This article aims to provide the first basic elements for understanding email marketing for the layman.
Email marketing is one of the tools that entrepreneurs use incorrectly and inappropriately, causing serious technical problems for corporate email.
So here is the article dedicated to this topic, written to offer a more aware idea of how this tool can be useful to the company.
WHAT IS EMAIL MARKETING
Let's start from the ABC, or rather from understanding "What is Email Marketing"
From Wikipedia:
Email marketing is a type of direct marketing that uses email to communicate commercial (and non-commercial) messages to the public.
In a broad sense, any email sent to a customer (or potential customer) can be considered email marketing. However, this term is usually used to refer to:
Sending e-mails with the intention of taking the relationship between a company and its previous or current customers to a more advanced level and to encourage their loyalty.
Sending e-mails with the intent of acquiring new customers or convincing previous ones to buy something immediately.
Adding line items in email messages sent by other companies to their customers.
Companies, both in the United States and in European countries, and emerging economies, are investing more and more resources in e-mail marketing, which is often also used by public and non-profit organizations.
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Email Marketing is the web marketing tool with the highest ROI
Let us dwell on the last sentence of the Wikipedia excerpt: Companies, both in the United States and in European countries and emerging economies, are investing more and more resources in e-mail marketing,...
This indicates that email marketing WORKS, indeed, it is the web marketing tool that WORKS THE MOST.
Look at the image below (extracted from the Econsultancy blog):
The graph shows the result of a survey carried out in 2014 in American companies which were asked: "How do you rate the following channels in terms of return on investment?".
Email marketing ranked first in this survey, with 68% of companies rating the ROI obtained from their email marketing activities as Excellent (22%) and Good (46%) (in second place of the SEO survey).
These data must clearly show that this is a tool that should not be underestimated.
The user is not only subjected to advertising but does an active search: this is why the conversion rates of investments on Google are higher.
However, all this does not happen in the Display Network: in this case, the user finds the banner ad on the site he is visiting at that moment, without doing an active search.
This is the reason for the lower conversion rates compared to traditional text ads.
WHO NEEDS EMAIL MARKETING
In the field of web marketing, not all promotional tools apply to all situations because in general there is NO promotional tool that is ALWAYS GOOD in ALL cases, but here is the exception.
“Email marketing is for everyone”
Email marketing is the exception to the rule.
It is a web marketing tool that more than any other is potentially suitable for all types of companies.
The response to this statement is easily found in daily life: everyone asks you for an email, the clothing store, the supermarket, the pet shop, the supplier company, sometimes even your favorite restaurant.
This is because with email marketing you can get the most "intimate" contact that the web promotion tools make available to you: "enter" the mailbox of your customer (or potential customer) creating a communication relationship "one to an exclusive one that cannot be obtained in any other way, and this relationship, IF EXPLOITED WELL, is the one that manages to give the best results.
OBJECTIVES OF EMAIL MARKETING
Well, at this point it should be clearer to you What Email Marketing is and why it can be important to use it for your company as well.
But what goals should an email marketing campaign achieve?
For each company, the daily goal is to SELL products or services, to get in touch with new customers or with existing customers.
The main problem in selling, in our experience, is that in most cases the company comes into contact with the potential customer at a time when the customer IS NOT READY to buy.
Maybe they like the seller, the company meets their trust, they like the product or service you offer, but when they come into contact, for whatever reason, the potential customer IS NOT IN A CONDITION to buy ...
And what happens in many cases like this? It happens that months or even years go by until that customer is ready to buy, but in the meantime, you have never been able to establish a "relationship" with him and he ends up turning to a competitor simply because he shows up at the right time without even calling you. This happens often and has probably happened to you too.
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HOW DOES EMAIL MARKETING INTERVENE IN THIS PROCESS?
Email Marketing plays a very important role in this process: it establishes a constant CONNECTION with the customer and keeps the memory of the company alive UNTIL THE CUSTOMER IS READY TO BUY.
The advantage of this method is that it avoids us having to call back on the phone many times, becoming heavy, or spending time and money on periodic in-person meetings.
If by coming into contact with a customer, you manage to get his email address and the authorization to subscribe to our newsletter, you will have established a "relationship" with him that you can carry on overtime with little effort until the RIGHT moment in which it will be him to contact you.
HOW TO DO EMAIL MARKETING: THE SECRET OF SUCCESS
PLEASE NOTE! So far, all of what has been said only applies to the CONDITION of doing email marketing in the RIGHT way.
And the right way is not to send a thousand newsletters with EXCEPTIONAL offers, DISCOUNTS, and PROMOTIONS with the constant and unique message "BUY, BUY, BUY" ... these newsletters and this type of email marketing do NOT work.
We have devoted an entire article to this topic, titled “How to Write a Successful Newsletter”.
As pointed out in this article, an email marketing campaign must be based on an editorial plan that has as its foundation the creation of VALUABLE CONTENT for the user who must read them.
And to be clear, valuable content IS NOT:
Promotional offers;
The discount proposal;
The presentation of the characteristics of your product or service.
Valuable contents are for example:
Guides for solving common customer problems;
FREE and PRACTICAL advice on how to tackle an activity;
Explain what are the parameters to be measured when buying a product or choosing a supplier;
Industry information that your company can or has resolved
TECHNICAL PREREQUISITES
A mention of the technical requirements necessary to properly manage an email marketing activity is a must.
In the article "How to avoid ending up in SPAM", I gave several tips on how to manage the technical part. In this post, I want to emphasize the most important aspect, without going into too many technicalities.
If you decide to do email marketing effectively, you MUST be EQUIPPED with a tool for PROFESSIONAL sending.
Do not improvise with DIY or with the thousands of free or almost free tools that are online. DO NOT send newsletters with Thunderbird or Outlook from your PC ...
Just invest a few euros in the purchase of a professional service (we recommend Getresponse) and equip yourself with a tool that protects you from the most common risks, which are those of having your newsletters end up in SPAM boxes (and therefore not be read by none) or worse to report you as a SPAMMER and block the corporate e-mail domain (and have problems, sometimes serious, in sending normal corporate e-mail).
EMAIL MARKETING IS A FUNDAMENTAL INGREDIENT BUT MUST BE PART OF A STRATEGY
You can compare email marketing to an extraordinary INGREDIENT in a recipe which, however, must include other "gears" to work well ...
You cannot successfully e-mail marketing if the rest of your online presence is non-existent or almost non-existent (see dating website, or outdated blog, etc.).
You can't do e-mail marketing success if you don't commit to writing valuable content for your readers ...
You cannot successfully e-mail marketing if you plan to use this tool by abstracting it from a broader and more complete communication strategy.
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