Why You Really Need to Reconsider Email Marketing

Social media has become the holy grail for marketers. Not only does it allow them to reach an exact demographic, it also allows them to speak directly to potential customers. So what about email marketing? This older tactic has been around since email first emerged, and it might not seem as effective, considering you have to compete with spam filters and shorter attention spans.

Still, that doesn’t mean email marketing is dead. In fact, it’s alive and well. Whether you’re marketing to college students or working adults, email marketing is effective. Many actually prefer companies communicate via email. So what are some of the advantages email has over social media or other types of marketing?

Here are the top reasons why you should really consider E-Mail marketing as part of your campaign:

Greater Reach

There are billions of people using email worldwide, with many checking their email at least once a day. Most, however, check multiple times a day thanks to the advent of smartphones. People check during their office commute, in waiting rooms, while waiting in lines and more. It’s no surprise then that accessing email is the most popular daily activity on a smartphone.

What does that mean for you? It means you have more opportunities to reach your subscribers throughout the day. However, if your material isn’t mobile friendly, you’ll likely end up losing subscribers and seeing even lower click-through and open rates.

Even still, you have a bigger chance of reaching your audience through email than Facebook. Consider this: Even if you have a large amount of followers on your social profiles, only a very small fraction of that number will actually see your content. While only a handful of subscribers will open your newsletter, your newsletter will reach its destination, so it’s up to the consumer to read it or not.

With that said, consumers receive dozens of email a day and often don’t have the time to read through every single one, especially promotional ones. If your open rate is pathetically low, it doesn’t necessarily mean email marketing itself is dead. Instead, look at your subject line, content and call to action to see where you can improve. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Is the tone promotional or helpful and friendly?
• Are you speaking at the customer or having a conversation?
• Are you driving engagement?

If you’ve answered no to any of the questions, think about where you can make changes to your email campaigns.

Longer Life Span

It should come as no surprise that social media posts have a short life span to reach the intended audience. Twitter is by far the shortest at only a few seconds. While Facebook might have a longer life span of a couple hours, and Pinterest might boast a few days, it still pales in comparison to an email. Unless it lands in someone’s spam filter, an email lives on in an inbox forever until the user acknowledges it, even if it’s just to delete it.

Of course, you don’t want to bombard your subscribers with emails every day—that’s a surefire way to get your emails marked as spam. Instead, focus on sending material out at certain intervals to keep people interested in your company and fresh in their mind. If you send information out too infrequently, your emails will likely go straight to the trash bin and people are more likely to unsubscribe since they won’t remember you.

Automated workflow

Being into email marketing, you might know how time-consuming it is to send follow-ups. Luckily, there is a kind of tools on the market to help professionals automate the workflow and send the emails to the clients and subscribers automatically. They are called drip campaigns.

These tools are numerous and every specialist can always find the most appropriate one, in functionality and price. As a rule, the basic features are:

• triggers: this feature allows to send emails automatically depending on which action the recipient performs;
• delays: they let you send the messages a bit later after the definite action the client has performed;
• scheduling: with this feature, you can make the email campaign be sent automatically on definite days and time;
• attachments: usually, the users are given a feature of attaching a file to the emails in the sequence; this lets you provide the subscribers with extra information;
• personalized on-the-go emails: some of the tools offer to create an email sequence and compose the emails on the spot; every email and the subject line can be personalized with the custom variables (first and last name, position, location, etc);
• statistics: you will always be aware of how well the email campaign performs; in the detailed statistics, you will find information on how many emails were sent, opened, links clicked, and many more.

Surely, you will have to spend some time building the sequence and composing emails, but in the end, you will save time and receive better results.

Better Return on Investment

While social media advertising can be as cheap or expensive as you want, email marketing is even more cost effective. It costs pennies per message and produces a high return on investment. People who have already subscribed to your newsletter or mailing list are already interested in what you have to offer. Those that employ good email marketing tactics generally see an ROI of 3,800 percent.

Of course, your ROI is only as good as your campaigns. If your email marketing game is weak, then you likely won’t see any returns. Make no mistake about it; crafting a good campaign takes work and time. The most successful campaigns segment their subscribers for personalized messages. While it might take some time to craft these different segments and emails, you’ll definitely see better results than if you take a one-size-fits-all approach. You can segment by gender, age, location, years subscribed and more to provide emails that will engage your customers.

Of course, not everyone who signs up for your newsletter will be ready to make a purchase every time he or she receives an email. However, emails are still great ways to nurture your leads to convert into customers later.

More Measurable Results 

There’s still debate on how to measure the success of social media campaigns, and many businesses go about it differently. Not only is it difficult to measure the ROI, but it can also be complicated to track the traffic from these sites.

On the other hand, email marketing is fairly straightforward with a solid set of metrics:

• Growth: number of subscribers you’ve gained over a period of time
• Open rate: number of people who have opened the email
• Click rate: number of people who have clicked on a link or call to action.
• Complaints: number of responses regarding issues with the product or service
• Subscription rate: number of people who have unsubscribed from emails

From there, you can input all of this into a simple formula to find out the monetary value of your subscribers and track sales and revenue.

Besides tracking value, you can also perform A/B testing from your email software not only to see what layout works the best but also to provide insight into your customers. Are they taken in by tempting subject lines, or do they prefer more informative ones? You can easily test, measure and improve upon all of this with email.

While email is no longer the only means of communication, it is one of the few that remain private and serves as a direct connection between you and the customer. While email marketing might be an old tactic, it’s still incredibly effective, cheap and easy to start. With all of the benefits, if you haven’t started an email campaign yet, it’s time to get started.

Do you have an email marketing strategy? If so, do you find it more successful than social media? Let us know in the comments below.