Understanding the value of email marketing

The question

With the advent of social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, you would be forgiven for thinking that email marketing was becoming less popular as a marketing tool – but that would be way off the mark!

The dependability of Email marketing to help build trusted, reliable customer relationships has lead to it being taken for granted. leaving little or nothing to debate. Even Search Marketing Specialists, when asked about their strongest tactic in a survey by MarketingSherpa, gave highest votes to"email marketing to a house list". It is a fact that investment in email marketing is growing, although marketing budgets in general are being cut.

So Why The Success

So why is it that email marketing is so successful?

• People are able to interact with your email. They buy the products that you advertise, they click to register for events, they click to download information and view articles on your website and so on. All of this as a result of an email that you sent them.
• When an email contains content that is of value to the readers/subscribers, it promotes the building of trust and loyalty and cements customer relationships. In particular, it keeps your organisation at the top of the purchasing list when subscribers are in the market to buy.
• The Technology now available to you as an Email Marketer, allows you to target your email and customise it to the specific characteristics of each individual subscriber. Furthermore, you will receive a mass of useful statistics in return, following each email send. For example, you get an overview of how many of your readers clicked on each link in an email – plus a drill-down to see who they actually were. This reveals your subscriber’s interests, allowing you to address these in your future emails.
• Email is also a major tool to assist all your other Sales & Marketing efforts, you could, for instance, alert your readers to an upcoming an event in your Company / Store / Organisation or even pre-warn them that you have a promotion Voucher or Catalogue on the way to them in the post.

Of course, this kind of success doesn't happen overnight automatically. Your successful email marketing endeavour will always depend on the ongoing construction of your mailing list - a list of people who have asked you to send to them your compelling and valuable emails – supported by the technical infrastructure which ensures that your emails are dispatched and delivered reliably.

Get these basics right, and you will reap the rewards.