The use of email for marketing purposes may seem to be dying or coming to an end.
Still, many stores and startups are showing a renewed interest in email marketing as an effective way to market, reach the most significant number of visitors, and even convert them into potential customers that increase their sales.
So you have to ask yourself, do you use email for marketing to improve your store’s positioning? If you don’t, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to increase your store’s sales and convert visitors into potential buyers.
Table of Contents
What Is Email For Marketing?
Email marketing is a potent marketing channel that uses email for advertising your company’s goods or services.
Email for marketing is direct and digital marketing.
Incorporating it into your marketing automation initiatives can assist in informing your customers about your most recent products or offers.
Through various marketing emails, it can also be crucial for lead generation, brand awareness, relationship building, and customer engagement in-between purchases in your overall marketing strategy.
Also Read: Companies That Need Digital Marketing
Benefits Of Email For Marketing
An email will remain in the inbox until it is read, deleted, or archived, which is one of the reasons it has become such a standard marketing tool for companies.
However, email is also one of the most reasonably priced tools.
A 2015 Direct Marketing Association (DMA) study based in the U.K. discovered that email has an average return on investment (ROI) of $38 to $40 for every dollar spent.
Email for marketing can help you build a relationship with your audience while driving traffic to your blog, social media, or anywhere else you’d like folks to visit.
To ensure that people only receive the messages they want to see, you can segment your emails and target users based on demographics.
Using email marketing software that can also be configured to send out emails quickly, you can also use email marketing to run A/B tests on a subject line or call to action to determine the best-performing message.
How Does Email For Marketing Work?
Mainly to its simplicity and frequent automation, email marketing is one of the best-performing tactics.
Three fundamental components are needed for an efficient email marketing campaign:
Email List
To execute successful email campaigns, you need an active email list.
This is a list of email addresses from people who have indicated they’d like to hear from you about marketing initiatives.
An email list can be created in a variety of ways.
One of the simplest is to create a lead magnet, also known as an offer that your target audience will find valuable in exchange for their email addresses, such as a coupon.
Email Service Provider
Software that helps in managing your email list is an email service provider, also known as an email marketing platform.
Creating and implementing automated email marketing campaigns is also aided by it.
You can automate actions brought on by the behaviors of your target audience by using an Email Service Provider.
These allow you to customize each interaction with them, leading to increased engagement and conversion rates.
Clearly Stated Objectives
Many business objectives can be accomplished through email marketing.
You could use email marketing, for instance, to:
- Promote sales
- Increase brand recognition
- Creating and nurturing leads
- keep clients interested
- Boost lifetime value and customer loyalty
Your email list, email service provider, and objectives must all be in line for your email marketing campaign to be successful. Later, you can start working.
The first step is to segment your email list based on subscriber characteristics or behaviors.
Next, draft an email or a series of emails to persuade recipients to take action (your goal).
Finally, automate email sending and campaign monitoring using your email service provider.
Why Email For Marketing Is Important To Your Business
You might wonder why email marketing is crucial.
How does a return of $43 sound on an investment of less than 2$? Is it too good to be true?
You’re now in the world of email marketing, so welcome.
The value of email marketing cannot be overstated if your company has an online presence.
If I had to sum up the benefits in one sentence, I’d say that email marketing is important.
- Dramatically expands your ability to communicate.
- Is scalable, flexible, and measurable.
- Increases your income.
- keeps control of the data with you.
All use Email
Now, email is used by more than half of the world’s population.
Email is the ideal channel for your marketing because it has gained widespread adoption.
It’s a sure bet that everyone you meet and your target audience uses email in today’s hyper-digital world.
Email provides a direct line of two-way communication with your target audience, unlike other marketing channels like print or broadcasting.
Email Is An Excellent Way To Get Your Customers Updated
When your email list has grown to a sizeable size (even 500 quality leads is a lot for a new company), you can send messages with just a few clicks and for no additional cost than what you pay your email marketing provider.
Think of significant business achievement.
Perhaps you’ve recently made significant changes to your product and want to communicate the advantages to your target market.
You can decide to run digital ads or perhaps publish a press release in a newspaper to inform people.
Both strategies will cost you money and typically generate cold leads.
However, suppose you have a sizable email list of people who voluntarily chose to receive messages.
In that case, you can reach a passionate audience for a fraction of the price of print or digital advertisements.
Email Is Ideal For Targeted, Personalized Messaging
Every potential customer would have a different, personalized value proposition, which is every marketer’s dream.
Email marketing does an excellent job of approaching this idea, even though marketing is still not quite there.
Your email lists can be divided based on any customer traits you deem important for your company.
If your business is a sports brand, you might segment your clientele according to the sports they enjoy.
In this way, you can let your golf fans know about your new golf gear without upsetting the baseball fan who only subscribes to news about Major League Baseball.
Email alleviates the concern that marketing has a reputation for being impersonal.
Through various fields, you can choose to personalize your emails.
You can generally do this, thanks to email marketing providers.
Even if you email thousands of people, you can address each recipient by name, company, or job title.
These seemingly insignificant changes may significantly alter people’s views of your brand.
Email Build Bond & Credibility
We’ve already talked about how email marketing adds a level of customization that other marketing channels don’t
Relationship-building with your customers is greatly aided by personalization or, to put it another way, by understanding your audience.
You can actively contact leads and clients via email to express your enthusiasm and interest.
Others will undoubtedly see your confidence.
You can create lasting relationships by combining proactiveness and personalization.
However, if you use email to establish credibility, you can capitalize on solid relationships and use it to drive home your marketing message.
Credibility is the seal of approval and faith that others bestow upon you.
That badge makes you stand out from the din of rivals and clogged inboxes.
It’s simple to establish your brand’s credibility through email.
You need to demonstrate your domain knowledge and honesty in your communication.
Email For Marketing Is Scalable
Your growth is directly related to scalability.
Scaling in the context of email is very straightforward.
As your subscriber base grows, you scale.
The best thing about email is that you can start building an email list immediately without putting strict security measures in place.
Almost all email marketing software offers plans that scale as the list grows.
This means you avoid paying unnecessary fees upfront.
Email also allows you to scale your actions for ten people to 100,000 people without incident.
Email For Marketing Is Simple To Adjust
It becomes challenging, if not completely impossible, to change your message if you run a print ad and discover a typo or if you run a television ad and the public reacts negatively.
Not to mention how much money such changes can drain from your marketing budget.
All you’d need to do with email is resend it or, for a virtually non-existent fee, admit that you made a mistake by sending a follow-up email.
You can A/B test your subject lines with email marketing, which is another benefit.
Discovering which subject line variations generate the highest click-through rates will help you plan future campaigns.
Email For Marketing Is Measurable
There are numbers everywhere.
You probably have a good understanding of all the numbers you need to work with to account for your spending if you’re a marketer or business owner.
Accounting and measuring are made simple by email marketing. The majority of email marketing platforms give you access to vital figures like:
- Email open rates
- Emails opened by geography
- Emails opened by device/browser
- Click rates
- Delivery reports
- Percentage of clicks
Email For Marketing Is Highly Effective
The recognition of customers is thought to be easier to achieve with email marketing than with any other marketing tool.
Customers are more likely to interact with emails because they are delivered in real-time.
Email opens range typically from 20 to 45% worldwide, according to a GetResponse.
Email marketing is more successful than social media and other marketing tools because of its high open rate.
Better Analysis
Based on the outcome. You can assess the effectiveness of email marketing by looking at the open rate, click-through rate, and conversion rate.
A/B testing features are also available in some email marketing software packages.
Changing an email’s subject line will make it easier to determine which subject line generates the most click-throughs.
Using this analysis, you can determine whether your email marketing is effective.
Email For Marketing Is Economical
Through email marketing, companies can quickly reach a large audience for a relatively low cost.
Small businesses that might not have the funds for conventional forms of marketing like TV advertisements will significantly benefit from this.
Businesses must spend a hefty sum on printing and postage for print advertisements, which may or may not be successful.
Writing and sending an email to customers is significantly less expensive than using these conventional methods.
An email can produce the same image and text for much less money.
Email For Marketing Is Convenient
You can create a template and send emails regularly using various email marketing tools.
As a result, a customer who recently joined your mailing list will first receive a welcome email, followed by subsequent emails at predetermined intervals.
Real-Time
The response is immediate these days because so many people check their emails on their mobile devices.
To read your mail, they don’t need to use their laptop or computer.
Customers can access and open their email while working from their office or enjoying a coffee in the neighbourhood cafe.
Email For Marketing Strategy And Preparation
1. Get To Know Your Audience
A deep understanding of the receiving audience is one of the most important aspects to assess before you start sending an email to them.
Your audience is more than just a demographic.
Ask yourself and try to address the following questions in as much detail as possible:
- How and when do they prefer to be contacted?
- Is a particular slang that might resonate with them more than others (another significant component of A/B testing)?
- What types of actions or activities distinguish your audience from the general public?
It’s unlikely that you will address these questions completely the first time because as email marketing improves, you will gather important insights and data about your recipients to make intelligent changes to your software in your ongoing email marketing campaigns.
2. Experiment To See What Works & What Doesn’t
You must do A/B checks on every part of your email, from subject lines to calls to action (CTAs).
Some tips to keep in mind during tests (checklist feature):
- Test only one item at a time (otherwise, your results will be inconclusive)
- Make sure you have a large sample size in your test
- Once you find the winning item, go to the following test!
Remember that your product changes and your audiences, so a good email marketer never stops testing.
3. Personalize Your Email
Personalization isn’t necessarily new in 2022, but it continues to gain traction and grow in importance for email programs.
Bulk and urgent emails won’t cut or lead to high conversion and engagement rates.
To personalize your emails, you should first consider your user data.
Try to focus on behaviour whenever you can.
If you have a highly interactive part of your email list, customize the content for that user’s behaviour.
And for those who rarely open your emails, customize the range with a re-share email campaign.
4. Quality Is The Most Important
Email marketing can be a powerful tool for digital communication, but that doesn’t mean that increasing email frequency will make your message more effective.
Sending too many emails to recipients is likely to have the opposite result. Recipients may unsubscribe if they feel overwhelmed by your communication or, worse yet, decide to mark your email as spam.
Start slowly, and test how your audience responds to your email frequency.
5. Set Your Time
Deciding when to send your email is a hot topic. And while we don’t have a silver bullet answer for you, we do have a few tips.
Midweek, Midday: The traditional tried-and-true method of sending midweek and midday email campaigns tends to work well.
The general study suggests sending emails between 1 and 3 pm (9 to 11 am also recommended).
6. Review Your Landing Pages
Most of your time will be spent on email campaign design and copywriting.
But also take into account the recipients’ locations.
Send recipients to landing pages that make sense in light of your objectives and the email’s copy and offer a smooth transition.
For instance, send them to the landing page for that product instead of your home page or the home page for the entire product line if you want to direct them to a specific product.
7. Build Your Email List
It is important to ensure that each name on the list was included voluntarily and with the person’s knowledge and consent, whether you are starting from scratch or inheriting a list of email addresses.
Any email addresses you’ve rented or bought should be immediately removed from your email list.
In addition to experiencing low engagement (many of the purchased emails aren’t even from real people), you risk being rejected by significant ISPs (like Gmail, Yahoo, and AOL), and your email service provider account may even be closed.
Organizing an engaged recipient base is a strategy that will keep your email delivery rates as high as possible, even though it might not be the quickest way to build a sizable email list.
8. Divide Your Email List
Everyone receives the same message simultaneously with email marketing, just like direct marketing in the past.
These days, if your messages match certain traits you are aware of in your audience, you’ll see higher engagement.
Your email flows can be segmented on things like:
- What recently did they purchase?
- Where is he a resident?
- What time does the company open other mail, such as transactional mail?
Your chances of reaching and getting a response from recipients increase as your messages closely match their preferences, interests, activities, etc.
9. Frequently Clean Your Email List
Many people will ignore your emails indefinitely, though some will take the time to unsubscribe themselves if they are not interested in opening your emails.
This may hurt delivery rates and alert ISPs that you might not be sending a requested email, which is terrible.
Spend some time each quarter removing unsubscribed subscribers from your email list to solve this problem.
You can feel safe deleting your email if they haven’t opened it in a few months.
10. Be Careful Not To Take Unsubscribes Personally
Even if they had previously subscribed to your emails, some audiences might decide later on in your email campaigns that they no longer want to hear from you.
As long as you have a reliable opt-out system for these users, that is acceptable (and a specific aspect of the email lifecycle).
It should never be difficult to unsubscribe from your email program; it should be possible with just one click and instantaneous.
And under no circumstances should users be required to sign in to any account to unsubscribe from emails.
Remember that users can find the spam button if they can’t find the unsubscribe button.
The Disadvantages Of Email For Marketing
Businesses use email marketing as a practical and frequently efficient form of advertising.
However, it would help to educate yourself on the disadvantages and common misconceptions before using this technique.
Even though many people mistakenly think that email marketing is cost-free, starting a marketing campaign from scratch will still cost your business money.
Several factors can hamper your effectiveness, and email marketing may even harm your company in some circumstances.
Building A Mailing List
The benefits of email marketing might not yet be accessible to you if your company is new.
Why? Because you don’t currently have a mailing list.
It takes time to create a list. It’s necessary to gain subscribers.
But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be communicating with them just because you don’t yet have a mailing list, or maybe only a small number of customers have agreed to receive communications from you.
Build your database as best you can.
Add registration forms to your website or blog. Offers or giveaways should be used to entice customers to sign up.
One email address at a time, assemble your mailing list.
Even though it might take some time to develop, if you give it enough time, you’ll soon feel its benefits and enjoy its rewards.
Engagement
It will help if you make constant adjustments to keep your subscribers interested in email marketing.
People frequently sign up for email subscriptions to participate in a promotion.
For instance, if a user enters his email address, he might be eligible for a product discount.
Additionally, a user might unintentionally sign up if subscribing was set as the default option on a website.
Your email marketing may come across as intrusive in such circumstances.
You still need to work to maintain a level of engagement if someone specifically signed up to receive your marketing emails, such as an industry newsletter, to prevent them from unsubscribing.
Spam
You risk having your email list mark your messages as spam and not receiving them.
Many users today use spam filters and other similar tools to avoid email marketing.
To avoid having your domain flagged as spam by email providers, it’s critical to make sure that your email list has given consent.
Undelivered Email
You should update your marketing list.
You should avoid entering an incorrect email address because it wouldn’t be delivered.
The email should be formatted appropriately, and you should avoid spammy keywords, useless links, phrases like “click here,” “free this,” and other similar expressions.
The email service provider usually filters out such emails and adds them to the spam folder, so the recipient won’t be able to see them.
Unopened Email
Another way your business’s ROI can be lowered is through email marketing, which can lead to many unopened emails.
Nearly 20% is the average open rate for all industries.
This may be a downgrade if you have a more robust and more successful marketing plan.
To Generate Significant Sales, You Need A Large Audience.
A game of numbers governs email marketing.
It would help if you had a sizable audience to make significant money with email marketing, with an industry average open rate of 20% and conversion close to 1-2%.
Many businesses are unaware of the size requirement for email lists before you begin seeing any appreciable sales and conversions.
Email For Marketing Statistics
- In 2025, there will likely be 4.6 billion active email users worldwide.
- In 2022, there will be 333.2 billion emails sent and received every day.
- For every $1 you spend on email marketing, the average expected ROI is $42.
- Email marketing is used by almost nine out of ten marketers to distribute content organically.
- Small businesses use email in 81% of cases for customer acquisition and 80% of cases for customer retention.
- 8% of welcome emails are opened on average.
- Subject lines unique to each recipient increase open rates by 50%.
- On average, three abandoned cart emails generate 69% more orders than one email.
- Your email’s click rates increase by 300% when videos are included. Consumers would like to receive promotional emails from their preferred brands, according to 49% of consumers.
Conclusion
Businesses that don’t use email marketing are missing out on a crucial channel for interacting with customers, which is not a healthy trend.
Although there are other alluring ways to reach customers, email for marketing strength should not be undervalued.
Setting a goal and gradually building a database are good places to start, and you’ll soon have your customers’ attention.
Unlike other marketing strategies, email marketing has the highest return on investment.
It outperforms all other marketing channels, making it a potent force for growing sales, profits, revenue, and the number of customers for your online store.
As a result, if you start an email marketing campaign by following the steps above, you will significantly outperform your expectations in terms of return.