Email marketing is a growing industry and it’s growing for one reason, because it works. This is a run through of some of the reasons why you really should be doing email marketing.
Reason 1 - It converts much better than other channels
There’s no getting away from it, email marketing can achieve better conversion rates than any other channel. If you properly build and maintain your list it can be an incredibly powerful sales tool. If you’re not doing email marketing right now, this alone should be enough to convince you.
Reason 2 - Email increases retention
“A 5% increase in retention yields profit increases of 25 to 100 percent. Repeat customers spend, on average, 67 percent more than new customers.”
Source: Bain and Company
In other words, if you use email effectively to foster and maintain relationships the lifetime value of a customer will increase. This can have a massive impact on your bottom line especially if you are struggling with a high customer acquisition cost.
Reason 3 - It makes money!
“For every $1 spent, $44.25 is the average return on email marketing investment”
Source: Exact Target
The bottom line is the bottom line and this is it. Email makes money (if you do it properly). Just setting up a campaign and letting it run isn’t going to cut it. You need to invest the time to properly understand your audience, this will help determine how you engage and activate them through email in order to be profitable.
Reason 4 - Reach
“95% of online consumers use email” and “91% of consumers reported checking their email at least once a day”
Source: Exact Target
That’s right, you’ve got access to 95% of your audience through email. The thing is you have to get them to sign up through your list and opt-in to email marketing. Once you do that the 95% drops dramatically. The key here is to make your email marketing something that appeals to them. Exclusive content and competitions will help to encourage people to sign up to your list.
Reason 5 - Email is opt-in marketing to a prospects personal space
“70% say they always open emails from their favorite companies. Conversely, only 18% say they never open commercial emails.”
Source: Exact Target
This is one of the main reasons why email is much more powerful than other channels. It’s why it converts better and why people are happy to receive advertising which they actually engage with. They have opted in - asked to receive that messaging. If you make sure that messaging continues to be interesting and engaging then people will continue to be happy to receive it.
Reason 6 - You don’t have to be a marketing genius to do it
Email has a low barrier to entry and as long as you follow the basics it’s also got a very low risk. Of course being a savvy marketer will result in better campaigns and better results. However creating marketing campaigns with a healthy return on investment can be done by a novice with a little time and research.
If you’re not doing email marketing right now there are a myriad of tools, most of which have free plans. So you can sign up and start sending emails without needing to spend anything except your time. Make sure you choose a client which has an easy to use sign up form, you will find most will create one with an embed code which can be very easily added to a page or even just by using a WordPress widget.
Reason 7 - Email is growing
“The total number of worldwide email accounts is expected to increase from nearly 3.9 billion accounts in 2013 to over 4.9 billion accounts by the end of 2017. This represents an average annual growth rate of about 6% over the next four years”
Source: Radicati.com
Email is growing, it’s getting bigger and bigger. Even though people are moving increasingly to IM and Social for personal messaging the market itself is still growing. An investment now in email marketing is one that will pay dividends especially if you adapt as your audience, and the way they use email, changes.
Reason 8 - People spend a lot of time on email
“91% of consumers reported checking their email at least once a day”
Source: Exact Target
“The average interaction worker spends an estimated 28 percent of the workweek managing e-mail”
Source: Mckinsey.com
We spend a massive amount of time on email, we check it religiously. Email is a far more reliable channel to communicate with customers than any other form of mass communication.
Reason 9 - It gets better exposure than social
In a study on the lifespan of Facebook posts Wisemetrics found “Impressions are even shorter than Engagement, with only 2 Hrs 30 min to reach 75% of its max”
Source: Wisemetrics
Social moves fast, so fast in fact that if you’re audience doesn’t see your content within a relatively small timeframe it’s more than likely they won’t see it at all. Compare that with email where the lifespan is often until whoever it’s targeted at decides to deal with it. Be that by deleting or opening it.
Reason 10 - Email is way better for customer acquisition than you think
“E-mail remains a significantly more effective way to acquire customers than social media—nearly 40 times that of Facebook and Twitter combined”
Source: Mckinsey.com
Are you spending 40 times the effort on email than you are on social for customer acquisition?
So that’s it, 10 great reasons to make email marketing a priority. It’s not going anywhere and it’s a massive potential channel you could be missing out on. What’s more it’s very cheap to implement. Remember though, email should be about engagement. Don’t just spam your audience with offers.
If you enjoyed this you'll probably want to know how to create a successful email newsletter.
And please do let us know about your experiences with email marketing in the comments below:
