Email marketing is one of the easiest, least resistant and at the same time an effective form of marketing in the whole marketing mix used today. Now, it can also be as cheap as you like , with a simple account on platforms like Mail Chimp which is absolutely free for up to 2000 subscribers, but at the same time, it could be super expensive if you are really looking complex dashboards and CRM platforms.
Email marketing can get as creative and witty as you want and can really encourage your audiences to ‘stick’ to the content you want them to see.
Some of the best things I love about email marketing and think it really works is:
You can be really versatile in the given space: Embed a video, an info-graphic, a customer review or recognition or even just a lovely picture of your team to convey your message. I still remember one of the emails I received from a membership organisation for Christmas, included a lovely short video of the entire team taken at their desks in their work environment giving their wishes for the festive season. It actually felt as if a mate is genuinely wishing me siting at their desk. No fluff, no jazz, just simple messaging, really stuck with me for long and made me go back to their website repeatedly.
It sits in the inbox waiting to be opened: An email in an inbox stays unread till it IS opened. Comparing this with the fast moving feeds and posts on social media, it is easy for your post to get missed if audiences haven’t seen them at the time you post it as it will soon get buried under the million other posts from the rest of their feed. Also human nature is to open it …c’mon… you know it is annoying to have one unread message trailing in your inbox for long. People atleast got to flag them, file them or atleast clear their inbox of spam and other unwanted stuff. So your customers got to at least open their emails in their inbox even if it means skimming through.
Trackeability: With email marketing, you can measure your unsubscribes, your bounce backs along with your click throughs, hot spots in your email and hence conversion rates. Also it is easier to measure how well a campaign has improved from the last time it was executed to the same set of audiences. The ‘split testing’ attribute of it is certainly my good friend allowing the audience decide for what they want in their inboxes.
Segmentation and targeting: It has been proven time and again that targeted emailing to certain ‘type’ of audiences tends to have better results and lesser unsubscribe rates. This works better if you are able to get more information about your audience, may be through social media and then target them with a well-thought through customized email campaign, giving them exactly what they expect through your communications. You do not need a massive contact list to be able to segment your audiences into. But understanding the thought process/buyer journey of the segment of audience selected is key here.
There are so many more reasons than just these for email marketing being so popular, useful and one of the best return on investment and your time. So go on and get started on creating your very own email marketing strategy.
