Email marketing is used by most of the businesses globally. It provides an effective and targeted approach to reach the prospective customers. It does not take much resources and investment to start an email marketing campaign. The Return on Investment (ROI) is one of the best among all marketing channels. To be successful and customer-centric, businesses should definitely make effective use email marketing. It streamlines and makes the process of marketing very efficient. Some of the major benefits to the businesses from using email marketing are as follows.
Targeted audience
Email marketing has the inherent benefit of engaging with a targeted audience. It is one of the only forms of advertising where the user is targeted only after he/she provides consent for receiving the advertisement. This makes it a very effective form of advertisement. It also leads to better conversion rates as the users are interested to receive the advertisement. Some marketers may send unsolicited emails to the customers, but in most cases, such emails are ignored by the recipients and it does not help the marketers. Tapping potential customers who have actively provided consent for the email campaign remains one of the best marketing strategies.
Better customer segmentation
The marketers can do proper customer segmentation to ensure that the final recipient gets the content which meets their interests and needs. It also allows for better segmentation of the potential customers and greater control over who sees the advertisement. The users can be segmented based on their demographics, education, income level, occupation, interests, hobbies etc. The users will receive promotional emails which is suited to their needs. Segmentation helps the marketers to target the potential customers with relevant promotional content which has high chances of creating interest among them. This leads to better engagement with the prospective customers and higher conversion rates.
Cost effectiveness
Email marketing is very cost-effective compared to other traditional marketing channels. The marketers do not have to pay hefty billboard charges, print media, and electronic media charges for advertisement, postage, printing charges etc. With the click of a button, they can circulate their promotional materials to their prospective customers globally. It is one of the most affordable marketing channels which also provides very good ROI. According to the estimates of the Direct Marketing Association, every $1 spent on email marketing leads to a revenue of $40.
Boost revenue
Email marketing is probably the best marketing channel for tapping the impulse buying behavior among potential customers. When a potential customer gets information about a new product or service, then he/she can delay the decision to purchase. Once the decision is delayed it can get difficult to influence the customer into buying. Email marketing overcomes this problem as the customers can get promotional content and can make a purchase within minutes by just few clicks of a button. If used effectively, email marketing can drive very strong call to action among the potential customers. According to estimates, email marketing generates around $29 billion in annual revenues worldwide.
Reach a global audience
Businesses can reach a global audience through email marketing. They do not have to invest heavily or set up global operations for tapping a global market. Email marketing opens the door to a truly global market for the businesses. The marketers can further take advantage of effective localization in their email campaigns to benefit more to a global audience located in different geographical locations. They can translate their promotional content and also make subtle changes to the content and the time of sending the email, based on the location of the users and their cultural nuances. Reaching a global customer base also increases the revenues and profitability for the businesses.
Create instant impact
Email marketing provides quicker impact in call to action and conversion rates as compared to other traditional marketing channels. Marketers can start seeing the impact of emails shortly after sending it to the potential customers. The emails can trigger an urgency in call to action and response times of the users. It can facilitate immediate purchase decision by the customers using online platform. The marketer can also clearly attribute the purchase decision to the email marketing campaign. Traditional print and electronic media advertisement can take a long time to produce results. It is also difficult to precisely attribute the purchase decision to the advertisement only which makes it difficult to assess the effectiveness of the promotional campaign and the channel.
High Return on Investment (ROI)
Email marketing provides one of the highest ROI among various marketing channels. Not only is it highly cost-effective, it also provides very high ROI. This makes it very popular among businesses and digital marketers. According to the figures of the Direct Marketing Association, the ROI for email marketing was £ 30.03 for every £1 spent in 2016. This figure increased to an ROI of £32.28 for every £1 spent in the year 2017. It is evident that email marketing offers one of the best ROI among all marketing channels and is therefore favored by the marketers.
Measurement metrics
Email marketing provides very relevant and specific metrics to the marketers to assess its effectiveness. The marketers can access data pertaining to the delivery rates, open rates, subscriber’s engagement, call to action, revenue etc. of the email marketing campaign. This helps the marketers to evaluate their email campaigns and use the learning to design more effective email marketing campaigns in the future.
Popular email marketing tools
Can you send every email manually? Of course, you can. But who would do that? Imagine sending thousands of emails every day or even once a week. This would be a nightmare. This is where special tools become more than useful. There are several types of email marketing applications. Windows software like Group-Mail used to be popular some time ago. But nowadays people use email marketing tools running directly on web server. And here we have 2 types of server-based tools. Now people tend to lean toward SaaS (software as a service) tools like MailChimp, AWeber or GetResponse. They work as a service and usually you pay a subscription fee every month. Payment plan depends on the amount of emails sent or size of subscribers list.
Email marketing tools with one-time payment
The second type of server-based email marketing applications are tools installed on your own web server, so you pay only once and have no limits at all. A good example of these tools are MailWizz (click) and Sendy (click).
Conclusion
Email marketing provides many benefits to the marketers over other traditional marketing channels. It is highly cost-effective and provides one of the highest ROI among all marketing channels. It caters to an already engaged audience and can provide very specific segmentation to the marketers. This ensures that the potential customers receive only relevant promotional content which stimulates their needs. Email marketing also provides much better engagement and conversion rates compared to other channels. They can boost the company revenues significantly. Using the email marketing, companies can reach to a global audience in a highly cost-effective manner. The email marketing effectiveness can also be measured by the marketers using specific metrics.
You can read more about popular email marketing tools here.
