5 reasons why email marketing is important for your business

 

5 reasons why email marketing is important for your business

If you are looking for a way to reach your customers and prospects directly in a place they check at least once a day, then email marketing is the answer to your problems.

Email marketing helps you capture the attention of consumers, get them to take action, increase awareness of your business, and connect with them in the place where they spend their time. The possibilities for email marketing success are endless - if you understand the power of email marketing and have the right strategy.

In this post, we will answer all your small business email marketing questions, including:

• What is email marketing?

• Why is email marketing important?

• How Does Email Marketing Work?

• What are the best practices for email marketing?

Let's dive in right now.

What is email marketing?

First things first: let's define this term. Email marketing is a digital marketing strategy that allows you to send email messages directly to your mailing list, a subset of your mailing list, or email list.

The purpose of email marketing is to provide valuable information to potential customers and buyers, promote your business, get people interested in your business, and become paying customers.

5 reasons why email marketing is important for your business

Email marketing can serve many purposes and is a very effective marketing strategy. Here are some of the benefits of email marketing for small businesses:

1. People use email every day (several times a day!).

There are 5.6 billion active email accounts in the world and 99% of consumers check their email every day. At a time when it's hard to guarantee anything 99%, that's pretty incredible!

In addition, most consumers not only check their email every day, but the average person checks it 20 times a day!

2. Email marketing directly reaches consumers.

By sending an email marketing message, you access your customers directly through their inboxes, which we already know they check daily. This gives you a personal connection to your customers that is hard to find in digital marketing, making it a great and effective way to reach people.

3. Email marketing can get users to take action.

You can use email marketing to promote a special offer or deal you're running, encourage consumers to sign up for your newsletter, generate leads, or even encourage them to visit your business. The best email marketing campaigns are built around specific goals that drive customers to action.

4. Email marketing keeps your business in the spotlight.

In addition to using email marketing to get your audience to take action, you can also send educational content that represents you as a leader in your industry. This positions your business as a resource and can help you stay in the spotlight of your audience by encouraging them to contact you when they need a business in your industry.

5. Email marketing is easy to track.

One of the complaints many marketers and business owners have about various marketing strategies is the inability to track and measure success. However, with email marketing, you don't have this problem.

You can see several important and useful metrics, including:

Open Rate: The number of people who opened your email out of the number of people who received it. A good marketing email open rate is around 20%, but it varies by industry.

Click-through rate (CTR): The percentage of people who clicked on the call to action in your email. CTR varies by industry, so it's hard to set a percentage target. Generally, the higher the CTR, the better your email performs.

Leads: people who contact you to become your client or get more information.

Unsubscribe: The number of people who unsubscribe from receiving your emails.

These metrics tell you how effective your email marketing campaigns are and where there are areas for improvement. For example, a less-than-stellar open rate might tell you that you need to test new email subject lines to encourage more customers to open your email.

How Does Email Marketing Work?

Email marketing isn't complicated - as we've defined it, it entails sending marketing messages to your audience via email. But how to do it?

There are several ways email marketing can work:

You can use CRM.

Some CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools allow you to send email marketing messages to your contacts directly through your platform. The CRM manages your leads and customers, and you can set up automated emails to be sent based on triggers, events, or lead details.

You can try the email marketing platform.

If your CRM doesn't have this feature or you want to personalize your email a little, you can try an email marketing platform - there are even some free email marketing services you can use, like MailChimp. When you use one of these platforms, you upload your list, create an email, and send it from there.

You can work with the email marketing service.

If you want to outsource your email marketing, you can work with an email marketing agency to do this for you. An email marketing service can help by using advanced email marketing techniques to create the right strategy and messages, segment your audience, and A/B test your emails for the best results.

Finding the right email marketing service or platform is critical to the success of your email campaigns.

8 Email Marketing Best Practices for an Effective Strategy

Now that you understand what email marketing is and why it's important, it's time to talk about strategy. The great thing about email marketing is that you can adjust your strategy based on your specific goals and objectives.

Here we have outlined eight advanced email marketing techniques to help you create the best strategy for your business.

1. Personalize your email marketing messages

Modern consumers demand personalization from the brands they interact with. They want to see content and offers that are most relevant to them and are quickly turned off by brands that treat them like one person in a sea of ​​other customers. Research shows that personalized emails get 29% more opens and 41% higher click-through rates.

2. Customize your email marketing with segmentation.

Not all consumers are the same. Yes, everyone on your mailing list has at least one thing in common: an interest in your company. But most companies have multiple buyer personas. These characters represent the various consumer groups that do business with you.

Let's say you own a sporting goods store. You can have four different looks:

• Parents buy sports equipment for their children

• Hikers and campers

• Adults playing sports in recreational leagues

• Elite runners and cyclists

Elite runners don't care about hiking shoes, just like hikers don't need children's baseball gloves. This is where list segmentation comes in, which allows you to target your email marketing messages to the right audience.

 

By breaking down your audience by demographics, attributes, and previous interactions with your brand, you can send emails to everyone that are relevant only to their needs.

3. Create the right subject lines and email content.

The subject and content of the email will contribute to the success of your email marketing strategy.

You want your topic to grab attention. If it's something generic that fades into the background, recipients may not click to read what you have to offer. You can also try A/B testing themes to see what works best for your audience.

(We have some theme ideas for you!)

Make sure you create understandable email content, engage your target audience, and clearly describe what action they should take.

4. Create a yearly email marketing strategy.

One of the great things about email marketing is that you can technically use it as a one-time tactic as part of your overall marketing strategy. But when it comes to email marketing, it's even better to have a plan for the whole year.

Here are a few occasions throughout the year where email marketing can help:

• Holidays. The holidays are a great time to talk to your customers and potential customers to remind them of your business, the products and services you provide, let them know about upcoming specials, and more. In addition, the holidays are distributed throughout the year, so you have a ready plan! (Check out these holiday email headers for inspiration for your campaigns!)

• Downtime: Are there periods throughout the year when your business needs to boost its business a bit? Are you a seasonal business? Plan by adding email marketing and running a special or promotion at this time.

• Seasonal: Even if your business is not seasonal, you can take advantage of the seasons with email marketing. And with list targeting, you can reach different segments of your consumer base at different times of the year. For example, send a special email about your spa to parents with kids who haven't even started school yet - parents will be ready to pamper themselves after a long summer.

If you're not ready to plan a full year for your email marketing, there are plenty of other options to help you stay on top of consumer inboxes.

5. Plan to beef up your promotions with email marketing.

If you're planning your promotions or events for the year, be sure to include email marketing as part of that plan. Consumers love promotions. 61% of consumers enjoy receiving weekly promotional emails.

I love sales emails and this is how I discovered some of my favorite local businesses. I receive an email offering discounted dog baths and book my dog ​​immediately. I'm offered a new restaurant offering a free snack and I'm there (pick up) that weekend.

I mean, who doesn't love discounts? So, if you're running any type of discount or special offer, email marketing should be your go-to place to advertise it (in addition to your other channels, of course).

6. Tell us about your events

Just as email marketing is great for promotions, it's also great for events. If you host any events throughout the year, put together an email marketing campaign to accompany them. Make sure the email has all the details about the event, a link to RSVP if needed, and compelling images that encourage the reader to visit.

Let's say you're hosting an event when you open a new location - you want to attract customers in your area who can come and bring their friends.

With targeted email marketing, you can present yourself to consumers in the right place and increase the chances of more people visiting them.

7. Promote your business through education

Another great way to promote your business through email is to organize some sort of educational campaign. Maybe your auto repair shop creates helpful content for your consumers to take better care of their cars, or maybe you're a nutritionist who offers healthy recipes. Or maybe you don't create content, but you can collect useful content and send it as a resource to your audience. Either way, you can position your business as an industry leader by sending out informative content that asks for nothing in return.

You can even add this to your year-round plan. For example, a car repair shop may send seasonal tips on how to take care of your car in winter and summer. During the holidays, a nutritionist can send email marketing campaigns with healthy recipe ideas.

This is a great way to promote your business and help potential customers see you as a resource.

8. Link email marketing to your overall marketing strategy.

Email marketing works best as part of a holistic marketing strategy. If you're sending emails that drive traffic to your site, you want to make sure your site looks great and provides the right information.

Consumers can see your email and search for your business, so you need to make sure you're using SEO to be able to show up for that search. And, if you also use PPC, you can provide more opportunities to appear in search engines.

Get started with email marketing

Email marketing is an economical way to reach new and existing customers for a variety of purposes, which is important in any economic situation. You can use email marketing to generate leads, generate new customers, and keep your business in the spotlight. If you need more information on how email marketing can help your business, contact us today.