Email marketing is common nowadays. Everyone has been exposed to email promotions, solicitations, newsletters and spam. Our in-boxes fill daily. Why? Because it works, and if your business or organization virtual roundtables is not utilizing email marketing, it seriously needs to re-evaluate its marketing strategy.
Why has email marketing become so popular? Because it is so economical! Compared to other popular forms of advertising, email marketing easily offers the best deal:
Email: $.015 cost per email; percent of opens: 10%-70%
Direct Mail: $.50-$1.50 cost per piece; viewership is 50%-100%
Flyer: $.10-$.75 per piece, excluding delivery costs; viewership is 50%-75%
Newspaper Ad: $25.00-$600.00; viewership is 10%-60%
Pay-Per-Click Online Advertising: $0.45-$10.00 per click; lead conversion rate is typically 0.5%-10%.
Looking at other advertising methodologies, email marketing offers significant advantages:
As seen above, the return-on-investment can be astronomical!
Whereas other forms of advertising are shot-gun approaches, emails can be very targeted by using segmented email lists.
By building opt-in lists, recipients have already agreed to receive emails about certain topics, and email delivery percentages dramatically increase rather than winding up in a spam folder.
Opt-in email lists available from third parties can also be utilized to target specific demographics or geographical locations.
It also promotes relationship building for future purchases and customer growth and retention..
Emails often enjoys viral benefits, wherein your emails are forwarded to friends, family and colleagues.
It can be used for a variety of purposes, such as promotions, newsletters, event management and online surveys.
Autoresponders allow automated email responses and follow-ups to be preprogrammed, enhancing sales productivity.
Email results can be tracked – the number of opens, the number of clicks, etc. Moreover, you can actually determine who clicked on what link in a newsletter, for example, and then further segment your email list according to interest. Eventually, one can derive highly-targeted email lists consisting of pre-qualified recipients.
It is hard to imagine a successful business or organization today that does not use email marketing. Small businesses and start-ups can especially benefit from email newsletters and the use of autoresponder follow-ups. Email marketing is a proven strategy for growing your business, nurturing clients and expanding your sales base.
