Should you still use email marketing in 2020? Or should you scrap the idea, move on, and start using a different, more current marketing method altogether?
If you’re thinking about these questions right now, chances are you’ve read somewhere that email marketing is dead. Well, I’m here to tell you, email marketing is far from dead. In fact, it continues to bring meaningful results — and revenue — to businesses.
In this guide, we’ll talk about the importance of email marketing in 2020 and some tips and strategies to improve your small business email campaigns.
Overview: What is the advantage of email marketing?
First, email marketing is cost effective. Email platforms are often free or priced very affordably.
Second, email marketing campaigns are very easy to implement. With the help of email automation tools, you can run email campaigns 24/7 without your direct involvement. Just do the initial setup, and everything pretty much runs by itself from there.
Lastly, it’s highly profitable. Email marketing continually delivers substantial investment returns, as you’ll find out in the later sections of this guide. It’s a tried and tested business investment that brings amazing results.
7 reasons email marketing is crucial to your small business content strategy
Email marketing can take your company’s content strategies to the next level. By adding email marketing to the mix, you can connect with your audience directly through their inbox.
Below are some of the reasons you need to integrate email marketing to your content strategy.
1. Emails generate better results than most marketing channels
Among marketing channels, email marketing yields the highest return on investment (ROI) for the past 10 years. It also has the highest conversion rate (66%) for purchases made in response to promotional messages.
For every dollar spent on email marketing, you can earn up to $44, with almost 4.3% of shoppers buying from these campaigns. Plus, compared with social media, email is deemed 40 times more effective in acquiring new customers. You’re also more likely to get click-throughs from email marketing than tweets.
Get better results out of your email marketing campaigns by using these tips.
- Use email marketing software with performance optimization and analytics features. This allows you to make data-backed adjustments to your campaigns.
- Track your key performance metrics regularly. Experiment with tactics to see which ones work, and continually improve them.
2. Emails help with customer engagement and retention
Connect with your customers by collecting their emails and getting their consent to include them in your email advertising campaigns. Promotional emails are perfect avenues for educating your audience and presenting your offers without being too pushy or intrusive.
Remember these tips when reaching out to your customers using email marketing.
- Your email marketing content needs to pack a punch. It needs to be value-laden if you want to retain your customers. You can share tips and tricks, how your product solves their problems, its features and best uses, etc.
- Send email content with interactive formats, and diversify. Insert videos, infographics, GIFs, and different newsletter layouts, for example.
- Keep your subject lines concise and straightforward. Be direct or ask questions that rouse their curiosity. This will increase open rates.
What Boden did is an excellent email marketing example. Its subject line is catchy and consistent with its short and easily digestible content. With the subject line, “New season? New wardrobe,” here’s what Boden’s email looks like.
Share relevant emails with various content formats and catchy subject lines. Image source: Author
Boden included a GIF showing the same striped pattern in various outfits. Below that is a short text describing the ensemble, plus photos of clothes in prints, plains, and other patterns, among others.
3. Emails compel your audience to take action
Use marketing emails to influence your audience to take action on your offers. Let’s say you sent an email with a video tutorial of your product kit. At the bottom of your email, tell your subscribers to click the “Buy Now” button to purchase your product.
You can even sweeten the deal by offering a massive discount to whoever clicks your call-to-action (CTA) button and makes the purchase on the same day.
Apply these email marketing strategies to make your email messages more compelling.
- Make your CTA buttons stand out with contrasting or bright colors. Keep your text short and actionable as well.
- Ensure your CTA buttons lead to a landing page, rather than your homepage.
- Perform split tests to determine which email versions bring better conversions, click-throughs, opens, and other desired actions.
Check out the email sent by Flourist.
Add CTA buttons so it’s easier for your subscribers to take action on your offers. Image source: Author
Flourist added several clickable links throughout the newsletter. It briefly describes each corn or zucchini dish and provides the link for the entire recipe.
After sharing several dishes, it displays a “See All Recipes” button with a light grey shade complementing its brand color. The button guides Flourist’s subscribers on what action to take next after reading the entire email.
4. Emails improve brand awareness
Use emails to improve your customers’ understanding of your brand. By talking about your values, mission, products and services, etc., your audience will have a better grasp of what you are about. As your shoppers’ brand awareness grows, it’s easier for them to advocate your company since they understand you better.
Improve your brand awareness by considering these tips when sending emails.
- Always insert your logo and company name to increase brand recall and association.
- Make your messages memorable and unique.
- Maintain consistent branding throughout your emails to increase recognition and attract customers.
5. Personalize your content
Instead of sending generic email blasts, create content that’s relevant to your recipients’ interests, shopping activities, customer journeys, and other relevant factors. Get clues about their interests by looking into products they viewed, blog posts read, items purchased and added to their carts and wishlists.
Also, study your email marketing funnels to send suitable content to your customers based on where they are in the buying cycle. Do that by using email automation software programs that lets you send specific messages based on customer activities.
For instance, set your email software to send welcome emails to every shopper who signs up to your newsletter. You can also send abandoned cart emails to people who added items to their virtual carts but didn’t complete their purchases.
Setting behavior-based triggers makes for effective email communication because your subscribers feel the content you sent is made specifically for them.
6. Emails can bring loads of traffic to your website
Let’s face it: Even your most loyal customers don’t visit your website daily. It’s not that they aren’t interested in your content; they simply have other things to do.
This is where email marketing comes in.
Use emails to remind your audience of your brand and show a glimpse of your website content. Send summaries of your new blog posts, for instance, the way ezpz did below. It displayed thumbnails and summaries of its website and social content. Customers can click on the titles to read the rest of the content.
Show snippets of your content to invite customers to see the rest on your site. Image source: Author
7. Emails integrate with your other marketing channels seamlessly
Emails help amplify other channels in your integrated marketing campaign, such as social media marketing, webinars, and content marketing. Place clickable social media icons on your newsletter’s footer and embed your social media posts on your emails.
That way, your customers can follow your social media profiles.
You can also add “Pin it” buttons to your visuals to let subscribers save them on their Pinterest accounts. This strategy works wonders if your products and services are graphics- and image-heavy.
Emails are also perfect for promoting your webinars and sharing more information about them. Regardless of the marketing campaign you’re running, you can almost always use email to reinforce it. That’s how versatile the channel is.
Remember these tactics when using email marketing to bolster your integrated marketing campaigns.
- Be consistent with your branding throughout your channels.
- Insert social media buttons and website links to continue engaging them on other platforms.
Start growing your business with email marketing
Email marketing is still important in 2020. It possesses the firepower to bring you loads of sales, improve your customer engagement, establish your brand image, and more.
Don’t think twice about investing in email marketing. By using the tips covered in this guide, you’re bound to see the positive impact email marketing can bring to your business.