The Benefits of Email Marketing
October 12, 2017
We all know that email marketing has been around for years. Since the advent and rise in popularity of email addresses, companies have been trying to reach customers with unique and engaging messages for over two decades.
Like you, I have my email synced to my phone, tablet, and also have an icon on my desktop. I usually check my email a few times every hour, it’s my primary source of communication with all our clients.
Whether you realize it or not, email marketing is still an effective way to reach a targeted audience of readers. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking to spread the word about your latest product, or want to fill in your customers on the latest deals, email marketing is a great way to deliver a custom message to your audience.
For those of you who still aren’t convinced that email marketing is one of the strongest ways to reach your customers, we’ve put together a list of the best benefits of email marketing. Take a look!
Tailor Your Message to Your Audience
Creating a captivating message for a diverse group of customers isn’t easy. Depending on your audience, you could have readers that absolutely love one subject, but can’t stand another. You could have readers that want a monthly update, and you could have readers that only want the best promotions in their inbox.
Email marketing gives you the freedom to tailor content specifically for your target market. Whether you have different demographic segments you’re trying to reach or want to run different promotions throughout the year, emails allow you to create content around the specific message you want to deliver.
At VIG we have several different email lists that focus on delivering content to specific groups of clients. Ranging from our most loyal clients we’ve known for years to folks we want to get to know, we can adjust our content based on our audience.
Analyze Metrics
One of the hardest things marketing professionals try to measure is return on investment. With different promotional tools like social media, printed materials such as flyers, and even paid ads on websites, it’s usually hard to see a clear return on your expenses.
With email marketing, companies like yours can measure key metrics than can help them determine the overall success of their campaigns. Depending on what email marketing platform you use, you can usually measure bounce and open rates, clicks, and even website visits all in one dashboard.
Unique Content
If you’ve ever used print or social media to reach your target audience, you know just how limited your options can be with content. If you want to integrate videos or other rich content into your posts or materials, it usually requires you to adhere to a strict set of guidelines.
With email marketing, users have the ability to adjust and tailor their content to meet their needs. Many hosting platforms offer attractive templates that allow you to easily drag and drop your content. If you’re looking for something more unique, you can usually upload your own source code and create the exact styling and layout you want.
If you create your own code from scratch, the options are virtually endless for adding content, images, videos, and whatever else you audience loves!
Build Awareness
Staying at the forefront of your customers thoughts can be a challenge if you don’t send out regular announcements about your company. Many companies use email marketing as a way to send out monthly updates related to their products/services. We send out our VIG Buzz list every month to let clients know about our unique services, case studies, and popular blogs we’ve written.
Monthly email updates are a great way to build top-of-mind awareness for your customers because you can reach readers on their own terms. Most email marketing platforms have strict opt-in policies for email lists and require you to verify that users are willingly receiving your emails.
If email recipients are willingly receiving a monthly update or promotion and are actively reading the message, your ability to build awareness for your brand will be much stronger.
Flexibility
It’s a common saying in the marketing world that in order to be successful you need to deliver the right message, to the right people, at the right time. Email marketing encompasses these three components and gives users the flexibility to deliver tailored messages on their own terms.
For example, picture the last billboard you saw while driving. Changes are you remember sitting in traffic at a congested intersection and remember seeing a billboard for your local car dealer or even a new hospital being built.
Now, would you have seen that billboard if there wasn’t any traffic or if you were focusing on the car in front of you? Probably not. The problem with many forms of promotions is that if users don’t see them at the appropriate time, the opportunity to capture their attention is virtually lost.
The advantage of email marketing is that you can send a tailored message to a customer’s inbox and reach them almost anytime anywhere. With automation features you can also schedule what time you want your emails sent out and can automatically send a follow up email in the future.
Want to reach your audience like never before? Not sure where to start? Think VIG!