You may have heard people say that email is the old way of doing things. While email has been around for decades, there are many reasons that it remains the best way for small businesses to reach their target markets. We’ll take a close look at email marketing.
Consumers Prefer Email
According to a Marketing Sherpa study, 72% of customers prefer receiving a company’s promotional copy through email. Email gives customers a feeling of control because email is permission-based. Customers accept emails they signed up for, knowing they can unsubscribe whenever they no longer want to receive them. Of course, there’s the occasional spammer that you can ding for sending spam.
Common reasons people sign up for emails include exclusive access to new products, product or service information, free e-books or other content, contests and sweepstakes, company news and updates, loyalty or rewards programs, and coupons and sales promotions. Your customers will appreciate email’s ability to quickly send the desired information to them. However, studies have indicated that customers don’t want to receive marketing material more often than once weekly.
Email Marketing Is Affordable
Email suits the small budget of small companies because email enables them to reach their target market for just pennies per recipient. Email campaigns cost much less money than direct mail, print, or tv ads. You would need to develop an email strategy and campaigns. If you don’t have an in-house person who can write and implement your email campaigns, you’ll have to hire a copywriter.
While using the services of a high-dollar professional copywriter is still cost-effective in the long run, learning to write marketing emails from an online source such as Tarzan Kay would be far more cost-effective. You would receive various templates, email sequence information, a swipe file, launching information, and other items in a copy kit. Your one-time investment in yourself would let your company launch campaign after campaign in-house.
Email Reaches More Mobile Consumers
According to IDC and Facebook, checking one’s email is the number one thing people use their smartphones for. Browsing websites comes in at a close second place after checking emails. Scrolling down Facebook is the third most popular smartphone activity. Since seventy-eight percent of the population checks their email on their phones throughout the day, most of your target market will receive your company’s email messages soon after you send them.
Naturally, people check their email on tablets, laptops, desktop PCs, and other devices. Your emails reach most of your target market wherever they are. To accommodate smartphone screens, you’ll need to keep your emails clean, simple, and in a responsive template. Limit your images used as they take too long to load. Also, include call to action buttons.
Businesses Achieve High Email Marketing ROI
Emails drive traffic to your business website, improve sales conversions, and help you improve brand awareness in the consumer’s mind. Recipients of email marketing material spend more money than consumers who receive marketing copy another way. Since emails cost very little money per person reached, the return on investment (ROI) that email marketing gives you is high. The amount of ROI varies depending on the business. Still, this marketing method gives small companies the highest ROI possible.
Email Marketing Has More Features
Marketing over social media outlets limits the advertiser. There are limited characters and fields available when you use social media. You’ll need to make your messages short enough to meet ad requirements, too. In contrast, email marketing lets you write as much as you want. You can personalize content. You can also use all HTML features and include unlimited media.
Email Integrates Well with Other Marketing Tools
Despite the limitations associated with social media, you may want to include social media in your marketing mix. Email marketing supports social media marketing and other campaign routes. For instance, you can use email to garner excitement for what you’re doing on social media and elsewhere. Integrating emails with other tactics lets you get the most out of your marketing spend.
While various marketing avenues have arrived on the scene during the last couple of decades, email remains the cheapest, most effective marketing tool for small companies. It plays well with others, too.
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