12Aug, 2016

0Comments

Many people seem to believe that email marketing is dead and no longer beneficial. Social media runs the show now, and so more and more people are choosing not to make use of email. The fact of the matter, though, is that email is not dead.

An email address is the first thing a company asks for when they want to contact you. When you sign up for a service, file a complaint, make an inquiry, or download something from a website, you always have to input your email, while things like your phone number are still optional. Those email addresses become the direct line of communication between the company and the customer. They allow you as a company to communicate on a more personal level with your customers. You can also use emails to help push your customers down the sales funnel. Below, you’ll find a list of the top 5 reasons why email marketing is still valuable in the current marketing environment.

1) Engagement and Reach

As you’re reading this, someone somewhere is checking their email. How can I say that for sure? Because there are more than 3.2 billion email accounts registered today, and 91% of people check their email at least once a day. Unlike Facebook and other social media, you never hear people saying they’re going to quit email. Email messages have a much broader, more engaged audience than many people realize.

When you post something to social media, it can very easily get lost, buried in the depths of cat pictures, inspirational quotes, and engagement notices.  Additionally, sites like Facebook use algorithms to prevent your customers from seeing ads they aren’t making money off of, to… encourage… you to pay for ad space. When you send a message via email to your clients it will reach their inbox, almost guaranteed. While that doesn’t guarantee they’ll open it, you can be sure your customers are receiving your information. Unlike Facebook posts and tweets, which can get lost in a feed and never acknowledged, emails sit in the inbox waiting to be opened. They don’t just vanish– they have to be sent away.

2) Conversions

The ultimate goal of your marketing team is to drive conversions. No matter how it happens, the end goal is always to turn a potential customer into a paying customer. There isn’t a more powerful channel for these conversions than email.

The average click-through rate of an email campaign is around 3%, whereas the average click-through rate for a tweet is closer to 0.5%, meaning you are 6 times more likely to get a customer to click through to your website via email than you are via Twitter. Additionally, email subscribers specifically choose to be contacted by you; by providing their email address, they’ve directly and intentionally let you know that they’re interested in your company.

Emails also provide you with much more space to advertise various products, whereas posts to social media have to be kept to a certain length to be noticed. The attention span of someone on social media is generally shorter than that of someone on their email, as they are usually scanning through and not actively engaging. The space email allows gives you more opportunity to draw someone in, and to show them products you know they’re interested in, to convert them into a paying customer.

3) Return on Investment

Email is unmatched in it’s ability to drive conversions. It makes sense, then, that email is the most effective channel to drive ROI. Email marketing yields an incredible average return; the average return of a $1 investment is $38.

Why does email outperform other channels so well? A hugely important factor is the ability to personalize messages and deliver relevant content. Unlike on social networks, where every follower sees the same message regardless of their location or past purchases, email messages can be much more personalized. You can hyper-target your outreach, using data collected to guarantee that they’re seeing a message they’ll connect with directly and be more likely to interact with.

4) More Professional Communication Channel

Many people still view social networks as a more intimate and personal form of communication. Those platforms are used to stay up to date on close friends and family. They expect to see photos and updates from those people when they log in, not from companies.

People see email, on the other hand, as a much more professional medium. People expect to receive updates and information about products and services via their email. A survey conducted by marketingsherpa showed that 72% of people prefer to receive promotional content via email, compared to 17% who prefered social media.  Again, when a customer has provided you with their email they have actively indicated that they want to receive offers and product information from you on that platform. That is where they want to be getting information about you– if they weren’t interested, they wouldn’t have signed up.

5) Open Platform

Companies own social media platforms, and they’re after your money. Facebook and Twitter both have algorithms that control how many people see your advertisement. If it’s not a paid ad, chances are high that up to 98% of your follower base will never see that post about your new product or special deal in the first place. That means they can’t engage with it, and you can’t create conversions from it.

On the other hand, no one company owns emailing. It’s an open communication platform. No one is managing what you can and cannot offer to your customers. No one is hiding your emails from them to make more money off of you. If they’re subscribed to your mailing list, they are much more likely to see your emails, barring the few whose spam filters whisk them away.

So, What’s the Point?

Email is one of the best options available to you!

There are many marketing options available to you. As a smaller local company, your time and resources may be more limited. This means you have to be incredibly careful to prioritize what actually works for your company. There are pros and cons to every type of marketing, and you have to know what your target demographic wants. While social media appeals to the younger generation of buyers, email has a more universal appeal and will reach all of your customers, rather than just a section. Stop spending your hard-earned dollars on things that aren’t giving you good ROI. The DoBizLo data co-op gives you access to thousands of potential new customers looking for what you have to offer. If this article wasn’t enough to convince you, let DoBizLo show you the results. Sign up today and see the real-life ROI a well-managed email campaign can bring to your company.