As far as online marketing goes, email appears to be the dinosaur of the internet game. However, this marketing MVP is far from retired. Evolving with the internet landscape, email marketing has come a long way from cold contacting leads lists. Consumers now choose to subscribe to company emails in the hopes of receiving incentives and news.
For small businesses, email is an essential online marketing tool. Throughout this article, we’ll look more closely at why email still plays such a crucial role, and how you can use it to your advantage.
Broader Audience Reach
Of adult internet users, approximately 92% use email, and more than half use email daily. Emailing customers, rather than using your web design and social media alone, provides a broader spectrum of marketing outreach. It offers a chance to contact a wide selection of consumers who might not visit your website every day to check on current promotions.
Emails are an easily shared promotional tool. With a simple click of the “forward” button, your customers can send coupons and announcements to friends and family in under a second.
Personalized Communication
Email marketing is useful if you run a small business because it offers the chance to personalize your communications by recipient. Even using automation tools, there are ways to tweak messages to suit each customer. Options for personalization include:
Abandoned Cart Reminders: Carts are frequently abandoned online for a variety of reasons. From a change of heart to a loss of focus, an abandoned cart is a lost sale. Email marketing helps regain some of these sales, by reminding consumers about the items they were interested in. Research shows that approximately 10.7% of reminder emails result in a sale.
Loyalty Reward Updates: Loyalty rewards are customer-wide, but each customer accumulates differently. Therefore, each email must be tailored to include a customer’s personal information and reward count. These little records tell customers you care, and that each account is relevant to your brand.
Exclusive Offers: Finally, you can personalize emails with exclusive offers based on location, spending preferences, and more. Following each customer’s buying history through analytics will determine which specials and coupons will be most welcome.
High Rate of Success with Low Overhead
When you check the cost of email marketing next to web design, social media management, and content creation you’ll find that email campaigns have low overhead and high ROI. In fact, studies show that marketing emails are highly successful, with more than 50% resulting in a purchase from the respondent. With more than half your customers buying, and emails being so cost-efficient, it’s an economically appealing mode of advertising for a small business.
Higher Potential for Feedback and Customer Communication
Of all available forms of communication, more than 50% of consumers use email to correspond with companies they shop from. This makes it well worth the added effort of creating an email campaign. Finding reasons to reach out to consumers urges engagement and response. If email is the preferred method of communication for more than half your digital customers, not having it could mean missing out.
Email is a great way to request feedback from your customers without being aggressive. It provides a gentle push for information which can be answered at a time of convenience and from anywhere with an internet connection. This includes:
- Polls
- Questionnaires
- Star Rating System
- Reviews
Emails Are an Excellent Canvas for Different Media
There are a plethora of benefits for marketing emails available to small business owners. Even the types of content used create windows of opportunity. One of the most popular forms of email media is video. Video has taken the internet marketing world by storm over the past few years and it appears email videos are just as attractive. Studies show that videos provide a 300% higher rate of clicks than regular emails. This is a substantial difference, and part of the reason many marketers choose to use video email in their campaigns.
Video isn’t the only form of media providing results. Consumers respond well to all visual information, such as:
- Photos
- Memes
- GIFs
- Infographics
One media tip for small business owners looking to market through email is to make your media personal. The more your video, photo, or meme touches the hearts of your customers on a personal level, the more human your brand appears.
Email Marketing for Local Businesses
For those new to email marketing, working with a marketing management company can help get you started on the right track. Interested in learning more about email marketing and how it could work for your small business? Schedule a free consultation.