Honestly, I could give you many, many more…..
Email marketing has been around since the dawn of the digital age but email is, by far, the most effective way of directly affecting your bottom line and actually growing your business.
There are many platforms that offer a low-cost option to get started building your list and start using this very effective method of marketing.
Dependant on what your business needs, will determine what platform you eventually decide on.
Some are free for certain features and a certain number of subscribers which are ideal for small businesses starting off. Often their paid plans include automation and many integrations to really take it to the next level.
Some of the main contenders to look at are:
- Mailchimp: has a great free plan for up to 2,000 subscribers, but you will have to upgrade to a paid plan if you’d like to create autoresponder sequences.
- ConverKit: is the next level up in terms of price, but has a lot of extras features like the ability to tag people and segment subscribers based on how or where they opted in, what freebie they opted in for, etc. This is extremely useful when you want to start putting some advanced email marketing strategies in place.
- Awber: it essentially has the same features as Mailchimp but costs more per month.
- Contact Contact: comes with a 60-day free trial then you pay for either one or two levels of plans
So what you go with really depends on your budget, and how committed you are to using email marketing as a big part of your business growth strategy. You can always switch and bring your subscribers over to a new platform – so if you’re just getting started, might as well save some cash and go with Mailchimp to start.
Also be aware that a lot of CRM’s have this functionality built into them, take Zoho for example.
No matter which one you choose, here are 5 reasons why email marketing is one of the best channels in your marketing strategy.
Worth mentioning though, through all your communications, it is important to talk to your customer in their language using your brand’s voice. Keeping consistency throughout all points of contact will not only strengthen your brand but you will continually delight your customers.
1. Increase Website Traffic
Email marketing is not limited to a particular type of business. Whether you’re an eCommerce business that sells products online or a retail store that wants to increase traffic to your website so that you can bring more people into your store — email marketing can help.
Whether you are sharing your latest blog post or a curated list of relevant posts for your audience or your latest products in store, you can experiment with many types of media and content to see what engages your audience.
Once you examine the results do more of what works so you are continually driving valuable traffic to your website.
2. Reach People On Any Device
With almost 75% of all emails being opened on a mobile device, email marketing is one of the best tools you can use to take advantage of the growing popularity of mobile technology. Smartphones have taken this to a new level altogether. Most of the population has one of these devices and uses them for reading, researching and engaging with content all day long.
Being able to reach your audience is easier than ever before and with so many tools available for creating engaging content you should continually delight your customers with varied content.
3. Strengthen Your Brand
Your brand is a set of associations and sensations perceived by the customers or potential customers, and they attach value to the product or service offered. For a successful brand, these aspects must work with consistency and coherence, balancing the concepts, whether in social networking, marketing, email, landing pages, online services, etc.
Email marketing is an opportunity to create direct links with consumers that, when set up properly, can help leveraging the ROI of any marketing campaign. When planning your e-mail marketing campaign, it is extremely important to mention your brand accurately, so your company will become a reliable reference for consumers as well as being a way of being present in customers’ lives whenever there’s something new going on. Thus, the chances of someone to unsubscribe becomes lower and your business will always be present before the eyes of your target audience.
Below are some areas to concentrate on for creating trust and authority, beyond reinforcing your brand, through building email marketing campaigns which add value to your audience’s lives:
- Personality and voice
- A consistent template
- A stamped preview pane
- Custom landing pages
- A consistent picture style
By communicating with your audience regularly, using carefully crafted content, you stay top of their mind so they get to know what to expect from your business and its offerings.
4. Improve Communication
If your business depends on having a reliable way to communicate with your members and clients, you need to have a communication channel you can trust.
Setting up a regular newsletter for your customers, lets them know what to expect and they anticipate what you send. Once you are including content they appreciate and find relevant, they will appreciate the value you can offer them.
Once you set up a newsletter schedule – stick to it. Yes, it is hard but consistency is more important that frequency. Start with once a month, get used to your new habit and increase it from there.
5. Get Immediate Results
When you run a small business, every sale, order, or appointment can have a significant impact.
With email, you’re able to get the results you’re looking for right away and very easily track how your different campaigns are performing.
No matter what platform you choose, you will get immediate analytics, showing you who opened your mail, who clicked etc. This allows you see what is working and what to adjust. For example, if you share two pieces of content within your newsletter and you see one only got interactions, you need to look at the content you posted and do more of it.
CONCLUSION
Overall, email marketing is still the fastest way to get in front of your audience and is an opportunity to reinforce your brand. Therefore, above all, make sure you are constantly exposing your brand. The more consistent you are, the more consumers will be likely to remember and trust you, and the more likely they will be willing to complete a transaction. If you would like to get started, get in touch with us here at Itchy Fingers Design on 086-8710018.
Contributor Profile
Amanda Lucas is an experienced Web Designer and Digital Marketer and Founder of Itchy Fingers Design. She designs optimised, goal focused websites keeping user experience at the core of her designs. She also offers services such as email marketing, branding and graphic design along with content marketing. When she is not tapping away on her Mac, she can be found experimenting in the kitchen and travelling.
Read More – http://www.itchyfingersdesign.com/home/about-us/
Contact Details: Tel: 086-8710018