The first email was sent in 1971 and went on to become one of the most popular and effective marketing strategies around. But why use email marketing now that we have alternative options such as Google Ads, social media marketing, and inbound marketing?
While some might think that email marketing is dead, this is far from the truth. There are four billion daily email users, offering email marketers a huge potential audience. What’s more, this audience is highly receptive to email marketing. A recent survey found that 59% of respondents agreed that marketing emails affect their purchasing decisions. Email marketing is also very cost-effective, boasting an impressive average ROI of $36 for every dollar spent.
Still not convinced? Read on to discover more about the benefits of email marketing and why the relationship you have with your customers—and your business success—depends on it.
Why is email marketing important?
As explained in this comprehensive guide to email marketing, it’s a strategy that involves communicating with customers via email to achieve specific business goals. Businesses can use email marketing to enhance customer engagement, generate sales, create brand awareness, acquire new customers, and reward customer loyalty. Email marketing is a great way to communicate and engage with existing customers and clients, while also enticing and attracting potential new customers.
Email marketing formats can include welcome messages, newsletters, birthday greetings, limited-time offers, and abandoned cart reminders. This versatility and customization make email marketing especially important for maintaining an ongoing but also relevant conversation with customers. As a result, businesses can enjoy email marketing benefits such as enhanced customer enthusiasm, improved customer loyalty, and better customer outreach. Email marketing also has the advantage of being easy and inexpensive to maintain since most marketing emails are automated.
6 benefits of email marketing
Email marketing benefits businesses by offering an effective, efficient, and powerful strategy for cultivating meaningful connections with customers. This is because email marketing:
1. Builds strong relationships with customers and prospects
The purpose of all marketing is to demonstrate value to consumers. Email marketing offers a direct means of doing this by sending them useful, relevant content via email.
This value can be information about a sale or a special offer but it should also go beyond promoting and selling your products and services. Instead, your email marketing strategy should present your business as a valuable and trusted source of information. This then helps cultivate a stronger relationship with your customers and prospects.
Your email marketing strategy should present your business as a valuable and trusted source of information to help cultivate a stronger relationship with your customers and prospects.
For example, you could send an email with links to a recent blog post that you think your audience might find useful or informative. Or, you could send weekly or monthly newsletters with original content that offers advice or information relevant to your products and services, which customers can then investigate if intrigued.
2. Highlights your products or services
There’s no better way to draw attention to a new product or service launched by your company than with an email marketing campaign. The subscribers you’re contacting already have an interest in your brand and may have even expressed a desire for this new product or service in the past. As such, an enticing subject line should be more than enough to entice them to open the email before heading to your website to learn more.
3. Boosts credibility
People want to support businesses they see as trustworthy and credible. Although it can be difficult to build credibility—especially when you’re just starting out—email marketing can help.
Regular marketing emails that offer value to your customers help position you as an authority and a trusted brand. Keeping in contact with your subscribers also demonstrates your commitment to building that relationship, in turn making it easier for them to trust your brand and products.
4. Drives traffic to your website
Although your customers are no doubt aware of your brand, they may not have thought to check out your website lately. Email marketing can help remind subscribers why they signed up in the first place while also highlighting new blogs, services, and so on. By including links to certain pages and products in these emails, it’s easy to encourage subscribers to visit your website for more information.
5. Enables feedback gathering
Email marketing is also a great way to give your customers a chance to respond. For example, following a website visit or a sale, you could send out customer satisfaction surveys to find out if the customer found what they were looking for or whether they were happy with their purchase.
Sending out customer satisfaction surveys can help inform strategies to improve your customer experience.
This feedback can help inform strategies to improve your customer experience. Also, showing your customers that you want to hear what they think is a great way to encourage them to remain loyal to your brand, even after a less-than-positive experience.
6. Offers a high ROI
One of the biggest benefits of email marketing for small businesses is the excellent ROI it offers.
Compared to other marketing efforts, email marketing is a lot more affordable and can often even be free in the beginning stages.
Thanks to the way that email marketing targets those who already have an interest in your brand, it’s also a lot more effective in terms of the ROI it brings than more expensive strategies such as influencer marketing. All this makes email marketing a win-win for your business, no matter your budget.
Discover the benefits of email marketing with Scribly
While our digital landscape may have changed drastically over the past few decades, email marketing remains one of the most effective ways to reach new customers and reconnect with existing customers.
Whether you want to increase sales, create awareness, boost customer engagement, or all of the above, email marketing is a vital component of any effective marketing strategy. Get in touch with Scribly today for full-service B2C email marketing support.
