Why You Shouldn’t Underestimate the Power of Email Marketing
Email marketing? What’s the point? Everyone’s on social media these days! You can carpet bomb your message, reaching hundreds – thousands, millions! – without even having to pay for it! Well, that’s the theory anyway, isn’t it? If only life were really that simple. If only marketing could be managed successfully with so little effort.
Email marketing? What’s the point? Everyone’s on social media these days! You can carpet bomb your message, reaching hundreds – thousands, millions! – without even having to pay for it! Well, that’s the theory anyway, isn’t it? If only life were really that simple. If only marketing could be managed successfully with so little effort. While, of course, there is a place for social media – and all the more traditional approaches – in contemporary marketing, if you’re not employing email marketing, then you’re missing a serious trick for your business.
Email marketing is undergoing a renaissance for a very good reason: it works. And while, yes, it did come to develop a bit of bad reputation, being associated with spammers and the scourge of bulk address purchasing, ISPs now have that under control – more or less. Blacklisting soon puts paid to rogue operators. And if you do things properly, behaving ethically (no bulk buying of contact lists!) and administrating your data so that you minimise bounced emails and wasted opportunities. Management software, such as EmailVerifier.com could help you with that – our algorithms perform syntax checks, email server checks and as many as 10 more real-time checks through our proprietary algorithms in order to dramatically decrease redundant and invalid/undeliverable email addresses, then email can be a vital tool in your marketing arsenal.
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You’re contacting people who want to hear from you. Now, I hate to state the obvious, but if someone has gone to the effort of submitting their email address to you, jumped through the hoops of captcha and double opt-ins (signing up on your website, then verifying it via email), and hasn’t at any point clicked upon your ‘unsubscribe’ button, then it’s fairly safe to assume that they’re interested in what you have to say. The reason why this should be important hopefully goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: a receptive audience is more likely to act upon your triggers: making purchases; watching your content; passing on your messages.
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Email is reliable. The difficult thing about marketing is that even with the most conscientious research, you’re mainly working on the scattergun effect; shooting out your message and hoping that it hits someone. With email marketing, as long as someone has genuinely subscribed to your mailing list, every single message will hit home. And using verification tools, you can easily see if they’re being read.
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With email marketing you’re in control of your ROI. This point leads directly on from the one above. Because You can easily and directly track any activity generated by your emails, you can see exactly what you’re getting for your investment. If something is working, you know straight away. Equally, you can see if something is falling flat. The Direct Marketing Association revealed in 2015 that ‘segmented and targeted emails generate 58% of all revenue’. And that’s a pretty impressive ROI.
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Email goes where your customers do. Thanks to mobile technology, the vast majority of adults in the western world now carry their emails with them wherever they go. This means that you can contact them when they’re bunking off in the office, holidaying on a beach in Barbados, or on the loo in Tottenham Court Road tube station. If your message is urgent, it will never be missed. And because people – largely – check their email at times of boredom, your message is more likely to be read.
This is why email matters. Of course, you have to work to get it right; but then you have to work at all marketing if you expect any kind of ROI. Sending out a few slap-dash emails won’t resolve all of your business worries. But, it can be a great way to engage with, and retain customers in the long term. It keeps you in their fickle minds, it directly alerts interested people to your new promotions, and it allows for endless organic sharing.
If you do your homework, use your data wisely, and keep on top of your electronic housekeeping – monitoring your bounce rate to ensure that it doesn’t exceed the industry standard of 2%, avoiding/removing fake and defunct addresses, checking your analytics – then email marketing can be a powerful tool. It’s just down to you to use it wisely.