Email Marketing

Why use email marketing for your business?

It Works

Businesses engage in email marketing because it just plain works. And works well. Here are the numbers…

  • According to research conducted by the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing was expected to generate an ROI of $42.08 for every dollar spent on it in 2010. As such, it outperforms all the other direct marketing channels examined, such as print catalogs (reference).
  • In Datran Media’s 2010 Annual Marketing & Media Survey, 39.4% of industry executives said the advertising channel that performed strongest for them was email. This was the top result (reference).
  • The Ad Effectiveness Survey commissioned by Forbes Media in Feb/March 2009 revealed that email and e-newsletter marketing are considered the second-most effective tool for generating conversions, just behind SEO (reference).

Why Email Marketing Works

Email marketing works for a variety of reasons…

  • It allows targeting
  • It is data driven
  • It drives direct sales
  • It builds relationships, loyalty and trust
  • It supports sales through other channels

Modern email marketing services and solutions support database integration, segmentation and various other tricks and techniques for improving the targeting of outgoing messages. Advanced methods generate on-the-fly emails customized down to an individual recipient basis.

And every email campaign you send out generates a heap of actionable data you can use to refine your approach and messages.

Email promotions and offers generate immediate action: sales, downloads, inquiries, registrations, etc. Informative email newsletters and other emails send people to offline stores and events, prepare the way for catalogs, build awareness, contribute to branding, strengthen relationships, encourage trust and cement loyalty.

The money is following the results…

  • The 2011 Digital Marketing Outlook Survey from the Society of Digital Agencies revealed that 70% of brand marketers planned to invest in email marketing in 2011. This was the joint highest result (reference).
  • The 9th Annual Merchant Survey (2010) conducted by the e-tailing group asked merchants to say which initiatives they would be using to improve website performance. The top answer, cited by 79%, was “send more targeted email” (reference).
  • A Q2 2009 survey of over 5,000 senior US executives revealed that email marketing was the channel most likely to see an increase in marketing budget (see press report).
  • In August, 2009, Veronis Suhler Stevenson’s annual Communications Industry Forecast suggested total spent for email will grow from $11.9 billion in 2008 to $27.8 billion by 2013 (see press report).

All in all, a pretty good way of going about your marketing business. But…

Let’s not get carried away

Just like a garden only bears fruit if managed properly, so it is with email marketing. We know it can work, but you have to get the basics right. The basics of building a list of people who want to hear from you, crafting a message, and ensuring the emails get through to those on that list.

And once you have the basics right, there’s a whole spectrum of more sophisticated tactics you can employ to drive further success. Because the metrics show us that there’s plenty of room for improvement and plenty of rewards waiting for those who do improve.

For example, one report as far back as 2005 already found that “using web analytics to target email campaigns can produce nine times the revenues and eighteen times the profits of broadcast mailings.”

At a simpler level, just mailing a small coupon offer to customers who hadn’t purchased for a while will often bring in lots of extra sales.

Convinced? Start the email marketing  journey and contact us for a