With SEO and PPC garnering the majority of the attention, we are often asked how can email marketing help my business. We are not surprised when we hear it. It’s a very legit question. We live in an era of dynamic changes. Most businesses want to use the most current marketing tools that provide tangible returns. In such an environment, email marketing seems like an obsolete tool.

But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Email marketing is alive and kicking. In fact, it is more powerful and rewarding than it ever was. Guess the ROI on every British pound that you spend on email marketing? It can be as high as 100 pounds. That’s irrespective of whether you are B2B or B2C. There’s no shortage of the ‘email marketing is dead’ theories, mind you. So we figured that this was a great time to create a list of answers for the question, ‘how can email marketing help my business.’

An Overview Into Email Marketing in 2021

One of the biggest misconceptions is that targeted mailers remain unopened due to spam. Did you know that the global spam rate has been consistently decreasing? From 69% in 2012 to 47.3% in 2020, the drop is huge. That may not sound like much. But it’s a sizeable reduction.

Despite the 47.3% of spam and clutter that overfills email inboxes, targeted emails are still very effective. Moreover, they are cheap. Most email marketing platforms are reasonably priced. If you are looking to just wet your toes, there are many free platforms as well. Email marketing is also one of the most hands-free marketing tools. With a skilled email marketing agency by your side, you can schedule it for months in advance.

Once you have the mailers ready, it practically runs on autopilot. Monitoring and tweaking will be necessary to optimise it further. But at least it’s not as labour-intensive as say, SEO or PPC are.

Email Marketing for Business Enhances Other Channels

Email marketing can seamlessly integrate with any other marketing strategy. That’s not all. It can in fact enhance the results of the rest of your marketing endeavours. For instance, you can use it to boost your content marketing efforts, by promoting your best content. Anyone who’s tried to promote content otherwise would know how difficult it is to gather eyeballs. With email marketing, your only limit is the size of your list. If you have a list of 10,000 subscribers, that’s 10,000 people who will at least get a direct link to your best article.

You can club it with social media marketing by placing clickable social media icons in the footer of the newsletter. You can also embed your best performing social media posts in it. Webinars, product photos, there are a plethora of ways to use email marketing to amplify the results of your other channels. Most other marketing channels are mutually exclusive. Not email. It’s seamless.

It Increases Your Reach and Drives More Traffic

In most other marketing channels, you are competing for visibility. Be it search engine marketing or social media, there’s competition, algorithms, AI and tons of other factors stacked against you. Most of them are not in your control either. But you own your email list. It’s completely in your control and no algorithm can limit your reach.

You decide the frequency of emails. There’s no fear of censorship or your content being taken down because someone random reported it. We are not trying to undermine the importance of social media, mind you. Your social media presence is a critical part of your brand’s credibility. Linkedin for instance is one of the best lead generation platforms. But even large brands have been struggling with organic reach. It is currently at 5.2% for Facebook. If you have more than 100K followers on Facebook, the engagement rate is a dismal 0.08%. Segmented emails meanwhile, blow social media out of the water. The average open rate in the UK is 17.5%.

It’s not too different if you compare traffic oriented marketing campaigns. Even the most loyal readers won’t visit your blog every day. Email campaigns can deliver everyday updates into their inboxes. You can send emails to remind the audience about the great content you curate. Just a brief summary of your best blog posts with thumbnails will do wonders to increase website traffic.

It Encourages People to Take Action

Email click-through rates in the UK jumped from 0.9% to 2.4% in 2019. That’s an all-time high. If your business was using email marketing in 2019, then it would have definitely produced the desired results. Irrespective of whether it was traffic to websites, or direct phone calls, emails worked. What if you were not using email marketing back then?

Now’s the next best time. Currently, 89% of the UK’s population uses email. Researchers predict that there will be 4.48 billion email users by 2024. Imagine the number of eyeballs that you can get with a targeted email campaign.

On the other hand, if your email campaign is faring dismally, you need to reanalyse it. It is extremely important to work with a team that’s aware of the best practices to increase ROI on email spend. When it comes to increasing click-through rate here are some of the best practices we recommend.

• CTA buttons are the key. Use them effectively to improve click-through rates. Contrasting or bright colours that are consistent with your branding work best. Further, you can use short, crisp copy to create FOMO (Fear of Missing out) and a sense of urgency.
• Redirect your email traffic to a landing page. Not to the homepage.
• Use split tests to gauge the performance of different newsletters. Analyse click-through rates, open rates and other desired goals.

Email Marketing for Business Increases Brand Recall

There are two very important statistics that we wish to share with you. The UK has the highest mobile email readership in the world. The second one is a Statisa prediction that there will be 64.83-million mobile users in the UK by 2025. The take away from these is that mobile penetration is skyrocketing in the UK. Almost 62% of the UK’s mobile phone users read emails every day.

This means that email marketing is one of the best ways to increase brand awareness. It’s a stay-on-top strategy. Create separate campaigns for brand recall, and products and services. You can talk about your company’s mission and vision. Share your best content. But don’t shirk from sending out a great promotional offer. Uplers says that 60% of a company’s subscribers sign up to an email newsletter purely to learn about promotional offers. When your customers open their email as part of their morning ritual, they see topical emails that pique their interest. This will enhance brand recall.

It Helps Build Credibility and Trust

In the end, business boils down to trust. You are more likely to buy from a person you trust, than a mega-corporation that you don’t. The same holds true for your customers. Email helps you connect directly to your customer. It’s more personal than most other forms of marketing. Also, there are easy ways to make it even more personalised.

Campaign Monitor says that emails with personalised subject lines have 26% better open rates. How about sending out a great welcome email that establishes trust? Make it as engaging as you can. Let that first impression be a lasting one. Welcome emails are also a great way to establish the roadmap ahead. You can include details such as:

• The newsletter frequency
• The newsletter content
• A little backstory with social proof. Showcase yourself as an authority in your industry
• Tips on how they can receive relevant emails from you. Steps to add your email id to their whitelist

It takes time to build trust. Email marketing puts you in the best position to work on that. That’s in your customer’s inboxes. It is a personal, intimate place that they use to communicate with family and friends. There’s no better opportunity to advance your marketing goals.

It’s More Profitable

Search engine marketing is very advantageous. But guess what has been the most consistent marketing channel in the past 10-years? It’s email.

• Promotional email newsletters had a 66% conversion rate for purchases made as a response to the email. Even Google Ads, which we believe is a very effective marketing tool does not produce those numbers
• Email marketing is 40-times as effective as social media marketing for customer acquisition. Social media might be more in-your-face all the time. But this statistic reveals that small businesses might get better ROI by focusing on email marketing instead.

Email Marketing for Business Provides You With Actionable Data

We are firm believers in analytics. It provides you with invaluable insights. That too with brutal honesty. You might have put your best foot forward towards a content marketing plan. Your email marketing team might have worked for weeks to create a segmented mailing campaign. But it’s only as good as what the analytics reveal.

When it comes to email marketing, we use platforms that provide us with the most details. What was the open rate for a campaign? How about the click-through rate? We can set goals for conversions. We can make changes on the fly. Which day of the week provides the best open rates? Is there a specific time of the day that’s more effective? What’s the average bounce rate? Has a campaign been successful in reducing unsubscribe rates? Every bit of data completes a piece of the puzzle allowing us to improve and fine tune the campaign.

Conclusion

It would be foolhardy to write off email marketing in 2021. It continues to be one of the most effective marketing channels in the world. To make the most of it, you need a skilled & creative email marketing team by your side. One that has worked over a wide variety of industries with B2B and B2C clients.

Rockstar Marketing can help you kick start a brand new email marketing campaign. Alternatively, we can provide an unbiased critique of your existing campaign, and make suggestions on how to improve it. If you are still wondering how can email marketing help my business, speak to us now to know-how.

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