Is Email Marketing Something That We Should Consider?
If your digital marketing strategy were a family portrait, email marketing would be the red headed stepchild.
Let’s give it a makeover… Why does it matter? Because it works! Whether you’re a business that offers products or services that tie to an E-commerce site or you’re a consulting firm that sells high price services, email is right for you.
The thing that I’ve come to value about email is how cost effective it is. Most businesses have some sort of a database of customers that have converted. All that hard work of bringing on a customer pays off beyond that initial sale in the form of recurring revenue.
The Business Case:
Let’s say you have an email database with 15,000 active email addresses. You send that database an email that promotes a new product with a coupon offer, of which you manage to get 4% of those customers to open the email.
From there, your well designed digital real estate for that product does a good job of funneling customers through and converting 20% of those customers that clicked through into revenue on the average of $35 dollars per customer. This is what that looks like:
Sales:
15,000 Email Database x 4% CTR = 600 customers of which, 120 purchase with a shopping cart average of $35 which totals: $4,200
I know that $4,200 doesn’t sound like much, but let’s take that one email and let’s say that you do this once a month, twice a month, 3 times a month… You can quickly begin to see why this is worth the investment.
Well, that’s great Fernando, but why should I care about this if I’m not selling products, I’m selling services. Well, this is why you should care… In those months that revenue is seeing a dip whether by the forces of nature or man, why not see if you can’t mitigate those revenue declines by executing on a marketing campaign that has an email component to it.
Added Value:
Aside from the appeal from a revenue perspective, email is great for keeping in touch. Some people aren’t checking their Twitter, Facebook, G+, Instagram, Vine every time there’s an update to your business… They are more likely to check their email though for fear of being inundated at the end of the day… Some research stats show that 40% of people check their email 6-20 per day.
Knowing that, the name of the game then shifts to increased brand equity. How much is it worth to you to create an impression that’s going to increase your businesses likelihood of being recalled when your customer identifies a need?
Another question, how much is it worth to you to further ingrain yourself as the only choice in your customer’s eyes? You can achieve this by creating rich content that resonates with your audience and beyond just posting it on your social universe and blog, email that list of yours to continue to nurture your relationship with your customer!
The Future:
You’re starting to become a believer and you’re even beginning to execute on putting good energy towards growing your email database and executing sound email campaigns. What does the future hold?
Well, I teased it earlier when I said that you have a database of customers that have converted. That database can be integrated with other lead generation tactics, such as Prospect Targeting which is a form of Paid Search Advertising (in its most basic form PPC). But this isn’t your normal Google AdWords Re-marketing Campaign. What I’m talking about here is being able to integrate a unique piece of code to your emails that allows for the customers that you have to get tracked online and see where they congregate to identify other customers like the one you already have.
The technology is amazing and as a marketer, when you feel like you’ve gotten your marketing house in order and you’re hitting on all cylinders with your digital marketing strategy, this form of paid advertising or, CRM Re-targeting, can be a great way to acquire new customers.
If there’s one takeaway to leave with is technology has made it so that every channel of online advertising get used because the margins are there and the technology has made it easier to do so… Just don’t get crazy spammy and use subject headings to deliver promises that your email can’t keep, but that will follow on a different blog post.
