Digital marketers put a strong emphasis on social media marketing and webpage marketing, but not always on email marketing. Today, when there are so many options, email may seem outdated or slow. However, think about the amount of marketing emails you may receive per day. While it may not be the first thing that comes to mind, it’s clear that email marketing is still alive and well.
And there are reasons for this. In many ways, when it comes to lead generation, email marketing is still an effective option with offerings that social media or webpage marketing doesn’t have. So, let’s discuss some of the main benefits of email marketing.
#1 – More Personalized Content
It’s hard to offer personalized content on a social media platform or a website. However, when you have a list of email contacts, you can segment them based on demographics or interests. This way, you can offer more relevant, personalized content that is more likely to appeal to different audiences. There are even AI tools that can allow you to include the individual contact’s name or make suggestions based on their previous interactions with your brand.
Many attempts at marketing fall by the wayside simply because they aren’t relevant to the person who sees it. With email marketing, you can reduce the chances of that coming up.
#2 – High ROI
Email marketing often doesn’t cost very much. You can find limited email marketing options for free, as well as affordable email list databases or AI tools for email marketing. Most businesses can do email marketing at any scale. But it also has the potential to bring in considerable revenue. Statista found that email marketing revenue worldwide added up to about $8.4 billion. If you want the most bang for your buck, email marketing is often the way to go.
#3 – Appeal To Different Audiences
Your brand may appeal to more than just one target audience. Most brands do. However, you may need different approaches in order to reach different demographics effectively.
With email marketing, you can create email lists based on your different audiences. This is something we discussed in personalization, but it also helps in broadening your audience. You can then create different emails and content that goes out to each of those segmented lists. This helps to ensure that your email marketing stays relevant, no matter who you market to.
#4 – Saves You Time
You can schedule emails to go out at certain times throughout the month and then step away. The emails will do their work while you can focus on other aspects of your business or marketing. With social media marketing, this might not always be the case. While you can schedule social media posts as a rule, you may also need to be available to respond to your audience when they leave comments and replies or to join in community events. Email marketing is less intensive but often more effective.
#5 – Boosts Sales More Effectively
Email marketing is historically more effective when it comes to boosting sales so much so that 60% of consumers have cited email marketing as part of the reason for a recent purchase, compared to only 12.5% who made a purchase due to a social media plug.
This is not to say that social media marketing does not have its place. Social media marketing is a great way to raise awareness of your brand and to share your brand’s voice and personality with the world. However, it’s email marketing that tends to be more effective at piquing interest in making a sale.
#6 – Gets Results Fast
Nearly 20% of email recipients open their emails within the first hour they receive them, and over half within the first four hours. This is especially true with the rise in smartphones and email notifications that people can receive anywhere. The quick nature of the results means before the business day is over, many of your email recipients are already following up with the prompt from your email. Some may have already made a purchase.
#7 – More Centralized Than Social Media
When you use social media marketing, you often have to have multiple accounts across different platforms. This can be a pain to manage, especially when each platform has its own culture and format. With email marketing, you can send all of your emails often from the same platform. You can even segment your email lists from the same platform. This makes the process much more centralized and, therefore much simpler.
