Email marketing is a cornerstone of traditional ecommerce growth methods. While some have prematurely declared the tactic dead of old age, email marketing remains a very solid model of marketing new products to existing customers.
To begin with, let’s review some important facts about email marketing. According to the Digital Agency Network, 92% of internet users have at least one email account (far larger than the percentage on social media) with about the same amount checking their email once perday. The total number of email users has grown to 3 billion as of last year. Perhaps most convincing, email messages are 40 times more effective than similar messages sent by social media.
Why should a company pursue email marketing? There are a number of reasons. First, it helps to gather data about your customers. Being able to interact with the people who have previously purchased your products can give you a fresh insight into what kinds of new products they may want next. Also, this type of interaction can lead to a new source of data concerning metrics of clickthrough rate, open rate, and even conversion. This provides a genuine insight into what parts of your other marketing efforts and website design are producing results.
Secondly, the practical financial benefit of email marketing over direct mail is the shear amount of information that is produced from the effort. Direct mailings are far more expensive and time consuming. If you are successful, you may see a bump in sales. With email marketing, you may see the same bump in sales at a fraction of the cost and at the same time gain valuable information about your customers which can help you craft even better messages and experiences in the future.
With the growth of social media as a way to directly contact customers, email marketing may be erroneously seen as somewhat outdated. Yet the real problem is that companies do not use the method correctly leading to may unsubscribes from the email list. To avoid this problem use the following tips to keep and grow your email list:
- Limit the number
Consumers are already bombarded with information every waking moment of their life. Another email from the same company you’ve already heard from is a great excuse to opt out of the list. The best bet is to limit the total emails per month based on testing out different frequencies. You might also try to limit the emails to those that are promoting a special offer that would be of particular interest to the recipient. This leads to the next point.
- Segment your list to more effectively target your customers
Use your list managing service to divide your list by demographic or purchase types. This can allow you to create messages that are more finely tuned to the exact needs of your customers.
- Give your subscribers new content not available to other customers
It doesn’t have to be elaborate or expensive. An occasional ebook, template, or report may be enough to prove the value of continuing to subscribe.
- Include information that is likely to keep them subscribed
Once you have a functioning email list, it would be a good idea to subtly mention how many people are on that list in the email you send. This validates your value as a company and provides social proof that many other subscribers are benefitting from your emails. You could also, optionally, explain a case study of a subscriber that directly improved their life by the information contained in an email.
- Increase engagement with emails through a contest or subscriber contributed project.
This will be more time consuming but could provide a substantial reason for subscribers to stay on the list. A subscriber-only contest would keep people anxious to see the results in next month’s message.
There are many ways to keep your subscribers engaged and eager for emails from your company other than information about sales or new products. The important thing to remember is to be consistent in emailing (without going overboard) and providing them an actual reason to keep subscribing rather than taking them for granted. If you follow this advice, you will have an email list that can continue to grow and provide new marketing opportunities for months or years to come.