Email Marketing: Why It’s Worth Your Time + Tactics

Let’s address one thing before we continue; email marketing is not dead. There are some out there who would like marketers to think that it is, but email is nowhere close to death. If anything, email marketing is more important than ever. Statistics show that this form of marketing helps companies grow their revenues year after year. For example, email marketing accounts for 30% of our monthly revenue on average here at Drop Ship Lifestyle. 

The truth is that email marketing is changing. Which, as any digital marketer knows, is true of every aspect of marketing.

Companies are using their email lists more precisely than they once did. Thanks to the increased use of content management systems and email segmentation, a business can target their emails to ensure the right person is receiving the right email at precisely the right time. This level of precision helps companies increase their sales and make email marketing more important than ever. 

Let’s break down exactly what email marketing is and why you should be using it for your eCommerce and/or Brick and Mortar business.

What Exactly is Email Marketing?

To break this down into its most basic sense, email marketing is the act of using an email newsletter to promote a company’s products or services. It is also a form of direct marketing in which you bring your message directly to your consumers. Email is a subsection of digital marketing.

Email Marketing is just one more way to connect with your customers and improve those relationships. When a brand uses all the tools and data that are available to them, emails can be sent with pinpoint accuracy. Using cookies, your CMS, and other tools, customers can be reminded about their abandoned shopping carts or notified about a drop in price of items they browsed. Making your email newsletter content relevant to your customers will make them want to open your emails and feel a sense of loyalty to your company.

Statistics That Might Surprise You:

These stats show just how important email is to any brand.

• 91% of people check their email AT THE VERY LEAST once per day.
• For every $1 a company spends on email marketing, they get a return of $42.
• According to email marketing statistics for 2019 by industry from the IBM Marketing Benchmark Report, the conversion rate on email is 2.3%. Social media has an average conversion rate of 1%.
• There are 3.9 billion global email users.
• 59% of people say marketing emails influence their purchasing decisions.
• Email marketing, on average, counts for 23% of a business's sales.
• Email is 40 times more effective at getting a company additional customers than Facebook or Twitter.

Ways Email Marketing Can Help You Grow Your Business 

As statistics show, email marketing helps businesses grow their sales. Here are some of the most effective ways email marketing can help a company expand its reach.

It helps you increase awareness of your brand. Customers will think of your brand for products and advice because they have seen your emails and know who you are.

Email marketing also gives your brand credibility. If your email newsletter campaigns consist of quality material that is relevant to what your customers want, you will be viewed as credible. Customers want to work with brands that are trustworthy and an authority in their field.

Use your email newsletters to educate your customer base about your products or other company events and happenings. This is a chance to show off what makes your brand and products special. Talk about special features, unique partnerships your company has, or anything else that makes you stand out.

Email is the fastest way for a company to get information to their customers. Are you running a flash sale? Do you need to get a press release out about an emerging situation? Email is the way to get that information directly into the hands of your customers.

You can also use email to push traffic directly to your website. If you want to move a specific item, attract visitors to your blog, showcase a new website layout, an email campaign will help you do just that.

How To Sign People Up for Your Email List

To grow your email list, you will have to actively work to get new subscribers. Utilize these tips to increase your number of subscribers.

• Use pop up forms on your website.
• Use signup forms at brand events.
• Make your emails shareable.
• Used gated/lead generation offers to attract subscribers.
• Use call-to-action buttons on your website and social media that draws visitors to subscribe.

Benefits To Email Marketing Over Other Types of Marketing 

Email marketing provides businesses with a plethora of benefits. The most significant benefits are the cost and reach of email marketing. The ability of email to reach large groups at a fantastic price is unparalleled. The other is the speed at which email can deliver your message. Let’s dive into those a little bit further.

Reach and Cost

The first point mentioned was the cost and the reach of email marketing versus other styles of marketing. There are many email marketing tools on the market, and the price to use them will vary. But depending on the size of your email list and how many campaigns you plan on sending, you may be able to use a service like Mailchimp for free (2000 subscribers is the limit on Mailchimp’s free plan). Depending upon what other things you pay for (pictures, CMS, etc.), the cost of email marketing per month could be as low of $10. Traditional forms of marketing can not compete with this price. There is no way to reach 2000 people with other types of marketing at that price point. 

The Speed of Email Marketing

The speed of this form of advertising is truly remarkable compared to other forms. What other kind of marketing allows you to reach 2000 customers with one click? 10,000? 100,000? Social media can, but you have no guarantee that your post will be seen by all of your followers on Social Media. With email marketing, you know that you're sending a message directly to your customers. Furthermore, email marketing has a better click-through rate than social media.

Types:

One would think an email newsletter is just an email, right? When it comes to marketing, not necessarily. There are a few different styles of email marketing campaigns that a business can engage in.

The Welcome Email

When someone signs up for your email list, thank them! They didn’t have to sign up for your content, but they did. Send them a thank you and a welcome offer as a way to show your appreciation. These emails have a sizable open rate in comparison to other emails, in the range of 50-60%! 

The Standard Promo Email

This is a pretty standard email for a company to send. It lets your customers know about any active promotions happening with your company. These tend to come from companies regularly.

Seasonal Campaigns

Businesses change up some things as the seasons change. You may have new menu items for food and drink or other new product. Let your customers know that your seasonally appropriate product has arrived! Think about how excited Starbucks customers get when they get an email about the pumpkin spice latte returning to the menu each year! This is an example of a perfect seasonal marketing email.

A post-purchase email

These emails are a nice touch for any business. You can send a series of them to let a customer know their purchase is on its way. You can send another one after their product arrives to follow up and see if they have any questions/concerns/feedback. 

A Cross Channel Campaign

These are seen quite frequently as a cross between email and social media. A company uses its social media channels to grow its email database. 

Abandoned Cart Emails

These are somewhat newer to the field of email marketing, but to date, it has shown itself to be quite effective. These reminder emails have reduced cart abandonment anywhere for 10-30% for some companies. The conversion rate for these emails average around 18%. However, some marketers report rates as high as 40%. Definitely set these up if you aren't using them yet.

Re-engagement Campaigns

The health of your email list is essential. If there are people on your email list who don’t engage with your content, that isn’t good for your list's overall health. For those subscribers, send targeted email campaigns with the objective of getting them to re-engage with your brand and content. If they don’t re-engage after a pre-determined amount of time, it’s okay to remove them from your email list. The quality of your list is more important than the quantity of your list.

Triggered Email Campaigns

These campaigns can be based on a variety of factors. It can be based on who clicked on certain links in past campaigns, who didn’t click on previous campaigns, etc. Whatever demographic you want to look at, you can create a triggered campaign to just those people and get additional information based on those triggered lists.

What Does A Quality Email Marketing Strategy Look Like? 

The primary objective of an email marketer is not only to get your campaign to their email address but to get your emails into your recipients’ inbox. There are multiple ways that can happen, with the first being the person has to utilize their email setting so that you come to their inbox. How can you assure that they take this action? The biggest thing you can do is create quality content. If you don’t create content that holds any value for your customers, your emails will be instantly deleted at best, flagged for spam at worst. If you want your customers to add you to their inbox, give them a reason to do so.

Another way to run a quality campaign is to focus on segmentation. It was mentioned earlier in this piece to send customers the right emails at the right time. If you don’t attempt this, your subscribers will just tune your content out. Utilizing segmentation makes sure your list gets the information they want. One of the biggest mistakes made in email marketing is just to send the same email to everyone on your list. That is a huge mistake! Your customers will lose trust in you and not view you as an authority on your product. It will cost you business and earn you a poor reputation.

Another point to keep in mind as you create these email newsletters is to sweat the details. Think about your subject line. Is it catchy? Should you incorporate emojis? Would this campaign benefit from personalization of the emails? All of these small details are essential for creating a high performing email.

A/B (Split) Testing

Don’t overlook the benefit in A/B testing for emails and other analytic tools that your email provider will have available. Here is an email that we did a Split test on:

For A, we laid out clear expectations for what you'd find in the email.

With B, we put forward a specific & current statistic that is intended to pique the interest of the reader.

Which do you think came out ahead?

A did. But not by a long shot. It ended up getting just over 1% more email opens than B. However, every percent counts in email marketing, especially depending upon the number of email addresses in your list.

We can apply this information in the future. Every email you send is an opportunity to learn and improve.

Popular Tools:

There are multiple tools one can use to create and send your email campaigns. There are free and paid options for your business to use. The use of a paid or free option depends on the size of your subscriber list and how many emails you plan to send each month. Here are some providers to choose from.

• Mailchimp
  • One of the big players (if not the biggest) in the industry, chances are that you've heard of them. Mailchimp is easy to use, they're good at what they do, and they offer a whole lot of features. However, I do know a few marketers that have used them and switched to another platform for one reason or another. They do offer a free version and their paid version starts at $9.99 per month for their most basic package.
• Hubspot (paid)
  • Hubspot is an all-in-one Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. So they offer additional services besides email marketing. It's known for being user-friendly and it's a good tool if you want to keep all of your customer relations efforts in one system. Their prices range widely depending on the services you're interested in.
• EmailOctopus
  • EmailOctopus is an alternative to some of the big guys, like Mailchimp. They have a great support staff for any of your customer service needs and they seem to have a lot of happy customers, so they're clearly doing something right. They offer a free version and their paid options start at $19 a month. We spoke with a representative of the brand that mentioned they are offering segmentation very soon that will make the platform an even better value for your money.
• Moosend
  • Moosend was voted "Best Ease of Use" and "Best Value" on Capterra.com. They offer a huge range of features and automations that should satisfy just about any email marketer. They also boast impressive deliverability stats and a free to use editor. Their pricing starts at $10 per month and they offer a free version that allows you to use all of their automation features for up to 1000 subscribers.

The Bottom Line

Email marketing is crucial for any company that wants to grow their business and be positioned to sell in our increasingly digital world. This is not a tool that a brand can be without. Here are steps you need to take to use email marketing for your business.

• Understand the opportunities and connections that email newsletters provide your business.
• Utilize ways to expand your email base.
• Recognize that email can help you get information out to your customers at a fraction of the cost that traditional marketing would cost.
• There are multiple different ways to use email as a marketing tool. It’s more than just send promotional emails to everyone in your database.
• Segmentation is key to a successful email campaign.
• Quality content and attention to detail are hallmarks of a well-written email. With email marketing, you need to focus on the small details because customers do notice.
• Use an email software program or other tools that allow you to segment, get detailed analytics, and gives you the ability to send the perfect email at the perfect time for your email list.

If you employ these tools and tactics, watch your email campaigns soar to new heights!