Although it’s been used for decades, email marketing remains one of the most efficient and effective digital marketing channels. Email marketing gives business owners the means to directly communicate with their customers, creating a personal channel for reaching both new customers and loyal customers.
There are many benefits of email marketing. Ecommerce businesses can use marketing emails to create brand awareness, increase customer loyalty, and generate sales. And best of all, email marketing has an insanely high ROI. Great email marketing campaigns can bring in more than $30 in return for every dollar spent. Sounds pretty good, right?
In this article, we’ll explore the benefits of email marketing and explain how you can use email marketing communication to realize your store’s potential.
Let’s get started!
Top 7 benefits of email marketing campaigns
There’s a reason that email marketing campaigns are still one of the top tools that both large and small business owners use to grow their customer base and revenue.
Understanding the benefits of email marketing will help you make the most of all your future campaigns. That’s because when you understand exactly what you’re trying to do with each marketing message that hits your email subscribers’ inboxes, you can create more optimized email campaigns.
We’ve boiled down the essential benefits of email marketing to a 7-point list, so let’s get started!
1. It’s efficient and effective
Email marketing campaigns are an effective, efficient way of reaching customers and promoting your business.
Email marketing is a very flexible channel, and you can do a lot of different things with emails:
- If you have a sale coming up, you can send promotional emails.
- A great video that your team has been working on? Embed it in an email!
And the same goes for anything else… blog posts or how-to guides, and so on.
You can create a message and reach a large audience—even your entire list—with just one email campaign.
Furthermore, email marketing allows you to track results and ROI on a customer-by-customer basis, making it easy to see how successful your campaigns are.
This means that email marketing is extremely cost-effective. Since you’re sending your marketing messages to email subscribers who are familiar with and interested in your brand, email marketing campaigns often result in higher conversion rates than other marketing channels.
2. It allows you to segment subscribers
In today’s competitive market, finding ways to stand out from the crowd is more important than ever. If you have a strong email marketing strategy, you can use personalization to do exactly that.
Personalizing your email marketing content can create messages that resonate with your target audience and build lasting relationships.
In order to personalize your email content, you need to segment your list and send targeted messages to each specific group. For example, you could create one segment of customers who’ve bought a specific item, and craft a helpful custom message with tips on getting the most out of their purchase. When your subscribers get used to seeing targeted messaging like this, they’ll pay much more attention to your email marketing campaigns.
Another idea is to segment customers based on their interests by adding an extra step to your email opt-in form.
Here’s what it would look like: first you ask for visitors’ email addresses…
And then you ask them your segmentation question:
It takes so little effort for visitors to declare their interests that almost all of them (95%+) will answer your question!
You can also target customers by geographic location. This is especially useful if you have a brick-and-mortar store and want to encourage people in the local area to come visit.
No matter how you target your audience, the key is to ensure that your email marketing messages are always relevant to each individual. Because email is a relatively personal form of communication, email marketing campaigns tend to be an excellent way to build rapport and trust with customers.
As you’re crafting your email marketing strategy, let your marketing team’s creativity shine. By carefully segmenting your audience in industry-specific ways, you’ll be able to send highly personalized, engaging messages that your subscribers will love to receive.
3. Well-targeted email campaigns can improve sales
One of the best email marketing benefits? It’s an easy way to boost sales.
By building a database of customers and prospects, you can stay in touch with your target market and nurture leads through the sales pipeline, but you still need to encourage customers to actually check out.
When it comes to converting on your email campaigns, you should also personalize the experience of your customers when they arrive on your landing pages. This helps you turn high click-through rates into high sales.
For example, if you have an email campaign that’s designed for your VIP customers, you can adjust your website by consistently reminding your customers about your offer throughout your site (not just in your email).
Creating custom landing pages will create a better customer experience and increase the conversion rate of these segments by up to 20%. Test your subject line to boost those open rates too. You can use a subject line generator to come up with ideas.
4. You can increase website traffic
If you’re looking for ways to increase traffic, email marketing should be high on your list. By building a list of subscribers and sending them regular newsletters using email newsletter software, you can keep your brand on their radar and drive more visitors to your site.
The key is to ensure that your emails are relevant and engaging, with a strong CTA that encourages readers to visit your site.
You can also use email marketing to promote special offers and drive traffic to specific pages of your company’s website.
But remember, email marketing is only effective (and will only increase your traffic) if your messages are opened and read! Check out these open rate stats:
As we’ve seen, starting by segmenting your list into smaller groups is a great way to increase the open and click-through rates of your email marketing campaigns. When you send relevant, targeted email campaigns, they’re much more likely to be opened.
Another important part of maintaining a well-oiled email marketing strategy is regularly verifying your email list and ensuring that it’s up to date. This helps you avoid sending messages to non-existent accounts.
Also, when your goal is increasing traffic to your website, it’s crucial that you don’t forget about the subject line of your emails. This is your first chance to grab your recipients’ attention, so you should always make sure that each subject line is clear, engaging, and reflective of the email campaign’s content.
Finally, avoid sending too many emails. There’s a fine line between sending frequent emails and bombarding your subscribers’ inboxes… but you also don’t want to email them so rarely that they forget about you! You should work to create an email marketing strategy that strikes the perfect balance to maximize open rates for your unique audience.
5. You can establish authority in your industry
Authority…it’s the one thing that can’t be bought. You have to earn it. But once you have it, you’ll be able to reach untold levels of customer engagement. People will read what you write and they’ll buy what you sell.
A well-developed digital marketing strategy that makes use of email marketing campaigns to inform potential customers about your industry can help you get there.
By providing valuable content on a regular basis and keeping your customers informed about all the relevant developments in your industry, you can position yourself and your brand as an expert in your field, with support from full-service digital marketing agencies. You want to maintain communication at a level of quality that makes your subscribers excited when people see your name pop up in their inbox on a regular basis.
When your email marketing efforts go beyond automated messages and deliver real quality, you’ll become associated with authority and credibility.
Over time, this can help you build a strong following of loyal fans and customers who are eager to hear what you have to say next. So if you’re looking to establish yourself as an authority in your industry, email content marketing should definitely be in your toolbox.
Crafting an effective email signature for marketing purposes is crucial for reinforcing your brand identity and messaging. A well-designed signature not only provides your contact information but also serves as an opportunity to drive further engagement with links to your social media profiles or latest promotions. Make sure your email signature aligns with your overall marketing strategy to leave a lasting impression on your recipients.
6. You can build excitement about new products and services
One of the most undervalued email marketing benefits is that it can be a great way to generate excitement about your new products and services. Businesses can build their lists by encouraging customers to sign up for exclusive content or “early access” product drops.
After all, nothing’s worse than a product or service launch that falls short of its goals! All members of your team, from product designers to marketers, have been working overtime, so you want to make sure that your product launches don’t fall flat.
The more you capture leads and bring prospective customers into your list, the larger the audience your promotional emails will reach. And if you’ve got a capable email service provider, you can track responses to these marketing emails. This will help you discover what customers want and then retarget them as additional products and services become available.
Email marketing can provide a boost to get people talking and drum up excitement about whatever’s next for your business.
7. It’s owned media
What’s unique about email as a channel? The level of control that an ecommerce website is able to have over each email marketing campaign they send out. There are no limitations in terms of content, which is not the case on other channels.
With social media channels, for example, you’re relying on a third-party platform to get your message out there.
While that’s useful, the problem is that a company like Facebook can easily:
- change their ad policies,
- ban accounts,
- or even go out of business.
Email marketing is a great way to build owned media rather than relying on third parties to connect with your target audience.
Recommended reading: 16 Email Marketing Best Practices That Drive Results in 2024
FAQ
What is email marketing?
Email marketing means sending promotional messages to customers via email. These messages can include offers, discounts, updates or new product releases. Email marketing can be an effective way to reach customers and build relationships with them, but to be successful, campaigns must be well-crafted and carefully targeted.
Businesses have to comply with all applicable laws and regulations, like those regulating spam emails. When done correctly, email marketing can be a powerful tool for driving sales and growing a customer base.
What are the advantages of email marketing?
Email marketing is a relatively inexpensive marketing tool, and it can be highly targeted. For example, companies can use email marketing to send special offers to their best customers or promote new products to those who have expressed an interest in similar items.
It also offers plenty of flexibility, allowing businesses to tailor their messages to specific demographics or even individual customers.
What are the disadvantages of email marketing?
One downside of email marketing is that it can be easy to unintentionally spam people if you’re not careful. Remember to only add people to your email list who have given you permission to contact them, and always give them an easy way to unsubscribe if they no longer want to receive your messages.
Another potential disadvantage is that your emails could end up in people’s junk folders if you’re not using good email marketing practices. This can be frustrating for both you and your recipients.
Finally, email marketing can be a time-consuming task, especially if you have an extensive list of contacts. If you’re not careful, it’s easy to spend more time on email marketing than you anticipate.
What are the best email marketing services?
There are many great email marketing services available on the market. Klaviyo, Mailchimp, and Sendinblue are some of the best options for ecommerce stores.
When it comes to email marketing services, Mailchimp holds the largest market share. However, there are several excellent Mailchimp alternatives worth considering. Klaviyo, Sendinblue, and GetResponse are among the top options available, offering versatile features that are particularly well-suited for ecommerce stores.
Should I optimize my marketing emails for mobile devices?
The simple answer to this question is yes. More and more customers are using mobile devices to shop, but most people receive emails on their smartphones. That means you should always make sure that all your email campaigns look great on mobile devices. Most email marketing software will allow you to design campaigns that are optimized for mobile.
Wrapping up
Email marketing is a powerful tool for businesses of all sizes. When you send out an effective email marketing campaign, it’s just so satisfying to watch the website visitors and revenue roll in!
It allows you to communicate with their customers and potential customers through a direct, personal channel, resulting in increased sales, loyalty, and customer satisfaction.
With so many easy-to-use email marketing tools available today, there’s nothing standing in your way… follow the tips above to take advantage of all the benefits email marketing can bring to your business!
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Written by
Gael Breton
Gael Breton is co-founder of Authority Hacker, a site that helps small and medium businesses create and grow their online presence. He loves to experiment with new ideas and you'll often find him playing with new tools and processes to help people make the most of their web traffic!
