In this article, I am going to help you understand when you should use email marketing.
Even though people propose that with the advent of social media, email marketing is no longer relevant, but am here to let you know that email marketing will always continue to work.
An email marketing campaign is one of the most important tools that help every business and industry to achieve its marketing goals at any given point in time.
However, so many newbies to this form of internet marketing keep asking the question: when should you use email marketing?
Well, as an experienced marketer in this field, I will try my best to give a precise answer to this question. But before I do so, I will like you to keep in mind that email marketing, when done correctly, will enable you to maintain good communication with your market and in return increase your leads and sales.
Let’s quickly look at some of the benefits of email marketing.
The benefits of email marketing.
Some of the benefits of email marketing are that;
- It will help you in nurturing leads
- You can use email marketing to create awareness about your business and brand.
- Prospects are easily obtained through email marketing.
- It is through email marketing that you can build loyalty and trust with your customers.
- Email marketing will also help you to generate as well as increase the sales of your brand’s products and services.
After launching an email campaign, you can follow it up to measure the results you are getting. And this makes email marketing a great option for use in time-sensitive programs.
You can easily and affordable test different aspects of your email marketing campaign via the segments created on your contact list, and you can implement your creative offer to generate the best possible results.
When you should use email marketing.
Generally, you should use email marketing when you are trying to meet any goals you are setting in your annual business marketing plan; you can also use email marketing as part of achieving a wider marketing campaign.
As a matter of fact, the 3 most outstanding times you should use email marketing are when you want to:
- Generate interest in your new products or services.
- Allow your customers to learn before they buy your products and services.
- Stay in touch with your prospects and customers.
1. Generate interest in your new products or services.
As an email marketer, the first thing you must do is buy or rent an email list from any email marketing tool or software of your choice.
After that, you can add a subscription link to your blog, website, or even social media and ask people to willingly subscribe to your email lists.
It is therefore this email list that you will be used to send short and compelling messages to your subscribers and make them generate or develop an interest in your new product or service.
One trick to do this is by driving your potential customers to a landing page on your website to download any type of offer that will attract them.
To do this they must submit their email addresses and you can gather that information and send follow-up emails afterward.
2. Allow your customers to learn before they buy your products and services.
Don’t just send a link to any product you wish your prospects to purchase just like that. Rather, write content that details the importance of your product as well as how to use it.
And in so doing, you will give your prospects the opportunity to learn about your product before they purchase it.
The knowledge they gain from that content is what will drive them to immediately make a purchase. And sometimes can do so as a means of trying to see if the product is as good as you claim.
And if they get that confirmation, they are likely going to make more purchases as well as recommend others to your product as well.
3. Stay in touch with your prospects and customers.
You should also use email marketing to stay in touch with your prospects and customers.
Consistent communication is what will help you build loyalty and trust with your customers.
Therefore, you should try to deliver timely and valuable information that will compel your customers to always want to read your messages.
You can always add news updates about your brand, send special offers, etc as a means of maintaining that communication pattern.
But always ensure you focus more on content and information rather than trying to sell to them at every point in time.
Always learn to understand email marketing as more editorial than a means of trying to advertise a product or service to make sales.
What are the challenges of email marketing?
Like any medium, email marketing has its own challenges. Millions of emails end up in spam filters every day, so you must find a way of getting yours past that mark and always give your subscribers a reason to read your emails.
This is more of the reason why you should always create valuable content, give useful offers, and use appropriate design in your email marketing campaigns.
With an email, you have the opportunity of reaching a wider audience; but be mindful of the fact that sometimes you are going to fail in doing so.
It s only going to be effective when you apply to the needs of those who subscribe to your email lists. And you must ensure they are the right audience for your type of business.
In the long run, think of email marketing as one-on-one communication with your prospects and customers. And make it personalized, relevant, and timely to achieve your marketing goals with it.
Let’s look at some of the challenges you will face when trying to use email marketing.
- When you haven’t had time to learn more about when to use email marketing, you just go ahead and send an email about your new products or offers to your email lists. Your aim while doing so is to generate leads or just maintain perfect communication with your customers. But then, you lack the time to test your email campaign before launch, and boom you end up getting no feedback because you are not targeting the right audience with the right product.
- You just create a newsletter, even when you know you are low on leads; and then you blast it to all the subscribers on your email list. While doing so, you forget to test your email marketing campaign to know if any of those messages are even delivered to their respective destinations.
Before you begin to use email marketing.
Before you even begin to use email marketing, make sure you do the following:
- Use specific goals to develop your email marketing campaign.
- Spend time creating good and relevant content.
- Use an email service provider (ESP)
- Stick to industry-accepted practices.
- Always test before you launch your campaigns.
1. Use specific goals to develop your email marketing campaign.
Always make sure you spend time setting specific goals for your email marketing.
You can follow the following steps to do so:
- Make sure your objectives are always tangible. For instance, generate a specific number of leads, demo requests, meetings, or purchases.
- Make sure you are speaking more directly to your customer’s needs rather than trying to disturb them with products they will never get to purchase.
- Make sure you present your offers and call to action early in your messages. Don’t give them any reason to leave your email because it is so long and boring.
- Your email marketing campaign should be accompanied by a series of emails because it takes multiple touches to generate a response. But then, be mindful of spam while doing so.
- Make sure you always fulfill your promises. Don’t state anything that is not included in your special offers. Whatever you promise your prospects, make sure you fulfill it immediately and this will help them to see how trustworthy you are.
2. Spend time creating good and relevant content.
As I said earlier on in this article, make sure your aim is not to advertise a product you want to sell to your customers at all times.
Rather use good and relevant content that will help them to learn a thing or two. Once they find value in the messages you are sending to them, they will always be excited to read all your subsequent messages and you use timely tactics to present your products to them.
3. Use an email service provider (ESP)
Never try to use your regular email, for example, Gmail or Yahoomail; to send email marketing campaigns
Rather, choose a reputable email service provider (ESP) that will help you comply with spam legislation and deliver your emails to your prospects’ inboxes.
A reliable ESP will help to raise your delivery rate, manage your opt-in and opt-out process, keep your email list clean and provide reports that will help you improve your results.
3. Stick to industry-accepted practices.
Following industry-accepted practices will help you to improve your probability of success.
- Send regular emails to your contact lists. The more time you waste time to send email marketing campaigns to your prospects, the higher your rate of bad addresses is going to be. And those bounces might trigger spam alerts.
- Make sure you have an unsubscribe button that will allow your subscribers to opt out of future communications at any given point in time.
- Make sure your email lists, whether you buy or rent is an “opt-in” list.
4. Always test before you launch your campaigns.
It is always a wise idea to test your email campaigns before you launch them. If your ESP or list is new, always evaluate your delivery and the rate of response before you press the send button.
Also, always Keep testing and improving your subject lines, headlines and copy, design, offer landing pages, and even the delivery timing. This process will help you to improve your campaigns.
Conclusion.
As you continue to make email marketing your top priority and more important marketing strategy, keep learning about the subject and improving your campaigns.
Review what other companies are doing – both B2B and B2C. And they will give you plenty of examples so you could know when you should use email marketing in your business.
