Ok, before I begin talking about why you should incorporate email marketing into your marketing plan, let’s take a moment to acknowledge that as consumers we hate email marketing. We loathe getting the 431 emails a week in our inbox and we also despise the fact that one of those little emails will end up getting us to spend another $238 we did not have to spend and yet, we spent it. Email marketing is just a bad idea all around….if you are the consumer. It sucks!
Despite all the gnashing of teeth by consumers and business owners alike, email marketing must be included in an effective marketing plan if your goal is to maximize profit and minimize sales. According to the Direct Marketing Association, the average return on investment for email marketing is 4,300%. Say what you might about your personal feelings regarding email marketing, as a business owners are you willing to give up that kind of ROI just because you don’t like something? According to Hubspot, email marketing yields 50% more sales ready leads at 33% reduced cost.
Ok, so many business owners are already using email marketing sporadically and not seeing results anywhere near this. In order to start seeing great results, you have to have all your ducks in order.
- A profitable email list
- Segment. Segment your list!
- A well defined marketing plan
- Understand google analytics
- Understand and know how to track email platform analytics
- A/B test the hell out of your emails
- Realize that sometimes that your assumptions about customers won’t always be right
More and more businesses are ditching brick and mortar and turning into e-commerce based businesses. If businesses plan to continue to grow their marketplace then they must include email marketing as part of their marketing strategy.
A thousand years ago, you opened up the Sunday newspaper and saw the circular with the upcoming week’s deals and steals. When is the last time you put your slippers on and went through the paper to find out the local department store’s sales? Households are no longer buying the newspaper and there is very few ways to draw new customers in with weekly promotions without a quality email list and campaign. Rebel against email marketing all you want to mentally, but business owners have to face the reality that there is very little opportunity to educate customers on products outside of email.
So, strap on your big boy/girl email marketing panties and put together a marketing plan that includes email marketing. If you need a little help with that — give us a call.
