The younger generation of buyers are addicted to emails. Whenever they’re stuck in traffic, having lunch, or working out in the gym, Millennials and the iGen check their emails on a daily basis.
Apart from their popularity with the global consumer audience, email marketing strategies are a cost-effective, quick, and flexible way to reach out to potential consumers and promote website visits. They are the gateway to the establishment of meaningful relationships between your brand and your target market through direct marketing techniques.
So, before you put your newsletter campaign on the back burner or send that marketing email to the trash bin, check out these following reasons why a consistent email marketing strategy is a must-have for every small business.
1. Meeting consumer preferences
Even though social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok are widely revered by marketers for the billions of monthly visits they accumulate, not every small and medium sized company can afford the high costs of creating consistent, high-quality digital content. This is why many small businesses are focusing instead on email marketing as a direct medium of communication that can help them maintain a decent level of professionalism in their brand storytelling efforts at the minimal costs.
Surprisingly, email marketing is not just relatively cost-effective, but consumers also like it. Part of its success is the fact that this strategy is based on consent-you have to permit a brand to send you content before they can do so. A recent survey found that more than 70 percent of the respondents held favourable reviews about consuming marketing content via email.
Why is that so?
Well, for starters, there is probably nothing more convenient than reading an interesting promotional story on your daily -and boring- commute to work. In specific, brands that share special offers or redeemable coupons are likely to receive more engagement.
Second, in a sea of advertisers who are constantly fighting for the consumer’s attention, it is nice for once to find relevant and personalized content that could turn the long waits at a reception desk into a learning experience. Through email segmentation, you can deliver ever-green content at low costs.
Finally, there’s the speed element. The contemporary consumer likes instantaneous communication channels akin to email marketing. Customers want to learn about last minute sales and real-time exclusive deals to give themselves enough time to think about a purchase, or better yet, to make the purchase.
2. Wider reach
With more than half of all Internet users relying on mobile devices, it’s easier for you to optimize your email marketing strategy for a good readership experience. Your emails therefore have to account for the behavior/preferences of an average consumer.
More importantly, email marketing does not only connect you to smartphone users. Anyone with access to an email account is also a potential subscriber. As long as you optimize your emails for a good readership experience, regardless of a receiver’s device of choice, your options are unlimited!
To appeal to a greater audience, you also ought to incorporate simple design elements that work well with both small and big screens. And remember not to use too many or heavy images. Because most emails are consumed on the move, chances are that heavy files ruin the readership experience in light of increased scrolling and loading times.
3. More functionality
Even though social media advertising is as popular among marketers as email marketing, the former has limitations that the latter overcomes. For example, you can only share 280 characters per post on Twitter, and most social media sites have an upper limit on the size of images and videos you can publish. If your promotional messages cannot be distributed with these limitations in mind, then email marketing is your best chance.
In fact, emails can be extremely interactive. You can share a file of any size, or publish a plethora of pages at a time–just ensure that the shared content does not compromise the user experience in any way.
4. High returns on investment (ROI)
With low implementation costs comes high ROI. SMEs encourage the use of email marketing campaigns due to the high conversion rates and profit margins they attract. Most of these companies start out with limited promotion budgets yet end up enjoying huge benefits from email marketing solutions.
One of the ways email marketing campaigns expand your bottom line is by introducing your products to a wider pool of consumers, consistently over a long period. Be sure to include a call to action such as prompting the audience to visit your website. When the readers access your website and find a compelling landing page or product sheets that speak to them, they could make a purchase. In this regard, email marketing increases sales conversions.
Besides, the bigger your emailing list the higher the number of leads your business can pursue.
Overall, email marketing is a useful tool for advancing brand awareness. Extra visibility translates into more meaningful connections with the target demographics–which improves sales over time.
5. Ease of integration
The best thing about email marketing is how easy it is to implement this strategy alongside other product promotion efforts. Marketers do not have to explore this tactic in isolation. For example, besides using email marketing to fulfill a number of advertising objectives, you can also use it to sustain different campaigns to get the best value for money from your monetization initiatives.
A good example is how many marketers adopt social media and email marketing in unison. When a brand decides to distribute free items using social media channels to promote their products by encouraging sampling or testing, the entity can drum up support and anticipation if they incorporate email marketing techniques. Furthermore, email marketing can help you increase your social media following if you include a ‘Follow Us’ link whenever you have something to share.
Finally, emaIl marketing provides novel ways for your brand to advertise green content. Each time you publish a new blog, send your subscribers an email alert and watch your website traffic increase.
Bringing it all together;
In the absence of content marketing, most digital promotion efforts remain futile. Content marketing enables your brand to connect, entertain, and educate loyal consumers as well as generate more leads.
Consistent email marketing strategies are great for maximizing visibility and presenting your products in front of a large audience. To get it right on the first try, focus on sharing brief, light content continuously. Heavy files are not ideal for Internet users who are constantly on the move. Your target audience is already hooked on email consumption (with some of them reading and writing emails in the bathroom), all you have to do is give them access to relevant, ever-green content on a consistent basis.
