The benefits of email marketing

Email is one of the earliest forms of online communication. The first electronic messages were sent back in 1965, and since then, the use of emails has grown exponentially. It’s over half a century later and emails have become one of the easiest ways to communicate with someone. That’s why email marketing offers so much potential for businesses, especially from a digital marketing stance.

Learn why email campaigns are important for your business and what benefits of email marketing await you when you use it.

Why is email marketing important?

Since email is so widely used around the world, it offers the easiest way to connect and communicate with customers—past, present and future. This communication form doesn’t require you to contact each person individually as with telephone calls.

You can use automated software to send out thousands upon thousands of personalised emails all at the same time. Therefore, email marketing affords a relatively low-effort way to reach all types of customers, with the highest return.

Using email marketing software also affords you the ability to analyse the statistics of your email marketing campaigns—such as who opened your messages, what type of customer responded or clicked through to your site and how well your content converts into sales.

However, getting your emails into potential customers’ inboxes is one thing; you still need to create quality content to get them to open and interact with your emails. To do that, you need a strong marketing email strategy.

Email marketing strategy

Marketing automation and software have made it easier for new business owners, and seasoned business owners who might not know much about marketing, to create and implement successful campaigns and strategies. There are numerous strategies you can use when it comes to using email campaigns, so you will need to decide which one will work best for your small business.

Here are a few tips for getting your email strategy underway this year:

• Always personalise your email marketing messages: it’s a fact that people are more likely to open something personally addressed to them versus a generic title. Marketing software simplifies this process, allowing businesses to send thousands of personalised emails out every day.
• Divide your subscribers into segments: instead of sending the same email content to anyone and everyone, consider how you can pinpoint different customer segments. Break your email subscribers down into demographics or target audience types and send them specific content types that you know they will enjoy and interact with. You’ll get more individuals opening your emails and clicking through to your site as a result.
• Consider what your past and potential customers want to see: newsletters, sales and promotions, exclusive deals for subscribers, daily or weekly updates—these are all various types of content that you can create when setting out your campaign. You should determine what kind of content your target audiences want to see most and then deliver that content to their inboxes.
• Create mobile-friendly emails: now more than ever, people are checking their emails and staying connected online through their smartphones. This makes mobile-friendly email layouts a must. If your content isn’t compatible with mobile devices, people won’t want to interact with your business and site.
• Use automation when you can: simplify the email campaign process with software automation. Create personalised emails and send them out automatically while also tracking stats and analytics to determine how well this campaign is doing.

Ten benefits of email marketing

The benefits attached to email marketing are immense. A small but successful email campaign can pull off big things for your business. By creating strong email marketing content as the foundation of such marketing platforms, you can take advantage of the ten benefits listed below.

1. Improve your communication with customers

Sending out weekly or monthly emails to your contact list means that you are consistently communicating with them about your business’s content and ongoing deals or services. As you must first get the individual’s permission to use their contact information, you know they are already an engaged audience or fan of your business.

Keeping this communication going is the perfect way to keep engagement up while reminding past customers that you are still providing quality services or products.

2. Build your credibility and authority

One of the advantages of email marketing is the ability to build your credibility and authority in the eyes of your email list. The more quality content you send out, and the more people who interact with your copy, the more they will trust your business and its products or services. When your business possesses high credibility, it means that people see you as an expert in your industry and are willing to place their trust and money in your hands.

3. Strengthen customer relations

With an ongoing communication line, you can strengthen your relationships with customers as they come to expect and look forward to your next email. Providing something of worth to your recipients illustrates that you have something of value to give them. In turn, they will appreciate this free content—whether it is a newsletter, downloadable template or exclusive deal—and it will grow their trust in you.

This positive connection reasserts this growing relationship between your business and your customer base. With every high-quality email you deliver, these relationships will grow stronger.

4. Build brand recognition

The more people see your business’s logo in their inbox, the more they will come to recognise your brand. Brand recognition can be a game-changer for small businesses, as more and more people learn and remember your business’s brand. This will cause your customers to choose your brand over your competitor’s as it is familiar to them. Build credibility and brand awareness at the same time.

5. Boost sales

An effective email marketing campaign can improve sales and boost revenue thanks to impulse buying. If you have an enticing deal delivered through an engaging email copy, then with a click of a button, your customers are at your site, purchasing the deal on offer.

To really boost sales, try using a tempting call to action, with highly visible buttons that link straight to your deals or checkout page. An enticing deal also ends up sending more traffic to your website overall.

6. Easily share sales and content

The advantages of email marketing include keeping not only your customers up to date on the latest sales and promotions coming their way, but your customers’ friends and family too. Email offers an easy and accessible way to share and disseminate information.

This means that a customer who receives your newsletter or promotional email deal can send it on to other family members or friends with the click of a button. An email directed at one past customer could end up in the inbox of multiple potential customers—creating a higher chance that your business will complete a sale.

7. Create content with a personalised touch

As previously stated, email marketing allows businesses to deliver copy with a personal touch. Where other marketing avenues leave little room for personalised messages, email marketing makes it easy to send customised messages and tailor copy to specific segments of your customer base.

Relevant and personal content resonates on a deeper level with individuals, reasserting credibility, authority and custom relations all at the same time. By adding names or a personal marketing message to your emails, you can strengthen your customer relationships too.

8. Bring traffic to your site

One of the most significant advantages of email marketing is generating traffic to your site. When you engage with your audiences, they will naturally want to learn more about your business or product. The more people you send well-written and engaging newsletters and deals out to, the greater the traffic being pushed to your business’s website.

Remember, whenever you decide to link back to your site in your email (which should be every time), you should add a unique and enticing call to action to encourage your audience to click through to your site.

9. It’s a cost-effective form of marketing

Effective email marketing doesn’t have to take a chunk out of your small business budget. In fact, email marketing offers one of the most cost-effective forms of marketing with the highest return on investment, especially when compared to other mainstream marketing channels.

If you choose to use marketing software, there are free versions and reasonably priced paid packages that can deliver the features you need to get a successful campaign underway.

10. You own this content

If your business uses a long email list, you own this information, and it is yours to do with as you please. When you use social media platforms, your posts and updates on these sites may have been created by you, but the platform itself owns it. The platform can delete your account and attached social following if they so wish.

With email lists and marketing, you own the information and content you send out. No one can take that away from you. So you will always have those leads at your fingertips should you need them.

Integrate email marketing into your software

These are just a few of the benefits of email marketing that await you when you create and implement a strong email campaign. If your business uses accounting software like QuickBooks Online to send out and track invoices with your customers, then you’re halfway to making an email list yourself.

Sync apps and software with QuickBooks and easily import or export your contact list to start your campaign straight away! Once it’s underway, use this accounting software to help keep track of your business’s marketing budget, tracking where your marketing dollars are coming from and going towards. Use QuickBooks Online alongside your mail campaigns to see the return on investment today!