How Email Marketing Helps Your Business Succeed

Are you a business owner who needs a more effective marketing plan? Are you considering e-mail marketing, but don’t know where to start? Are you thinking about creating a campaign, but don’t know how it can help you grow your business? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. There are plenty of knowledgeable business owners who have asked us the same questions, so we’re here to help you understand. To understand email marketing, you must first understand email and the powerful impact it has on the digital and social world. There are an estimated 2.5 billion e-mail users worldwide compared to the estimated 1.9 million users in 2009 (Lifewire, February 2015). This astounding jump is an indication that more and more people are moving away from traditional snail mail, which means this is a medium that any business owner, small or big, should be investing. But, the bigger question is, “How can email marketing make me money?”  Well, here are five reasons why it is essential to the growth of your business.

Better Return on Investment

When running a business, we all understand that business owners must make the hard decision on what type of marketing method is best for the company in terms of investments and returns.  Marketing can be a very expensive, but critical tool for business owners, so it is the owner’s priority to pick a strategy that will have the better return on investment. When deciding what type of marketing strategy to invest in, it is imperative to know that e-mail marketing is the leading tool for most business owners or marketers because it has a high return on investment.  In 2014, EmailExperts released an infographic that stated “For every $1 spent, $44.25 is the average return on email marketing investment”, thus making it the best tool for a more engaged, enhanced return on investment.

Segmented Groups for Better User Engagement

Every marketing professional knows there are different types of personas and data that every company encounters when collecting information from possible customers including geography, gender, age group, etc.  After data collection, the information given can be used to divide the customers into different groups or sets, which are called segments. When divided, segments groups are used to create content and data that will appeal to the customers within the group, which will help them be more inclined to completing a conversion.  According to a 2015 National Client Email Report, “Segmented and targeted emails generate 58% of all revenue. More than a third (36%) of revenues were driven by emails sent to specific target selections”, which means that segmenting your e-mails can help result in better user engagement and return on investment.

A/B Testing for Better Conversions

Equating the success of any e-mail marketing campaign comes down to ultimately if or if not the e-mail is engaging with its targeting audience.  Therefore, it is important to any business owner to understand what subject line or what is the best time to send an email for better engagement.  This is where A/B testing becomes important to a marketing plan. A/B testing or split testing is an e-mail marketing strategic tool for understanding and analyzing strategy that would result in more effective open rates, which means a better engagement and return on investment.  A/B testing is conducted by setting up two variations of one campaign, then sending it out to a sampling of your total recipients. The variation between e-mails include, but not limited to the following:

• Subject Lines
• Call to Action
• Images
• Closing Text
• Headline

When engaging with possible leads, A/B is critical because it narrows down what content and data will best help to attract and engagement with the customer, which will result in a generated conversion.

Personalized Messages through Mail Merging

When sending out campaigns, it is important to note that emails sent directly to the user’s inbox can create an intimate experience with the user.  Therefore, it is important to find an engaging, personalized path to help the user move through the marketing journey from attraction to conversion.  This path is called mail merging. Mail merging is a tool that allows content writers to customize email content to large numbers of users.  This customization can be sent directly to the user through data collected through a call to action forms without having to create individual emails for each user, which results in savings of time and money.  For example, an email campaign can personally greet the user by their name, which per HubSpot, “Emails that included the first name of the recipient in their subject line had higher clickthrough rates than emails that did not” (2014).

User Engagement & KPI Analysis

After a completing and sending a campaign, you would think that the yellow brick road has reached Emerald City, but it hasn’t.  Going beyond clickthrough rates, Email Marketing is a great way to calculate KPIs or key performance indicators. KPIs are measurable data that validates how successful a company is achieving its key business objectives or benchmarks. Through email marketing, KPIs are a great way to retain new users and converting them into long-term customers, which means more repeat customers.  Setting KPI benchmarks allows your company to know and understand your customer; ultimately making your engagement more effective and conducive for future email campaigns. So, how does this all help you as the owner?  When you’re the boss of the company, you know that running a business is very time consuming and mentally demanding; so why not let email marketing tools help you stay on track for productivity and growth? When utilizing a marketing platform, you will be able to advertise and attract new users to your brand and growing your customer database. By utilizing the database with the collected individual information,  you can create personalized content to entice the user into making a purchase, which grows your revenue.  Then after the purchase is said and done, the information is recollected to re-market the customer into creating future purchases, thus propelling them into a lifetime purchasing cycle.  Therefore, the new customer is now a lifelong customer, which mean more constant revenue collected for your business.

Tags: Email Marketing