Marketing has come a long way in the four-and-a-half decades since the first email was delivered.
Advances like social media and search engine marketing have left businesses with no shortage of channels to leverage in order to reach their target demographic.
Why then, in this era of real-time socially driven marketing, do businesses continue to feature email as a staple of their marketing strategy?
As recently as 2014, more than half of marketers surveyed by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) planned to increase spending on their email channel, citing their impressive return on investment as the driving factor.
So what is it about this veteran marketing channel that keeps savvy businesses coming back for more?
One of the greatest benefits of a good email marketing program is detailed statistics about your campaign.
Compared with other marketing channels – like a billboard or television commercial – email marketing metrics provide exponentially more information regarding the success, or failure, of a marketing campaign.
Conversions from emails are clearly defined and thus easier to repeat, contrary to the vague nature of more traditional broadcast marketing techniques.
For an email marketing app, opens and clicks are standard – but you can easily dig deeper and see how long recipients spend reading your emails, as well as the devices they use to access them. Monitoring these analytics provides incredibly valuable – and actionable – insight into what’s working and what isn’t with your campaign.
The foundation of a good email marketing campaign – even before content – is your recipient list.
Defining and segmenting business contacts and deciding which emails to send to whom forces small businesses to take a more focused and scientific look at their target demographics. This type of detailed analysis benefits the rest of a small business’s marketing mix as well.
A precise understanding of your audience and what makes them tick is essential to successfully targeting search terms for SEO/PPC, aligning your brand with the proper accounts on social networks, structuring your website for conversion optimization and possibly finding the proper messaging for your next radio spot.
Most good things take time – some more than others.
For small businesses that operate without the resources of a large marketing department, daily life involves a cost-benefit analysis of all marketing channels.
The average Mailify client spends 20 to 40 minutes on his or her very first email campaign with us. In that time he or she is able to set up the app, import his or her data, design a template, test it and feel the rush of pressing “send.”
The reality of small business marketing is that everything comes down to return on investment, and the quicker the better.
Each and every marketing dollar counts, and that’s what draws small businesses to email marketing.
It’s estimated that for every dollar spent on email marketing, the return is $44.25, according to the DMA. Though this statistic should be taken with a grain of salt, it’s not hard to see how email marketing can consistently deliver outstanding returns.
Email targets the low-hanging fruit – your database of contacts – in an attempt to either re-engage previous customers, move new leads further down the sales funnel or cross-sell to existing clients.
When you apply email to your existing relationships, you create a non-invasive method of staying at the forefront of your contacts’ minds.
Of course these are just a few of the benefits of email marketing, but it’s also important for small businesses to create a successful strategy to truly reap the benefits of the tactic. In addition to using the best software, for example, integrating Sendgrid to your platform, here are some things to keep in mind when planning your next email marketing campaign.
The fact that email marketing continues to play a prominent role in small business marketing is no accident. As one of the most effective methods for small businesses to grow online, email continues to provide the prompt returns and insights that small businesses need to thrive.
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