Though it’s been around a while, email is by no means an outdated marketing strategy for business. Even with the rise of social media platforms and business blogging, email is still the number one way to communicate with your audience. If you are not yet taking advantage of this tried and true marketing strategy, these 15 benefits of email marketing just may be the impetus to get you started.
Related: Email Marketing for Small Business Owners (free download)
1. Email Integrates Easily
The first benefit of email marketing is that email integrates easily with other marketing channels. For example, you can repurpose content from your email marketing campaigns into quick and effective social media posts to multiply your reach, without having to reinvent the wheel again and again. Data collection, sharing, and other features are also typically maintained with email, which makes for accurate and uninterrupted tracking and measuring.
2. No Character Limits
Email provides the benefit of unlimited space for content. Unlike many social media platforms, you are not limited by character limits or the types of media that you can share with your recipients. Attention spans are short, so it is an email marketing best practice keep the message to the point, but the choice is yours as to how long or short the message might be for each email. Make content easy to scan at a glance and get the main message, but also give readers the option for more information if they want.
3. Stay Top of Mind
One of the basic purposes of email marketing is to maintain regular communication with past, potential, and current customers. This helps to reinforce the positive feelings they have about your organization, and ensures that they will remember your business even when they are most distracted. During the rush of the holidays you can make sure that your customers think of you first to spend their dollars with your company. In the slow season for your industry it can provide a boost to sales and make sure people do not forget about all you have to offer.
4. Email Fosters Long-Term Relationships
Another way email benefits your business is by facilitating the development of strong customer relationships. Delivering consistent, interesting messages that add value to your customers will help you earn their trust and respect over time. It will also ensure that they look forward to and pay attention to your organization’s email messages. Think about the long-term value of the customers on your email list, not just what they might buy from you today.
5. Personalize Your Messaging
The benefits of personalizing your marketing messages are too great to ignore. Email marketing campaigns allow you to address your customers by name, speak directly to them, and show the human side of your company and team. With email, you can present the personality of your business and better resonate with your audience.
6. Optimize Your Content
Email marketing benefits your business by allowing you to optimize your content and messaging for the greatest effect. With list segmentation, demographic targeting, and testing, your can identify the best strategy, tone, and content for your target audience or even and niche markets within it. Pay attention to the results of your email campaigns and use this data to create an even better campaign next time.
7. Email Supports Variety and Versatility
With email marketing, you are not limited to one format, content type, or frequency. You can send a monthly newsletter, sprinkle coupon sends in between, or provide updates on a major event you are planning. When you mix things up and freshen up the layouts on a periodic basis, you keep things interesting and eliminate the risk of your messages becoming background noise.
8. Email Drives Conversions
Well written and designed emails with call to action buttons encourage readers to follow links to landing pages or other web-based assets. With careful attention to the outcome you want, you can use email marketing to drive various goals involved with creating sales and increasing revenue.
9. Improve Your Social Media Reach
For your followers who have email notifications set up, they will be notified via email every time you post something to your social media channels. In some cases, they can view the post directly in the email window. This helps to increase the number of people who see and engage with your social media posts.
10. People Prefer Email
While the proliferation of ads on social media is seen as a nuisance, 91% of people actually like to receive promotional emails from brands they support. Combine this with the fact that email is 40x as effective as Facebook and Twitter combined makes this a no-brainer.
11. Ensured Delivery
Social media platforms and search engines have algorithms that filter out content according to particular metrics. Email, on the other hand, is a freely flowing platform. People on your email list subscribed to your content and want to receive your information, so there are no algorithms or filters to obey. With email, you know that your message will get delivered and that you will enjoy the benefits of regular communication with your audience.
12. Reach Your Customers 24/7
More than two-thirds of all email is opened on a mobile device. This means that customers can see, read, and engage with your emails throughout the day, no matter where they are or what time it is. To reap this benefit, make sure your emails are responsive or optimized for mobile.
13. It’s Quick and Easy
With the various tools and platforms available, creating professional email marketing communications has never been more simple. Plan carefully and craft a finely-tuned message or blast out a deal-of-the-day that gets immediate results.
14. Create a Dialogue with Your Audience
Your marketing emails don’t have to be one way messages to your target audience. You can also use email to open up interactive engagement with your audience. Just be sure to respond promptly!
15. Email Builds Credibility
The last benefit of email marketing is that it provides endless opportunities to show your expertise, credibility, and brand voice. This allows you to earn trust from your audience and build your business reputation.
There are many more benefits to list, but hopefully these first 15 have been enough to convince you that email marketing is still going strong. Get started with email marketing today, and watch your business grow. For help getting started with your email marketing, download our free eBook below:
