Email is an opportunity to achieve a graceful, opt-in interruption. With a carefully crafted headline and a value driven message, email is one of the last remaining opportunities businesses have to get directly in front of a customer or prospect. As long as your list consists of people who have requested to receive your email, you have a captive and targeted audience waiting to hear from you.
“Email outperforms social-media advertising three to one. ” – Direct Marketing Association
Email is Personal
Hello, Chris! Modern email marketing tools give its users the ability to customize nearly every aspect of their campaign. The most widely used technique is to simply put the customer’s name in the subject line or body of the email. Personalization is important because it strikes an emotional chord. Think about how nice it is to hear someone call your name… and even better, remember it!
Email provides many more dynamic opportunities to personalize an email campaign including sending a birthday greeting every year, delivering customized products or services, sharing important account information and so much more. The good news is that modern email marketing software can accomplish these custom edits on the fly, for everyone on your list. It can take a bit of effort to set it up, but once it’s up and running, it can literally manage itself.
Email is Professional
Facebook is not the most professional of platforms to promote your business. Nestled somewhere between a cute picture of a kitten licking cake batter from a spoon and some high school buddy touting the magical qualities of bacon is your post about a special offer coming up next week. What are the odds of your post actually getting noticed? I’m not saying it isn’t important for your business to be on Facebook – it should, but when it comes to sending a professional message, Facebook is not the best medium to accomplish this.
Email gives you the opportunity to control not only the message, but the environment in which it exists in. You own the stage when that email is opened. It is an opportunity to reinforce your professional brand and deliver meaningful content directly to your customer. Outside of a having a cup of coffee with each of your clients, email is the next best opportunity to deliver a direct message in a professional manner.
“Facebook and Twitter activity combined make up just 0.2% of the number of emails sent each day.” – Direct Marketing Association
Track Sales and Engagement
One of the best things about email marketing is its ability to track clicks. Imagine that your company offers a red and a blue widget and you want to deliver a special offer to your customers. Email will allow you to know who and how often your customers clicked on a link. The data can reveal many things including the fact that the blue widget was immensely more popular than the red one. With this information you can send a companion email the following week with more blue widgets. This is just one example of how the reports from your email activity can help you fine tune your message that will ultimately help your business stimulate growth.
Still not sure if email marketing is right for your business? Contact us for a planning session and a free trial account. We’re confident email marketing will drastically improve your business’s revenue, and brand awareness and stimulate growth starting with your very first campaign.
Message us today and we’ll schedule a free, no-pressure phone consultation. We’ll cover all the benefits of email marketing and even discuss how to get your first campaign out the door.