When Mark Twain was visiting London, a city paper mistakenly published that he’d died. Twain responded with his usual wit: “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
The same could be said about Email Marketing. The fact is, Email Marketing is alive and well—not to mention among the most effective (and cost-effective) tools in your digital marketing arsenal, particularly when you integrate it with other digital strategies, like video, mobile, SEO, and display advertising. According to Forbes, Email Marketing yields, on average, a return on investment (ROI) of about 4,300%. That’s a whopping $43 for every $1 you invest.
Does Email Marketing really work?
The answer, as so often the case with marketing strategy, is “it depends.” It’s fair to say, however, that businesses that effectively leverage Email Marketing best practices tend to achieve remarkable results. Consider, for example, these Email Marketing metrics from WordStream:
- Almost 60% of B2B marketers say email is their most effective strategy for revenue generation.
- More than 30% of email subscribers purchase products and services from the companies whose emails they receive.
- About 75% of Millennials point to email as their preferred method of business communications.
- About half of all US businesses use some form of Email Marketing automation.
- On average, consumers who respond to promotional email offers spend almost 140% more than those who respond through other marketing channels.
It’s not about you—it’s about your customers
Those are impressive numbers, but it’s important to note that they reflect average performance. In other words, some businesses achieve even better results, while others don’t do nearly as well.
Across a wide swath of industries (including media companies), the companies that leverage Email Marketing best practices tend to be the ones most likely to achieve their principal marketing objectives—and add to their bottom line.
As HubSpot notes, success with Email Marketing doesn’t rest on any single strategy. But it does require a laser-like focus on your customers—effectively answering their questions and solving their problems:
“…Email Marketing isn’t just about you, or your company. It’s about your customer. If you keep this golden rule in mind, your subscribers will not only read your emails, but they will look forward to hearing from you every time. Unless you have the (wo)manpower, free time, and capital to individually build a personal relationship with each one of your prospects and customers, email should be your best marketing friend.”
How to build a killer Email Marketing strategy
Every business is different, of course, with different customers, different challenges, and different marketing goals. That said, the companies that achieve optimal success with Email Marketing tend to share a common set of best practice strategies, including the following four:
1. Know your target audience
Knowing to whom your emails are directed exponentially increases the impact of your emails. That means effectively incorporating customer data to ensure your emails are relevant to their needs. For most, that means segmenting your data based on key customer characteristics. One of the best ways to do that is by creating effective buyer personas.
2. Create clear, specific, measurable goals
Having specific goals will not only provide a greater sense of strategic direction, but also let you know what success looks like. It’s important to benchmark your Email Marketing goals against average performance for your industry. You also need to ensure that your goals are reasonable, attainable, and measurable.
3. Define the nature of your Email Marketing campaign
There are several types of Email Marketing campaigns—from campaigns to nurture new leads to those intended to generate more conversions and sales. Your first step is to get a good sense of the many types of email campaigns from which to choose. The second is to decide which of these options is best suited for your specific marketing goal.
Once that exists, then decide which is best for your audience. You should also set up different lists for different types of emails, so customers and prospects can sign up for only the emails that are relevant to them.
4. Measure—then measure again
There’s little point in creating an Email Marketing campaign if you don’t measure results. This could be anything from counting new leads to measuring the change in your open or click-through rate (CTR). By measuring results (with some degree of specificity), you’ll know what’s working and what isn’t. This enables the continual improvement of your campaigns.
In conclusion
Effectively leveraged Email Marketing can help you achieve your key marketing goals and increase profits. But it can also be both complicated and confusing. That’s where we can help.
We can give you the marketing guidance and advice you need to succeed. Using our Programmatic Email Marketing Solutions, your business can target emails to highly specific audience segments based on everything from shopping preferences to demographics, geographics, personal interests, and purchasing history.
To learn more about the ways we can help you achieve Email Marketing success and take your business to the next level, schedule your free demo today.
