Undoubtedly, digital marketing has undergone massive transformations in recent years. Consequently, many individuals hold the view that email marketing has lost its charm and is no longer as impactful as it used to be.
Contrary to popular belief, email marketing remains the most effective means of engaging with potential leads and transforming them into customers. It outperforms other marketing channels in various aspects, including Return on Investment (ROI), which we will discuss further.
What is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is recognized as a highly efficient digital marketing approach, whereby targeted consumers are sent emails for the purpose of conveying valuable information, boosting sales, and enhancing brand loyalty.
Email marketing, akin to physical mail, is a direct marketing approach; however, it is more cost-effective and environmentally friendly because it does not involve paper.
Is Email Marketing Beneficial?
Undoubtedly, email continues to be the most efficient means of generating potential clients and converting them into faithful patrons. Keep in mind that email marketing outperforms all other methods of marketing!
Email marketing is not only cost-effective but also offers a variety of other advantages that make it an excellent digital marketing tactic worth considering. These are the top three benefits:
Email is the preferred communication method for the majority of consumers.
Email has gained popularity with consumers as a preferred mode of communication with brands due to its permission-based nature. Customers willingly subscribe to email lists to receive brand updates, discounts, and promotions, indicating their interest in brand-related information. Recent research indicates that a majority (72%) of consumers favor receiving promotional messages via email, with only a small percentage (17%) preferring social media.
It is evident that individuals enjoy receiving emails from their favored businesses; however, what is the appropriate frequency of such mails? Various studies indicate that sending emails on a weekly basis is sufficient to convey your message to subscribers without burdening them.
Email can help you reach a larger audience of mobile users.
Reading and sending emails is one of the most common activities among smartphone users, surpassing social media browsing and internet searching. This is because most consumers rely heavily on their smartphones for various tasks, including email management.
It is crucial to note that although 48% of emails are accessed on mobile devices, 69% of mobile users remove emails that are not optimized. Failing to optimize your marketing emails for mobile devices implies a loss of opportunity to engage with mobile users.
Making online sales is most efficiently achieved through email communication.
The figures are quite stunning! Research indicates that individuals who buy items via email expend 138% more than individuals who don’t get email promotions. But it becomes even more impressive because email advertising yields an ROI of 4400% (yes, you read that right!).
What is the difference between email and social media? To address this question, here are some noteworthy figures: Social media has an engagement rate of just over 0.5% (0.58% to be precise), while email is received by approximately 85% of its recipients and has an opening rate of nearly 23%.
Email boasts the biggest user count overall, as well as among any age group.
What Types of Emails Are Most Effective?
Explore different kinds of email marketing that can help you engage with your audience. Discover the nine significant email types that you must utilize.
Emails of Welcome
When it comes to new leads, welcome emails provide an excellent opportunity to promote your brand and demonstrate your appreciation for their business. A great way to do so is by incorporating an incentive, such as a free trial or discounted offer, right into your welcome email.
Emails containing promotional and special offers.
Some of the best email marketing methods include those that offer promotions, as they can effectively persuade subscribers to make purchases and yield higher conversion rates. Everyone loves receiving emails about discounts and sales.
Sending promotional and exclusive offer emails can aid in retaining and involving your audience with your business. These promotions, which are available only through emails, make your subscribers feel valued and motivated to continue receiving updates from you. In fact, they may also persuade their friends and family members to subscribe in order to snag the same deals.
3. Emails containing newsletters
Using newsletters as a marketing tactic is proven to be effective as it informs subscribers about new offerings, promotions, and updates, while also enhancing brand recognition and customer allegiance. The fact that recipients willingly subscribe to receive these communications indicates their interest in learning more about your company.
Rewording: Emails for Verification
It’s crucial to send this particular email. Customers eagerly await confirmation emails to ensure that their order or appointment has been successfully registered. These emails foster customer engagement since clients frequently refer to them for information about their purchase.
Emails that remind customers of products left in a shopping cart before completing their purchase.
Cart abandonment emails are crucial in increasing conversions as customers often abandon their shopping carts or choose not to make a purchase. Despite this, it is possible to re-engage these customers through targeted emails that remind them of the items left in their cart. A simple yet effective approach is to send an email with a message like “Did you forget something?” or “Are you still considering purchasing [product name]?” These types of emails typically get open rates, and customers may end up making the purchase that they had abandoned earlier.
Examine emails.
Inviting customers to leave reviews after making a purchase is crucial for your business as it aids potential customers in making an informed decision before buying. Once a customer subscribes via email and buys something, follow up with an email request for a review of their recent purchase.
Emails that require prompt attention.
The effectiveness of time-sensitive emails lies in the sense of urgency they create, prompting subscribers to act quickly before the limited offer expires. Consumers tend to jump at the opportunity to make the most of a deal before it slips away, making this style of email a powerful tool for improving engagement and conversions.
Email of gratitude
It is recommended to have an automated email sent out as a response once a customer or potential client fills out a form from your landing page. Such emails, also known as thank-you emails, serve the purpose of delivering the promised information directly to their inbox.
9. Emails meant for re-engagement
Reconnection emails aid in reconnecting with inactive subscribers and rekindling their interest in your brand. Place emphasis on your subscriber’s prior interaction with your business and inquire as to how you may enhance it. The valuable feedback received will assist with the creation of a more effective email marketing strategy moving forward.
BONUS: How to Choose the Right Digital Marketing Strategy for Your Business
Achieving a thriving digital marketing plan does not involve experimenting with the latest digital marketing fads or making assumptions about customer preferences. Rather, it entails taking informed actions based on data insights.
According to Rebel Interactive Group’s chief marketing officer, Jess Reilly, the marketers who have achieved the most success are those who comprehend that scalable digital marketing now requires people-based advertising; in other words, knowing precisely what message to deliver, on the right channel, and to the correct audience.
The process of selecting a digital marketing approach involves creating buyer personas, determining your objectives, selecting appropriate digital marketing resources, and evaluating the effectiveness of your strategy.
1. Build buyer personas to understand your target audience.
Fictitious characters, known as buyer personas, illustrate the prototype consumers who could be drawn to your brand. These personas assist you in promoting your merchandise and services to this particular group.
According to Reilly, the creation of buyer personas can aid in devising a marketing strategy by shedding light on the identities of buyers, their specific circumstances, and most significantly, their objectives as an audience. This, in turn, can guide the messaging strategy.
When creating customer personas, take into account the following details about your desired audience:
- Job type
- Interests
- Age
- Gender
- General demographics
- Most-used social platforms
- Beliefs and values
Subsequently, tailor your approach according to these particulars.
A helpful hint is to gather opinions and customer feedback through online surveys, emails, or text messages in order to comprehend the pain points and desires of a particular market.
2. Identify your goals, and align them to your strategy.
What specific goals do you have for your marketing strategy? Perhaps you aim to enhance the recognition of your brand, boost product sales, or expand your social media presence. It’s important to specify your objectives to ensure that you use your efforts wisely. Let’s examine some concrete illustrations.
If your goal is to heighten brand awareness:
Do reputable brands attract your target customer? Is your brand known to them? Do they have enough knowledge or confidence in your brand to purchase from it?
If your top priorities include enhancing your company’s reputation and building brand recognition.
If your goal is to raise consumer awareness:
Low search volumes for your target keywords could be indicative of consumers not comprehending how your product or service can enhance their lives, resulting in them not actively seeking out your company.
If your sales process and website traffic are not a concern, it’s possible that you are facing a lack of consumer awareness. In this case, your objective for your digital marketing strategy would be to inform potential customers about a particular issue they face, and subsequently present them with your solution.
If your goal is to increase traffic:
Having top-quality traffic is a crucial KPI that most business owners prioritize, as it typically results in an increased number of sales leads and actual sales. Therefore, traffic is highly sought-after in the business world.
To drive traffic, your main priorities should be centered around implementing effective search engine optimization (SEO) tactics, investing in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and utilizing email marketing strategies.
If your goal is to increase leads:
It is illogical to anticipate customers to purchase an expensive or complicated item online for the first time. Rather, concentrate on creating leads that your sales team can follow up on.
If your goal is to increase sales:
To enhance sales, it is probable that you need to strategically incorporate email marketing and amplify traffic to your landing page on the website.
3. Choose digital marketing tools based on your primary goals.
Content marketing calendar templates, social networks and email marketing software are among the numerous marketing tools available. The suitable tools for your objectives will ultimately hinge on their distinct advantages and purposes.
According to Prentiss, each business has distinct requirements or deficiencies. These may include insufficient reviews, poor Google rankings, or a website that requires a revamp. The tools needed to address these business needs are always varied.
Arrange your objectives in order of importance and analyze your finances to identify the most profitable ventures. If you are a considerable distance away from closing a deal, opt for low-cost resources, like emails and social media updates, as there might be a considerable amount of loss in your sales process. You can continuously return to explore and try out alternative tools available in the market.
4. Audit your current digital marketing strategy.
To audit your digital marketing strategy, you must identify past successes, evaluate current tactics, and identify necessary changes.
- Discover the true ROI of past efforts. You’ll need to measure ROI for digital marketing campaigns you ran in the past. Reilly advised business owners to ask how much “lift” each marketing channel provided in previous seasons. “Using a combination of customer purchase data, digital tracking data and any traditional media buys you have, you can dive into the data to discover what your true ROI was in the past and opportunities to grow in the future,” Reilly said.
- Test new strategies. Before going live with your new strategy, test it to see what might work and what won’t. Spend time figuring out if there are aspects of your strategy that can be fixed or improved.
- Determine what needs tweaking. Prentiss recommended monitoring your progress to determine what might need shifting. “We set daily, weekly and sometimes even monthly reminders to check on the progress we made,” Prentiss said. “The daily and weekly check-ins on what we created are very important in the beginning so we can adjust what we are doing. This truly ensures the success of the campaign.”
In essence, if the amount spent on each lead exceeds the profit gained upon finalizing a sale, then the return on investment is subpar and adjustments should be made.
