Social media marketing is all the rage now. So, what about its predecessor? Email marketing.
There’s some discomfort surrounding the subject of email marketing because marketing emails often end up in spam folders. This happens even more now since Gmail has really cracked down on unnecessary or ‘spam’ emails. If the sender’s reputation is low enough, the marketing email may even be blocked outright, instead of just being sent to the spam folder.
However, for most legitimate businesses, this is actually not as significant an obstacle as you might think. In most cases, you have to obtain the customer’s consent to add them to your email list to send them marketing emails in the first place. Almost all reputable businesses seek permission from their users to send them promotional content or offers. And the customer can opt out at any point in time, so there is no real trickery involved.
As long as you have the permission of the customer to send them emails, your marketing emails are not going to end up in the spam folder. As any Dallas digital marketing agency worth their salt will tell you- if you follow a few ethical email marketing rules, there’s no fear of getting mistaken for a spammer and getting your email account blocked.
But, that’s not the real issue here. Even if email marketing is possible, is it truly effective? That is the question that we’re going to address in this article.
How Effective is Email Marketing?
Here are some facts that you should know about email marketing:
- The rate of opening Newsletters in email marketing is 21.33%. This is 20 times higher than the post engagement rate of Facebook.
- According to Hubspot, 86% of consumers have admitted that they prefer their promotional content to be limited to emails rather than be spread out over all their social media sites, TV, and other entertainment channels.
- Among all the other digital marketing channels, email marketing has the highest ROI.
In short, email marketing works better than both social media marketing and traditional marketing.
Did you know that the first marketing email sent in 1978 collected more than 13 million dollars in sales?
It is evident from the above statistics that email marketing still works. And not only that, it actually works better than other modern forms of advertising.
However, why exactly does it have the highest ROI? What makes email marketing the best avenue for marketing for small businesses?
This is what we’re going to examine in this article. So, keep reading to find out more.
Why Does Email Marketing Work So Well?
The reason why email marketing has the highest return on investment is that the investment itself is quite low in email marketing. It is super easy to do, and it’s one of the cheapest ways to practice digital marketing.
All other methods of digital marketing take a considerable amount of investment. Whether it be social media ads, influencer marketing, or even PPC campaigns, each one of these increases your Customer Acquisition Cost.
Compared to this, the CAC of using email marketing is next to nothing. There is plenty of email marketing software on the internet that offers free trials for the first few months. Even beyond this, if you use a software like Mailchimp, you can enjoy their service without spending a penny as long as your subscriber’s list remains below 2000.
There are other perks as well. Most email marketing software provides you with a drag-and-drop interface through which you can easily design attractive ads without a lot of prior training. Compared to this, designing social media ads is a lot more difficult.
The software also allows you to target specific customer bases based on their level of interaction with you. For example, people who have remained completely inactive for months are crossed off the subscribers’ list to shed the dead weight. In their place, you can add fresh email addresses. You can also put your loyal customers on a priority list so that you can provide them with special offers and priority memberships.
So, now when you look for a digital marketing agency in Dallas, make sure they specialize in email marketing.
How to Build An Email List?
Building a list of subscribers is an essential step in email marketing. It is, in fact, the very first step.
You might not have practiced this yourself yet, but you may have handed over your email address to at least a dozen sites by now. These sites don’t ask you to create an account. They don’t even go anywhere near asking for your credit card information. They just want your email address.
Why do you think sites covet your email more than your financial information? Because it is simply more profitable in the long run.
So, how should you participate in this program and start gaining email addresses? The first option is, of course, pop-ups. Pop-ups can surprise you at any point in your browsing journey. You might encounter them at the very beginning or right before you are planning to navigate away from the page. You might even stumble across a pop-up after some minutes of inactivity.
The reason why pop-ups work so well is that they ask for a very limited amount of information. They just probably only ask for your name and email address. This not only provides the guests with an active choice regarding whether they want to receive promotional content or not but also encourages them to read on further by asking for too little.
There are plenty of other ways to gain email addresses as well. Many businesses have a hybrid model where some of their business is conducted offline while some of their business is conducted online. Such businesses can collect email addresses from their visitors at offline conferences. They can also collect these emails from their offline customers during the billing process.
Many businesses incentivize the first sign-in or online purchase. This is an easy way to not only store up on email addresses but also to help your offline customers transition to the online space. After all, every business is expanding into e-commerce because the consumer base is huge in the digital space.
Whether you go for this integrated model or pop-ups, what is crucial is that you must keep the customer well informed that they are going to be receiving updates. The only way your email marketing campaign is going to work is by ensuring that you have the full consent of the customer to send them promotional content.
This is why the “Cancel Subscription” or “Unsubscribe” options should be easily available.
What are the Best Strategies for Email Marketing?
There are various kinds of marketing emails, and you have to know which ones work out for your specific business.
For the casual first-time subscriber, you need to build the initial engagement before you start sending them detailed newsletters and case studies of your former clients.
This is why travel OTAs send quizzes to their potential customers through emails with questions like “Where do you want to go this summer?” These are not difficult questions, which is exactly what lures the readers into engaging. And this is what leads them to answer the question.
The moment they click on the answer, the aforementioned OTA channels have an interaction with the customer. And no, the sole intention of these exercises is not to get a direct client. As any good digital marketing company in Dallas will tell you, finding out exactly how many people are receiving your email, reading it, and actively engaging with it is just as important.
This allows you to understand which categories of your potential customers you should prioritize.
Dedicated customers wait for newsletters and case studies to find out exactly how the company is faring. Some companies even send complete ebooks to readers who are very interested in the inner functionality of the company. However, what is mostly sent through email marketing are the links to individual articles.
Individual articles are sent for two reasons:
- It brings potential customers to the website and provides them with important information.
- These articles are sent as guest blogs to other sites from where you can get the backlinks.
As almost everyone knows by now- original, relevant, and quality backlinks can get you straight to the top of the Google search engine search page. This is an essential requirement to build a brand presence.
In Conclusion
Not only does email marketing have the highest ROI out of all other digital media marketing channels, but it is also super cheap. This is why most small businesses go for email marketing instead of PPC campaigns or social media advertising.
The one thing you need to keep in mind during email marketing is that you need to space out your emails sensibly, even if you are sending out emails in bulk. Inundating your potential customers with incessant emails is a sure-shot way of losing them. So, make sure whichever Dallas digital marketing company you are contacting knows the proper schedule for sending out marketing emails to clients.
