7 Benefits of Email in your Online Marketing Plan
Mar 10, 2020
Email Marketing needs to be at the core of your online marketing plan.
Growing an email list should be one of your top priorities in growing your business online. In my last article, Is Email Marketing dead?, we explored five reasons why email marketing continues to live on.
One of those reasons is the permanency that email holds in our daily lives. There are over 3.8 billion email users in the world and this is expected to grow to 4.4. billion users in 2023. The majority, if not all, of these users check their email every day multiple times throughout the day. And with the growth of technology, email is checked every where they are – at work, at home, whilst eating or shopping, and yes, even in the bathroom.
Email is one of the most reliable methods of communication between your business and your audience of potential customers or clients. To have an effective online marketing plan, email needs to be at the core of this plan.
Let’s explore 7 benefits email marketing will bring to your online marketing plan.
1. Create personalized content.
The ability to send personalized emails to your audience is one of the strongest benefits of email marketing. Many, if not all, email marketing platforms allow you to segment your email list based on product or service preferences, location, customer behaviours, etc. This allows you to adjust your message and provide highly personalized content for different audiences based on their interests.
By delivering highly personalized content with a personal message that includes your audience’s name, you are delivering a better customer experience, and increasing the loyalty of your audience. As you cultivate the relationship through personalized nurturing, you are increasing the potential return on investment.
2. You own it!
When you primarily use social media platforms to engage with your audience, you don’t own the list of contacts or even the content you post. The social media platform owns this information. Just think - How many followers and contacts would you have if the social media platform disappeared tomorrow?
This is probably one of the greatest reasons for growing an email list! You own the names and email addresses of your subscribers, and are able to interact with them regardless of the email marketing platform. In addition, all of the information and content you choose to send to your email list is owned by you!
3. Build credibility with your audience.
Email is a perfect platform to connect with your audience on a regular basis and let them get to know you. As you engage with your list of subscribers, you are providing value by sharing helpful and informative content with them. Your audience subscribed to your email list because they are interested in what you have to say.
As you continue to engage your list, and continue to provide them with high-value content, you are building a relationship with them. You are letting them get to know, like and trust you. People are more likely to do business with those whom they like, know and trust because they see the credibility of what is being shared.
4. Establish authority within your industry.
Just as engaging with your email list on a regular basis builds credibility, it will also establishes you as an expert and authority. As you continue to provide your email list with high-value packed content, you are establishing yourself as an expert. Your audience will know to come to you for answers within your field of expertise.
5. Increase brand awareness.
Every email you send to your audience exposes them to your business, to your services and your products. Sending emails that are highly personalized and targeted to their interests will help your business to stay top of mind with your audience. When they have a problem that you have a solution to, they will think of and turn to you – provided you have been sending them emails with content around that subject.
As you strengthen the relationship with your audience through regular email communication, and your business continues to stay top of mind, there is a higher chance of turning your subscribers from leads into clients.
6. Increase traffic to your website.
Email marketing is the core of your online marketing plan because it will boost the effectiveness of all the other pieces within your marketing plan. Within your emails you can provide links to other blog articles, products and services on your website.
Once someone is on your website, they are more likely to stay and look at other pages of your website.
7. Efficient with your time and budget.
Email marketing is a very cost-effective method of online marketing with minimal fees that often save time. You don’t have to make a large investment to start email marketing, as many email marketing platforms offer a free or low-cost plan to get started.
Within the email marketing platform you can set-up email campaigns that are automatically sent based on a certain trigger. You can automatically send a follow-up email to someone who has abandoned a shopping cart or a series of follow-up emails to someone who has downloaded a free lead magnet. You save time by having these emails automated, and you don’t miss out on the potential lead.
These are 7 of the top benefits email marketing can bring to your online marketing plan. For the minimal cost, email marketing has a high return on investment (ROI) of 4400%. This means that for every $1 you spend on email marketing, there is a potential to bring you a $44 return. With this ROI, do you see the benefit in email?
