Whether you’re in control of a small business or a corporate giant, you are a business owner who wants their company to achieve the best results possible. Having a marketing budget in place allows you to seek out new business opportunities and turn potential customers into huge fans.
Many businesses lapse in the marketing department, but having a strong content marketing strategy is key in becoming successful. If you know your marketing strategy inside out, then you’ll likely notice that other aspects of your digital marketing strategy have evolved. It is at this point you may be wondering if email marketing campaigns are still important.
When it comes down to it, the answer is yes. Having a strong email marketing strategy enables you to reach out and connect with your target audience in a more personal way. Email marketing allows you to increase sales in a cost effective manner, this is great news for new and small business owners.
In the same way that other media and platforms have changed, all email marketing tools provide your business with what it needs to reach customers; and it’s easier than ever.
What is email marketing?
Email marketing services can be used to boost customer engagement, create brand awareness, generate sales and customers and also reward customer loyalty.
In its simplest terms, an email marketing strategy is utilising email communications to keep your customers informed and form personal relationships with the people in your contact list.
For those customers you already have, email marketing emphasizes communication and awareness. Basically, your email dropping into your customer’s inboxes reminds them you’re still there. However, for potential customers, these emails can be used to attract and entice them into your business.
Many businesses find that the most successful email marketing campaigns can be segmented in a way that caters to lots of different personas. For instance, one campaign could be aimed at new customers, whilst another is announcing a sale, such as Black Friday.
Email campaigns are put in place to help increase click through rates to your website, collect customer data and get them as email subscribers so you can send them future campaigns. Once you’re in their personal inbox, there is no going back! (obviously, they can unsubscribe, but if you’re selling something they want, chances are they won’t).
Also Read: What are buyer personas? And should you have them?
Why email marketing is important
As we’ve now established, using email marketing as part of your marketing strategy is a great way to enhance customer engagement and target customers, encouraging them into your online business.
Here are the top benefits of email marketing.
Creating personalised content
With email marketing, you are able to customise your campaigns and create personalised content, in order to target customers.
The personalisations you make don’t have to be huge ones, it can be as small as including the contact’s first name in the email. Statistically, emails that include the recipient’s first name in the subject line have higher click through rates, than those that don’t.
Alternatively, another effective email marketing campaign is creating individualised content based on your target audience. Doing this allows you to send the right marketing emails to the right customers.
For example, you may want to create segmented campaigns where you send one email to current and past customers, perhaps with an offer with a link to a landing page on your online store. Whilst another email is aimed at new customers to boost brand awareness and your average click through rate.
Having the ability to personalise your promotional emails has to be one of the main benefits of email marketing. Each email can have a variety of subject lines and images to boost engagement. It’s even possible to create lists within segmented campaigns based on geography.
For your marketing strategy to be a success, you need to send the right email, to the right people at the right time. This is when personalisation and segmentation can help.
Enhance customer loyalty and gain feedback
Staying present and keeping things alive is really important when you want potential customers and email subscribers to interact and purchase from your business.
Email marketing is here to help you do this. For example, when one of your customers buys from you, send out a satisfaction survey to gain value feedback and really get an insight into how your business is performing.
You can use the comments you receive to gain a clearer vision of future campaigns, post reviews on social media platforms, and focus on what is needed to improve your targeted messaging.
A good email marketing strategy will ensure that there is communication in place to regularly touch base with your customers and website visitors. Your buyers like to be kept in the loop about the latest products or offers you may be running.
In fact, research has shown that it can cost up to five times more to gain a new customer in comparison to maintaining an existing one.
Also Read: Why email newsletters are so valuable to your audience.
Improving sales
So, not only is email marketing an excellent content marketing tool, but when done right, it can increase sales too. Who doesn’t want that? Studies have shown that 59% of marketers recognised that email marketing is their biggest source of ROI and those who utilise segmented campaigns managed to increase their revenue by as much as 760%.
Email marketing campaigns can include the products or services you provide, boast about special offers or encourage customers to checkout as they’ve left items in the basket. Many online shoppers state that marketing emails do have an influence on their purchase decisions.
Your email marketing campaigns can easily include messages to motivate your customers to make a purchase and they’re more likely to buy from you because they’ve subscribed to your messages and updates. In addition to this, you can help your business generate sales by using email marketing as part of the sales process.
Increase website visitors
When you’ve put all your marketing efforts into creating great content for your business, how do you then get that out into the world?
Well, you might share it to a social media platform such as Instagram, LinkedIn, or other marketing channels; but what you’re definitely going to want to do is make good use of email marketing and send something out to your email subscribers.
If you get the email marketing game right, you’ll be sending traffic to your website and improving your search engine optimisation too. The more website visitors you have, the more search engines like you. Of course, you can use paid advertising, but if you can improve rankings organically, you increase brand awareness and keep your audience engaged.
When creating the content for your email campaigns, you need to bear in mind that every email needs to have a call to action (CTA), this encourages readers to click through to your website. The call to action needs to draw the reader in and make them click on it. Convince them that they absolutely need what is on the other side of that link. It could be a new product or a special offer, just make sure it’s relevant to your target audience.
Increasing leads
Not only can you improve sales, but you can get more leads into your business too. Email marketing is important within your marketing strategy as it nurtures past customers and encourages new customers to sign up.
For instance, you download a lead magnet from a website and then start to receive emails, eventually, you want to know more or buy the product.
Email marketing campaigns can gain better quality leads so your sales team isn’t wasting time on empty leads. From your promotional emails, you can keep track of whether those leads open your emails or engage by clicking the links.
Reaching the right people at the right time
In order to run a successful marketing campaign, you have to reach the right customers at the right time. This is really important when it comes to email marketing. Otherwise, your marketing efforts could be wasted and customers won’t take the action you want them to.
Reasons why email marketing works, it’s because mobile users are always checking their emails. It’s not just mobile either, emails can be checked on any device, at any time, this heightens the chances of your email campaign becoming a success.
Using email marketing software to send out regular emails to your customers, allows you to remain at the front of your customer’s minds, increasing engagement and the likelihood of taking action.
Producing cost-effective campaigns
While traditional marketing campaigns like direct mail or print can be expensive, email campaigns tend to be more cost-effective. When you run an email campaign, there is then no need for any photoshoots, printers or mailing. All you need is a copywriter and graphic designer to create captivating campaigns.
Additionally, email campaigns don’t take long to produce. If needed, you can produce an email in one day, which is much more cost-effective than the time it takes to produce a direct or print campaign. Budgets and time constraints are the two things that always impact paid advertising, but an email marketing campaign is much more efficient and timely.
Providing more value to your audience
The main goal for any business is to provide your audience with something valuable, to keep them coming back. Using your email marketing efforts to keep your audience engaged with your business is a great way to add value, even when they aren’t making a purchase. This is why we also work hard to get a customer to sign up and provide their email address.
Email marketing is one of the best marketing channels to continually keep customers informed and engaged with your content. When this is done right they will pay attention and purchase your products or services.
Maximising different email campaigns
Welcome Messages
This is the type of email you’d typically send to first-time clients after they’ve signed up, but they’re also used for sales generation, lead follow up, or brand awareness. A welcome message is usually more effective when combined with a special offer to further increase customer interest or action.
Anniversary or Birthday Messages
A birthday or anniversary email campaign boosts customer retention and loyalty. This type of email is more personalised and highlights milestones that are important to the brand or the customer.
Again, these are usually accompanied by a special promotion or discount code that they can use.
Limited Time Offers
This particular type of email campaign is used to target customers in sales. It aims to capture those who have purchased similar items or those who have not completed their purchase. These emails also come with promotional codes or discounts that will expire within a certain time. You can further encourage customers to make a purchase by including an expiry countdown within the email.
Abandoned Cart Emails
For those involved in e-commerce, sending an email about an abandoned cart can encourage customers to complete their purchases. This is one of many greatly effective customer acquisition tactics and these emails can be automated messages that ask the customer to complete their purchase within a specified timeframe.
Also Read: Why is local SEO important?
Our top tips for nailing your email marketing strategy
By now, we hoped we’ve answered your question on “why email marketing is important?”. So, let’s dive into some tips on how to deliver the best email marketing campaign.
Pay attention to mobile devices
When considering what is important in your email marketing strategy, you’ll need to remember that the majority of your customers will be mobile users. Therefore, the campaign you send out needs to be responsive on mobile devices and easy to read on smaller screens.
The extra thought taken to ensure all users can view your email means that your marketing efforts aren’t wasted. It’s incredibly frustrating when you open an email and you can only see half of it.
Monitor customer engagement
Once your first email marketing campaign is live, you’re going to want to see some results. However, you’ll need to prepare yourself to not see an instant uplift with all your products selling out or you becoming booked up for the rest of the year.
It is important to take a look at the results to see what your customers did, or didn’t do. You can then alter your email marketing campaign to engage more customers and change the results.
Before you set your sights on one particular email, you should do some testing, to marketers, this is known as A/B testing. You can have two versions of your email and change one variant, such as the subject line, to see which one was preferred by your customers.
Subject lines may be considered a small detail to some, but it’s the first thing your subscribers or potential customers will see before they open your email. If it’s irrelevant or not captivating enough, they may just delete it. In order to engage your desired audience, you need to engage them and make them open your email.
Don’t forget your social media channels
Everyone has social media nowadays, and this is something you need to take into account when planning your email marketing. Including the links to your social media platforms in your emails can boost your following, engagement on your posts and inform customers on all your latest products and offers.
As we’ve already mentioned, it’s likely that your customers will view your email on their mobile devices. Their phones will also likely have their social media accounts already logged in. So, if they were to click on a link in an email, it would take them straight to the correct page.
The fact that it’s so easy, makes your customers more likely to follow it through. Then, if they like/follow your pages, your posts will appear in their news feeds when they’re scrolling in their spare time.
Staying active on your social media channels keeps your business at the forefront of customers’ minds. People will take to your social media to look at products, promotions and reviews. Ensure that your profile is all filled in with your business email etc, customers put more trust in businesses that are transparent and easy to contact.
Research the best email marketing software
As email marketing is a well used marketing strategy, it means there are many different softwares out there to use. You’ll need to do your research to find the one that works for you as there are different packages and offers available.
Some software can help you create a whole email campaign with a journey depending on what your customer does. You can trial segmented campaigns to tailor your emails to target your entire customer base. By doing this, you’re personalising your campaign and increasing customer engagement in the hope they take the required action.
Need help with your email marketing?
Now you understand the importance of email marketing and want to get started on your own strategy, but you’re unsure where to start.
Well, Suki is here to create marketing campaigns that will boost customer engagement, brand awareness and drive more traffic into your business. Get in touch with us to get started.
