Category: Email Marketing

Email marketing, we’ve established it’s not dead.

It’s still alive, kicking ass and taking names for businesses large and small.

But, beyond just writing a fancy email and clicking send, how else can your business use, and benefit from email marketing as a promotional tool?

According to a GetResponse report (Email Marketing & Marketing Automation Excellence 2017), here are some of the top benefits of email marketing.

Top Benefits Behind Email Marketing

1. Lead Generation

Yeah, yeah – pretty obvious.

But not always used to its full potential.

Inviting website visitors to subscribe to your email marketing list (with a valuable incentive) is an easy, peasy lead gen strategy.

Follow up with them after they’ve had time to use / try / read their freebie, and you’re on your way.

2. Improve Your Sales

Think about it. If every single prospect on your email list became a paying customer, you’d quickly be in business heaven.

Sadly, that’s most likely not going to ever happen.

Even so, you can use email marketing to improve your sales prospects, simply by sending the right stuff, to the right people.

It’s the bread and butter of most email campaigns but, the trick to accomplishing this is – list segmentation.

A practice which allows you to contact each of your list members with the appropriate sales message at just the perfect time, in the end converting each one of them through the funnel into being a happy customer.

Feeling as though, thanks to your segmentation, your messages really do resonate with them, their current pain and their need.

3. Improve Your Conversion Rate

The key to improving your conversion rates is, as above, getting the right message in front of the right people, at the right time.

So, conversely – sending people stuff that doesn’t resonate with them, will drive down your conversion rates, and result in a big fat zero in your bank account.

As in the previous example, the key to doing this is personalization and list segmentation.

When you nail this, your campaigns are going to be a lot more successful and, your conversions are going to increase.

4.  Reduce Your Marketing Costs

Small businesses are almost always on a small budget (heck, even some bigger firms are tight) – and they’re always on the lookout for cost-effective marketing methods that work.

Which is precisely where email comes into play.

Fortunately, there’s plenty of email marketing applications available (think MailChimp, AWeber etc), and a number of them are either totally free or low cost.

5.  Identify Higher Quality Leads

No one wants to throw their time away, wasting it on low-quality tire kickers.

It is for this reason that it’s very important to have a system in place to ensure that you get good quality leads before you put too much effort into promoting your business.

Fortunately, email marketing is by nature a lead qualifying system, which illustrates a prospect’s desire based upon:

• The simple fact that they’ve subscribed to your email list, to begin with;
• Whether or not they open your email messages; and
• Whether they click the links in the emails you send them.

If your subscribers do any of the above, they may well be prime prospects for you.

6.  Shorten The Sales Cycle

Email marketing is an excellent way of getting your most persuasive content seen by potential decision makers.

Provided you’re following some of the tips above, nurturing the right subscribers, and leveraging both segmentation and good quality, relevant content, you’ll soon see the speed of your sales cycle shift into top gear, getting the most appropriate content seen by key decision makers.

The people who will actually buy from you.

Need an email marketing consultant?

I’m your man.

I can help write the copy, design the email and advise on strategy.

Drop me an email [email protected] for more info and to set up a quick call.

Too many wannabe ‘guuurooos’ will claim that email is dead.

That it no longer works, is out of style or somehow too old-fashioned compared to the whizz bang shiny shit.

Yep, it’s not exactly a Snapchat message, so for some it is considered old-fashioned.

However, email marketing is every bit as relevant today as it has ever been. All the email marketing statistics suggest that it is responsible for driving some of the highest conversions of all forms of online marketing.

One of the best things about this form of marketing is the fact that you’re able to quickly and easily communicate with your audience directly – getting your messages directly to them, and often on their phone.

A captive audience, in their pocket.

Coupled with marketing automation and segmentation, internet marketers are able to send email messages out which are hyper targeted at the touch of a button.

So, time dive straight in.

Let’s take a look at some trends shaping the email marketing industry in 2018.

Trend 1: Targeting and Cross-Channel Tracking

One of the greatest challenges facing those who use email marketing is the fact that consumers use so many different and unique types of devices.

Plus, there is the challenge of tracing consumers that click through a link in the email on a mobile device, then go on to use their tablet later on when making the purchase.

There is the difficult to answer question whether or not this type of activity can be properly tracked. And to complicate matters even further, what if it’s a shared device?

With tracking and analytical tools getting better with each passing day, marketers are benefiting by being able to combine data across all the different sources.

However, all that said, the capability to track is only as good as the ability one has to effectively make use of it. For this reason, many email marketing software vendors are now allowing it’s users to set up intricate automation rules that lead to being able to keep track of email subscribers on virtually any device being used.

Trend 2: More Regulation

Regulations have long been a huge concern for email marketers.

You’ll already find strict rules, which can result in a significant fine from the Federal Trade Commission if you don’t comply with all of them.

(Let’s not get started with the new GDPR rules!)

Due to the volatile condition of global politics as well as ever-increasing concentration on Internet privacy, we’ll continually see efforts to introduce new guidelines.

The single best way to stay within the guidelines is to employ the double opt-in strategy when building an email list. While this will most certainly lead to receiving fewer sign-ups overall, it will keep you safely within the guidelines of the law.

Regulations don’t have to be something you see as bad though. As someone running a business if you put the needs of your customers first you won’t have any problems since this is how most of the regulations are designed and written.

The important thing is to give subscribers options about the data they provide and let them know exactly how you intend to keep and use their data.

Trend 3: Better and More Efficient CTA (Calls-To-Action)

Gone are the days when a simple call to action calling for users to sign up to get a newsletter would be enough for the emails to pour in.

These days’ users are much more sophisticated and have no interest in another ’empty’ newsletter. In all reality, the newsletter as we knew it 10 or 15 years ago is all but dead. Just like the generally un-targeted email blasts.

Smart email marketers have made the shift from these methods to automated list segmentation and personalization. This is a shift we will more than likely continue to see, and because of it, calls-to-action will continue to change as well.

In order to be successful calls-to-action will have to offer visitors something of value that they will gladly exchange with email marketers for their email address.

Trend 4: Speaking Directly To Subscribers

While most internet marketers still don’t view marketing through email as a way to have an open dialogue with customers the reality is, it’s a great way to create and build customer relationships.

At its simplest level, people are able to easily respond to your messages with their own views and comments, however, you might also create organized promotions that connect customers to live discussion widgets, online surveys, and other specific tools with email.

This serves as a very convenient way for businesses to be made aware of any issues with customer service that may crop up – immediately.

Of course, it’s also just plain good for business to communicate with customers occasionally – duh!?

These opportunities to communicate can yield some of the best feedback that will ever be received, which leads to better products and services.

Recent surveys have concluded that the more engaged a customer is with a particular business the longer they remain as a customer, and more than 50% of all customers don’t mind paying more if their experience with your organisation is good.

You really should be using email as part of your customer engagement strategy.

Trend 5: Shrink Those Emails

There is simply no disputing the fact that the rise of tablet and mobile use has had, and will continue to have, a noticeable effect on the way online marketing is done.

One of the biggest changes that can be readily noticed is the reduction in the size of emails. This is mainly in response to the rise of mobile users and the way they check their email while on the move.

According to recent surveys, the optimum length for an effective email message is around 60 and 120 words. Any shorter and they are perceived as not being valuable, and when they go longer than 120 words users tend to swipe past them. When considering the size of your email messages you must also factor in the images you include as well.

This shrinking of email is a trend that is sure to continue as we go forward, as the shorter quickly digestible content is becoming more and more popular. Online marketers must adapt to these trends in customer desires.

Where do we go from here?

As you can see, there is still plenty of room for email marketing even today. Due to the fact that email lists are the property of each individual business, email marketing remains at the top of any list of the best online marketing methods.

One trend currently taking hold is for email marketers to send more email messages, however, make them shorter and send in smaller more targeted batches.

From the looks of it, even though laws will certainly be introduced that will call for adjustments in the way it’s done, email marketing is not going anywhere any time soon.