Email marketing is one of the most effective, yet under-utilised form of digital marketing available to businesses. Email marketing allows you to get direct marketing to exactly who you want, instantly. There are a lot of benefits attached to using email marketing as part of your overall marketing  plan, here are 10 of them:

 

1. Low Cost

Email marketing carries a lower cost compared to mainstream marketing channels. There are no print, post or publicity costs, but there is the opportunity to invest in software to automate, track and evaluate email marketing campaigns. There may also be a small charge for sending several thousand emails at a time but even so, these are far less costly than other marketing methods.

 

2. Targeting Fans

Emails are one of the few forms of marketing that consumers opt-in to receive. The majority of businesses only send message to customers who have asked to receive them, which almost guarantees higher conversation rates than other forms of marketing.

 

3. Segmentation

You can go one step further when targeting brands by only sending emails to those who meet certain criteria. Emails can be targeted by various different criteria such as location, age, gender and interests. The different segments you target can be altered depending on which product or service you are trying to advertise. Segmented email marketing lists can work really well for brands who have collected enough data on their customers, and has been proven to boost engagement results.

 

4. Call To Action

Email marketing is one of the few platforms that allow recipients to go from viewing an offer to purchasing a product in 2 or 3 clicks. This means that emails lend themselves to impulse buying. With an effective call to action and links directly to products, emails can be an unrivalled source of sales.

 

5. Easy Creation

Some of the most successful marketing campaigns utilise simple plain text templates, suggesting that it is the content within an email, rather than the design that is most important. It is very easy to design emails however, using various free or paid software you can have access to templates, videos and images, making it very easy to create a well designed email.

 

6. Easy Tracking

Email tracking software allows you to monitor open, click-through and conversion rates, so you can see easily where things are going right or wrong. From there, it is a simple process to identify and update areas for improvement. Unlike other marketing platforms, weaknesses can be identified and changed immediately. Tracking software can offer features such as click mapping (which tracks what recipients are clicking on within an email) and A/B testing (which allows you to send out two variations of the same email and monitor which was most successful).

 

7. Easy Sharing

Recipients can share the content with whoever they choose at the click of a button, and unlike social media, it is easier to tailor who they are sending the message to. This means that existing recipients can play a part in endorsing and spreading brand awareness to new audiences.

 

8. Global Reach

No other marketing can guarantee that you directly reach thousands of individuals from across the globe. This has the edge over social media, which allows you to broadcast messages to a global audience, but there’s no guarantee that these people will actually take the time to read your message.

 

9. Immediacy 

A business can start seeing results within minutes of an email being sent, due to their immediacy. 24 hour or short term offers are a great way to take advantage of the immediacy of emails as they create a sense of urgency and call for immediate action from recipients. This means that the outcomes (such as an increase in sales) of a successful campaign can also be seen immediately.

 

10. Return Of Investment

The main reason that businesses invest in email marketing is due to its high return of investment. Back in 2011, it was estimated that email marketing returns £40 of profit for every £1 spent. A number of sources have also suggested that it is better than any other platform in terms of return of investment.

 

What Can You Do With This Knowledge?

You now know many of the benefits of email marketing for a business, but do you know how to put a successful email marketing campaign together?

There are 251 email marketing software solutions currently on the market. There are various different types of software catering to different budgets and working styles. Mail Chimp is great if you hope to produce emails cheaply and easily. Likewise, Campaign Monitor is easy to use but is professional grade, and therefor pricier.

Creative Alliance can introduce the insider knowledge, resources and industry best practices to apprentices on email marketing and many other marketing topics. Creative Alliance will be holding an email marketing seminar available to all it’s current apprentices on Wednesday the 26th of October 2016.