You wake up one day, decide to hit the slopes, and then…boom. You’re in an accident, you suffer a minor injury, or you just plain old have a bad day. Regardless, you’re now in the company of injured skiers and snowboarders, who are frustrated and angry that the day they had looked forward to all year just went down in flames.
While we empathize with the plight of injured skiers and snowboarders (and also their parents, who have to explain to their child that they’re not going to make it back for their school photo shoot), it’s important to note that not all injuries warrant the closure of a whole season. In fact, based on the type of injury and whether or not it’s life-threatening, you can usually tell how many days or weeks of the season you’ll be sidelined.
For example, if you’re knocked out for the year after hitting a particularly nasty tree branch, you might just have to wait until next season to continue your skiing or Snowboarding adventures. However, if, say, your ski boots cause you to suffer from plantar fasciitis after just a few runs, you might be able to continue to enjoy the slopes right away.
So, how does this relate back to email marketing?
If you’re relying on the sporadic blasts of cold snow to keep you motivated to hit the slopes, you’re going to be in for a rude awakening once the snow melts and days become longer. Just like the injured skiers and snowboarders we mentioned above, your audience might grow tepid about your brand as the weather becomes more agreeable.
According to HubSpot Blogs research, 66% of consumers want to receive regular emails from brands they love or like, and only 11% want to hear from brands they don’t know or care about.
If you’re going to keep your email audience interested, you’re going to need to continue to cultivate and nurture that interest. And to do that, you’re going to need a strategy.
Luckily, you’ve come to the right place. Below, we’ve compiled a list of 140 reasons why email marketing isn’t dead yet, and even if you think you have a good excuse to avoid investing in email marketing — like, say, if your budget’s tight or you’re starting a new business — you might be surprised at how many options you’ve got for effectively marketing via email.
Email Marketing Is As Effective As You Make It
Let’s be real, most email marketing campaigns are pretty boring. Newsletters, marketing emails, and marketing blogs with occasional sales promotions — it’s a pretty standard formula that doesn’t seem to change all that much.
But what if we told you that there was a way to get more bang for your buck, a way to cut through the blandness and get your recipients actually engaged with your content?
You might be wondering how. Well, it’s simple. Focus on providing value to your audience. Instead of pitching products or services that your audience doesn’t need or want, pitch products or services that can help them solve a problem. And voila! Suddenly, your bland emails become interesting and even useful. Your recipients will actually want to read your email because it’s providing them with useful information.
This is called “Value-Based Marketing”, and it’s extremely effective. It’s the exact type of marketing that David Ogilvy, one of the world’s greatest marketing gurus, extolled in his 1936 book, Advertising for Men.
“Inevitably, a man’s mind boggles at the prospect of catering to a woman’s whims and fancies,” Ogilvy wrote. “But in the field of advertising, the opposite is the case. A clever advertiser will learn to charm the woman in your life and to delight you in turns. He will try to make his products look like attractive baubles to hang about your neck, and a companion piece for the evening gown. And when he wins your confidence and you begin to trust his judgment, he will sell you any damned thing in the name of profit.”
In other words, don’t just market to men. Market to everybody. But find a way to connect with and delight your man-candy.
Use Personal Stories To Convince Your Audience
It’s not just about the value that you’re providing. It’s about the personal connection that you’re making with your audience.
In one of his best-known books, The Art of Storytelling, author Joseph Campbell states that stories allow us to connect with one another, to understand what another person is feeling, and to sympathize with their plight. Stories allow us to empathize, to place ourselves in another person’s shoes, so to speak.
While it’s an effective tactic to simply state a fact in an email, telling a story proves that you’re connecting with your audience on a more personal level. It shows that you understand their plight, and it humanizes you in the eyes of your audience.
Email Marketing Is Still Popular Because Everyone Thinks It’s Safe
It seems that people are still skeptical of email marketing, which is ironic because email marketing is one of the least intrusive marketing tactics there is. While it’s true that email marketing can be a bit of a stealth form of marketing, it doesn’t feel like marketing to the recipient. In other words, you’re not going to spam your audience.
Instead, you’re reaching out to individuals who have expressed an interest in your product or service. Plus, you’re not going to force someone to take action or make a purchase, you’re just going to provide them with information. So, while it might feel like you’re sneaking up on someone, the truth is that you’re not.
For some reason, people still think that email marketing is a little bit of a free pass, that it doesn’t really count, or that they’ll get in trouble for subscribing to a lot of marketing emails.
But in actuality, email marketing is completely legal as long as you don’t spam people.
Email Marketing Allows You To Test Credibility And Validate Your Claims
If you’re claiming that your product or service is “the best there is”, you might want to test the claim by sending out samples to prove it. But you can’t do that if you haven’t written any compelling copy for your email.
When someone decides to trust you enough to give you their email address, that means you’ve convinced them that you’re credible. So, you might want to use your new customer to validate the credibility of your claims. You can use email marketing to send out coupons, discounts, or additional value as an incentive to get the person to sign up. Or, you can use email to send out your most recent product review, showing that you’re an authority in your industry. Your new customer, or potential customer, is now seeing that you’re an expert and, hopefully, will start seeing you as an authoritative source for information on your industry.
Email Marketing Is Still Popular Because It’s So Easy To Start
If you’re looking for a way to market your products or services, but don’t have the money to spend on expensive ads, billboards, or magazine spreads, then email marketing is one of the cheapest and most effective ways to do it. Even if you don’t have a lot of money to spend, you can start a small email marketing campaign for little to no cost.
All you need is a good email marketing service like MailChimp, which offers free accounts that you can use to create your email list.
Once you have your email list, you can start sending out periodic emails, like we mentioned above, or you can create branded short-links that will drive traffic to your site. You can even use Google’s free tool, Google Analytics, to track the traffic that comes from your email links.
And if none of that convinces you that email marketing is still effective, perhaps this will: According to HubSpot Blogs research, 66% of consumers want to receive regular emails from brands they love or like, and only 11% want to hear from brands they don’t know or care about.