Email marketing is the business practice of sending an email to people on a list in the hopes of selling them a product or service. The primary intent is to establish loyalty, trust and brand awareness.
Unfortunately, email marketing seems to have a bad reputation. Many companies think that if people see an email that isn’t from someone they know, they will immediately consider it spam and delete it. While this may be true in some cases, you can make email marketing work for your company.
In fact, there are a lot of reasons why you should be using email marketing – engaging your existing customers and gaining new ones, in addition to other visible benefits. By avoiding these marketing mistakes, you will put yourself ahead of your competition.
1. It’s Cost Effective
When considering email marketing versus direct marketing, email marketing has amazing benefits as far as being cost effective. A direct marketing campaign can run you thousands of dollars for one printed newsletter, whereas email marketing costs nowhere near that much. Plus, e-mail marketing is targeted – which means you can contact only the customers you know are interested in what you have to say, and build brand loyalty by providing useful, relevant information in every e-mail you send out.
If you are looking to manage your marketing budget and get more bang for your buck, then email marketing is the way to go. Plus, email newsletters are normally quick and easy to set up – and no postage fees will apply.
Start building your listing by adding a newsletter signup box on your website.
2. You Can Track Data
With email marketing, you are able to track all sorts of data that can help you not only run your business more effectively, but see how your email marketing campaigns are doing. For example, you can see at a glance how many people open your email; how many people click on links you are placing in that email, as well as the number of conversion (i.e., sales) that are a result of your email marketing campaign.
You’ll also be able to track which customers have forwarded your emails, unsubscribed to them or marked them as spam, so you can see how your emails are being received and whether you need to change them in order to avoid the dreaded spam filter. This data will help you figure out which types of content work best for your customers.
3. You Can Automate your Campaigns
Unlike direct marketing, email marketing can be automated, making it easier for your company to schedule emails months or weeks in advance.
This can be an incredibly useful feature, especially if you offer seasonal sales or promotions or other events that are already planned for the year. With email marketing, you can set up your email newsletter in advance and schedule them to be sent out on a specific date to let your customers know about your sale or promotion.
4. It’s Immediate
Whereas other marketing tactics require you to wait for results, email marketing is immediate. Your emails are sent instantly to the subscriber, and you don’t have to wait days or weeks for a direct marketing campaign to reach them, or wait for your potential customer to find your website through banner ads or blog posts.
Plus, if you take the time to include relevant, well-written content in your email newsletter, you are helping build a relationship with your subscribers, thereby increasing the chances that they will turn into customers or that your current customers will remain loyal to your company.
5. It Can Boost Sales
One of the most important reasons your company should be using email marketing is because it can boost sales. Now, you don’t want every email you send out to be a spammy sales letter – but you can use email marketing to your advantage without sounding like a generic sales pitch.
For example, you can email subscribers when you have special promotions or discounts going on. You can even send customers special coupon codes to entice them to try your company’s products or services, or offer loyal customers a special gift just for them. No matter how you do it, email marketing can effectively boost your sales in a measurable and time-tested way.
Despite its un-deserved status as spam, email marketing is a highly effective way to not only engage current customers, but help gain new ones as well. Any company who wants a cost-effective, proven method to help build customer relationships and boost sales should be using email marketing on a regular basis – it is that simple.
Great post, Brian.
Over the past few years I have been working with music artists of all levels and the most effective marketing tool these musicians have is their email list. The importance of building and maintaining their mailing list cannot be overstated. To entice fans into handing over their email list most artist are following the industry best practice of trading media (mp3 download) for email.
I have been recommending that artists make use of the Topspin platform which not only has widgets for email collection, but allows artists to send emails with excellent tracking, and also allows artists to sell music online, direct-to-fan, and they have an awesome WordPress plugin.
Here is an example of an artist web site that does all this stuff that is built on the Genesis Framework, to boot.
http://www.joshrouse.com/
Hey Chandler – that’s a great strategy for collecting emails. What’s great about the internet is that there are various methods of business practice depending on the niche. What works for some, won’t work for others.
This is great, Brian. I keep telling myself I need to implement this…and soon. Personally, I want to move away from RSS because people don’t visit your website, but with email I do think people still make the click and stop by for a quick visit.
Thanks for the push.
PS: I like the new design…of the site and your logo as well. Kudos.
Thanks Charles – I think you’re in touch with my subtle redesigns that I do often. Seems like each time I’m visiting your site it looks a bit different too.
As for the list – it’s something I never took seriously until I merged to form Copyblogger Media with my partners. Before then, I was just a self-taught WordPress guy who didn’t know the value in various business practices!
Good to know about the email list. It’s one of about thirty things on my to-do list.
And speaking of subtle redesigns, I just “subtly” redesigned everything yesterday…again.
You couldn’t be more right on your hunch Charles, open rates vary from site to site, but I have open rates on Sparring Mind that are as high as 71% (not always, but they often top 60+%)
Think about that in terms of traffic: even an email list of 1000 will send a large amount of traffic.
I also do RSS, but I never actively promote it because RSS people know how to add your site to their reader anyway. I see MUCH lower clickthroughs from RSS, people just read it on Google Reader and then… that’s it.
This is all very intelligent stuff Gregory, you definitely know what you’re talking about. I also concur with what you’ve said, and overall find this fascinating to discuss.
Great stats, Gregory. Yes, I would think the click through rate on email lists is at or above 50%. That’s an interesting subject.
I know that another blog I frequent often (via email) is going through a series right now on why bloggers ought to scrap RSS altogether, purely because of this issue. The comments have been off the charts on this issue. It hurts your advertisers on click through rates and…man…I waste (I mean, spend) so many hours on designing my site that I want people to show up and look around a bit.
LOL.
Excellent post. I would add one intent to your list: “The primary intent is to establish loyalty, trust and brand awareness…” AND to separate prospects from suspects. By tracking how many and WHO clicks what, you discover who is interested in particular topics you discuss. If you’re a music store and you want to sell more classical music, include an item about classical music (not a sales pitch in a newsletter), track who clicks that link, tag those clickers as “classical music fans” and send those people the pitch for the classical music sale. Integrated surveys can also help you do this.
Good stuff Tom, and thanks for dropping by to comment. It’s funny how many (myself somewhat included) gather email address and don’t take the time to analyze their campaigns. Fortunately right now for me this is all about getting people information that they want via email, and I don’t have any current intentions to sell them anything.
That’s what my company Copyblogger Media is for.
No doubt, Brian, it’s all about valuable information from you. That’s what we love about Copyblogger. Even a site that’s not selling can serve more effectively and provide greater value by tracking and segmenting. I say that not to call you out, but to remind readers of this post of the possibilities. I have a financial planner client who communicates only with existing clients. He shares content to educate. But he’s also very concerned about sending too much. So he’ll use link-tracking to segment his list, and then he’ll send occasional targeted pieces only to those in a particular segment. We all get too much email that’s not pertinent to our interests — even email that’s not pitching. Segmentation and targeting enhances the emailer’s value by putting the right information in front of the right people.
Hi Brian,
This is a really great post, with some excellent pointers for those who are thinking about starting with email marketing.
Sometimes how effective email is can be forgotten, especially with the rise of social media people are moving away from email, or trying to integrate the two without getting the basics right first.
Great stuff,
Stephanie
Thanks Stephanie. I agree, too many folks are focusing their efforts now on social media, as they’ve practically been brainwashed into thinking that Facebook and Twitter are the only two ways to market themselves. There’s a reason that email marketing worked back in the early days.
I agree, Stephanie. Email is much more personal than a tweet, a DM, or even a facebook message. To me, the perception seems like someone took an extra moment to compose an email rather than hurry off a 140 character thought. And even an emailed newsletter seems more personable.
Hey Brian,
I think it all comes down to how people use their e-mail marketing campaigns and in what kind of market they are in.
There are e-mails from some marketers and bloggers that as soon as I receive them, I immediately click on them because I know I’m going to learn something cool for sure.
And there are other e-mails that I know all I will get is a really boring and needy pitch because all they send is pitch after pitch non-stop. (Some of them, don’t even bother in changing the e-mails copy)
In the end, you learn who is doing it right and who is doing it wrong and I really believe that when done wrong, can hurt insanely your marketing efforts/business.
Sergio
Hi everyone, currently I’m building my email list and in about 3 months it’s more than 1,000 people. I’m using feedburner and I need to know if anybody could recommend a decent feed management plugin for WP, beccause that’s what feedburner uses to send emails.
Also, do you know how to use WP’s builtin “subscriber” functionality? I have a few subscribers but don’t know how to email them
I haven’t monetize the site yet, so for now I’m not considering any paid services like mailchimp or aweber.
Hey William, huge congrats on building your list to over 1,000 people so far. Quite impressive. (mind sharing your URL?)
As for the subscriber functionality, which in particular are you using? If you’re talking about the ones that “sign up” or “register”, I don’t know if there is a way to email them. WordPress isn’t an email list service, and there’s a lot of red tape involved (ie with regards to spam stuff) when you collect email addresses for marketing purposes.
Thanks Brian, right now I prefer not to mention the site; hope you understand it.
Yes, I’m referring to those people that “registered” to the site, and I hate to think there are about 250 individuals actually willing to receive my info and I haven’t found how to keep in touch with them :S
Regarding spam, I’m certain that’s not the way to go. I’m looking for real people willing to buy my stuff, not just to fire an email to thousands of anonymous addresses.
This is the whole quantity vs. quality thing. It’s far better (and you’ve agreed) to have a few hot leads, than a ton of luke warm leads.
Hi Brian,
I see you’re now using some sharing buttons at the top of this post. Which plugin are you using to display those?
Warm regards,
C
Wow, you’re quick. I literally just added those a few minutes ago. It’s called Really simple Facebook Twitter share buttons and can be downloaded here.
What I spend a lot of time debating about my email marketing campaign is whether I should email the full post or just an excerpt. I know from blogs I subscribe to that the ones where I receive the full post I tend to read more. However the excerpt route means that click back to my website. In the end I’ve chosen full post but would love yours and others opinion on it. Thanks.
That’s definitely an interesting question you ask, Jo. I see why folks would want to only send out the excerpt, but the question really is what is your goal. For me, it’s more about the conversation – so ultimately it’s easier to entice that if people are on the actual blog post rather than reading in the email.
With that said, if you send out the whole post like I do, perhaps it’s a good idea to somehow add a link to the bottom of the email that invites them to leave a comment. Which, by the way is something I don’t do (yet), but will be looking into doing.
My biggest frustration with email marketing is that it ends up in my spam folder, mostly associated with the email marketing system being used.
Email has a bad reputation because it is a medium so many use to send out pitches daily for the next “last chance” junk.
I like RSS Feeds. It goes straight from the website to my folder to read at my leisure.
Enjoyed.
I hear what you are saying – and it makes sense. I personally use Google Reader to view the sites/posts I am interested in, and believe it or not the only blog that I sign up for blog post emails from is Entreproducer. I guess I’d rather do things on my time, ya know?
Thank for this post Brian,
I didn’t believe in Email Marketing, I considered it as a spam method. But now I start to build my Email List.
I think if we setup a good plan for it, not to sell anything until to reach a certain number of subscribers, we are not going to send them spam mail, in stead we will help them to discover good tool which could help them in someway.
I think everybody should start to believe Email Marketing still works and it will continue to work for long long time.
hi,
This is a really great post, with some excellent pointers for those who are thinking about starting with email marketing.
Sometimes how effective email is can be forgotten, especially with the rise of social media people are moving away from email, or trying to integrate the two without getting the basics right first.
Great article Brian.
I have been selling my unique product for the last 2 years, via Adwords and banner ads, and auction sites. Then it hit me that email might be a better way to go. Reading your blog has convinced me to give it a good try.
I can reach millions of people with email against thousands or hundreds via other methods. I will only need a small percentage to buy.
Thanks
If it works, there’s a free one for you!
Nice work Brian… clean and easy to understand. I was searching for a good article about Email Marketing. I’m currently using few techniques to promote my websites and never tried Email Marketing. I saw another good article at VPSWEBSERVER today regarding the same title.
Any good software to use?
I personally use Mailchimp, but Aweber is supposed to be one of the best.