Innovative marketers know that the best way to attract, engage, and retain customers is by using multiple channels and tactics to reach them. One of the most effective channels for many businesses is email marketing. If you’re not utilizing this powerful platform, you’re losing out on a huge market share.
What is email marketing?
- It’s one of the most popular and effective ways to engage with customers.
- It’s incredibly flexible.
- And you can use it to communicate with customers about almost anything.
In many ways, email marketing is akin to social media marketing. It’s a way of connecting with customers on a personal level, and allowing you to speak to them where they are, rather than trying to convert them to a different channel.
A report from Litmus states that 92% of consumers have used email marketing to hear from brands. In an increasingly digital world, email marketing provides marketers with the opportunity to have a deeper conversation with their customers.
Why should you consider email marketing?
The ability for email marketing to attract, engage, and retain customers makes it a pivotal tool for any business. According to HubSpot Blogs research, consumers have used email marketing to acquire new information from businesses (51%), to learn more about a product or service (38%), and to obtain a discount or deal (31%).
From a marketing standpoint, email marketing allows you to craft messages that will be effective across different platforms, and gain attention in a crowded sea of messages. It’s also a great way to continue the conversation with customers who have previously shown interest in your product or service.
And did we mention that email marketing is incredibly flexible? Businesses of all sizes, from large corporations to small shops, can use email marketing to get in touch with their customers. Whether you have a handful of subscribers or a million, you can still use email to reach your audience.
How can email marketing help my niche business?
If you’re reading this, you’re in the right place. We’ll now walk you through how email marketing can help your business.
- Research shows that customers who receive regular, personalized emails, grow to like those emails more than those who receive mass emails. It’s natural for customers to feel connected to a brand or business they’ve communicated with via email. When you send personalized emails, those customers are more inclined to believe that your brand or business is taking an interest in their specific needs and wants. (Source)
- Because your email marketing is personalized, it’s easy for customers to feel like you’re interacting with them on a one-to-one basis. This builds a more intimate connection that makes customers more open to suggestion and offers. (Source)
- Emails that are personalized have higher click-through rates than those that are not. (Source)
- It’s well known that buyers who receive a lot of marketing emails end up getting sick of those emails. This is called ’email overload’ and having too many messages can actually decrease a person’s productivity. (Source)
- In one study, participants who received frequent and relevant email marketing messages about products they were interested in buying, were 20% more likely to buy the product than those who received fewer emails. (Source)
- Customers who receive relevant emails about products they are interested in, are 26% more likely to make a purchase than those who receive emails on a random basis. (Source)
- The key to effective email marketing lies in using metrics to track and improve performance. (Source)
- E-commerce stores that use re-marketing techniques generate 12.5% more revenue than those that do not. (Source)
How can I utilize email marketing to grow my business?
Now that you’re convinced that email marketing is a crucial aspect of your business, here’s where you can move forward. First, choose a platform. There are a variety of options when it comes to email marketing platforms, with the most popular ones being HubSpot and MailChimp. You’ll want to look for a hosted solution that offers you all of the automation and customization you could want or need. Plus, you can choose to integrate your email marketing with your social media accounts, so when you post on social media, your email gets automatically sent to your subscribers.
Once you have your email marketing platform setup, the next step is to populate it with content. You can do this using various techniques such as;
- Creating emails that are relevant to your target audience.
- Finding your audience’s most common questions and addressing them in your content.
- Integrating video content into your emails.
- Using case studies and other types of inbound marketing.
It’s important to keep your emails relevant, interesting, and engaging. Avoid sending overly promotional emails and those that are simply a ‘blurp’ about your product or service. Those types of emails will either turn off your audience or cause them to unsubscribe.
What should my next step be?
There are a few steps you should take after you’ve set up your email marketing platform. First, make sure that you’re looking at the right metrics. Without a good understanding of how your email marketing is performing, it’s difficult to know what improvements you should make. Once you’re comfortable with those metrics, it’s time to try something new. You should always be looking to expand your reach to new audiences, and grow your email list as much as you can.