While social media is certainly valuable, there is no denying that email marketing is still very much alive, and quite possibly one of the most effective online marketing tactics around. According to HubSpot Blogs research, 77% of respondents said that email marketing is essential to their business, and only 19% said that they don’t see it as important.
Not surprisingly, the respondents who said that email marketing is not important often fell into the following categories:
- B2C brands looking to gain brand commitment from customers (24%)
- Traditional B2C brands, trying to keep up with the times (29%)
- B2B brands, trying to gain market share (19%)
- New media marketers who may not have vast experience in email marketing (22%)
- Marketers who do not have a clear communications strategy (20%)
- Marketers who are not testing (20%)
What’s more is that HubSpot Blogs research has also shown that businesses that prioritized email marketing increased their revenue by 25% on average, compared to those businesses that did not prioritize email marketing.
Why Should You Care About Email Marketing?
At the very least, email marketing allows you to target individuals based on their previous actions, interests, and demographic information. It’s much more effective and efficient to target individuals based on these factors than it is to target individuals based on their demographics alone. And with each new email you send, you get to optimize the message for better engagement and higher click-through rates.
On the other hand, traditional marketing methods, like billboards, bus benches, and radio ads, can only target the most receptive audiences. As a result, you may end up reaching a lot of people who have no interest in your product or service – or who may even think that you’re a little bit crazy for trying to sell them something that they don’t need.
Here’s how email marketing can be used to fuel your business:
1. Brand Awareness
One of the major advantages of email marketing is that it can be used to establish brand awareness. Since you’re not advertising on social media, you can use email marketing to introduce your brand and get the word out there.
For instance, if you’re B2B brand looking to expand your reach to potential customers, you can use email marketing to send out regular updates on new products that you and your company offer. Or, if you’re a fashion brand, you can use email marketing to promote special promotions and discounts that you’re running on social media. These are just some of the things that you can do with brand awareness in mind.
2. Lead Generation
Another advantage of email marketing is that it can be used to generate leads. You can use lead generation to get potential customers to sign up for your email list, and then you can engage with them via email marketing to turn them into paying customers.
The advantage of this strategy is that you can get potential customers to come back for more, so you can continue to nurture and grow your email list. And since you never “waste” an email with a potential customer, you never run the risk of losing them as a customer. You can also use email marketing to send out special offers and discounts to existing customers – something that you can’t do on social media.
3. Customer Retention
Last but not least, we have customer retention. You can use email marketing to keep in touch with current customers and remind them of your brand’s importance in their lives. You can also use email marketing to provide them with special offers and discounts (as mentioned before) – as long as they’re not too hot to handle, of course.
What this means is that you can continue to use email marketing to cultivate a relationship with your customers and encourage them to stick around. You’re not going to sacrifice quality just to make sure your emails go through, which is usually the case with batch and blast emails – or emails sent from random marketing automation tools.
Even if you’re just starting your email marketing journey, you can make good use of these three areas to really see an improvement in your performance. Before you know it, you’ll have a large and loyal audience of engaged customers that love to hear from you!