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Why email should not be forgotten in digital marketing
Since the onset of digital marketing and the ever-growing reach of the internet, email has been a faithful tool for marketers globally. And though the growth of social media has grown into one of the most important methods of growing a business, there remains a great necessity for email in digital marketing. This is why.
Email in digital marketing
Who doesn’t carry a phone on them these days? According to bankmycell over 91% of people have and use phones today. That’s over 7 billion people that are possible to reach. That is the potential of email in digital marketing. Now, obviously you’re not going to reach every since one of those people, especially since statistics show that just over half the population actually use email. But that’s still a very deep pool to cast a net into.
What this shows is that it has never been easier at any point in history to get in contact with potential customers. This kind of reach is vital to digital marketing, and is why email will always remain relevant. Send an email advertising a sale, promoting a contest or just letting customers know what’s currently happening with your business, and in seconds you could reach millions of people.
Tracking all important numbers
If you work in marketing, or are the owner of a business, you know how vital it is to be able to track how effective your marketing strategies are. And that right there is one of the main strengths of email in digital marketing.
With a variety of email marketing services to choose from, you’ll find most of them give you insight into whatever data you need. Everything from how many people are opening your emails, to how many people are entering your website through these emails. You can track where customers are clicking from, what browser they’re using and keep up to date with delivery reports.
And the best part of all of this is, this can all be done automatically. Most email services will allow you to schedule and send emails whenever you like. So you can design and schedule these emails to line up with releases or sales, then sit back and let it happen without having to stress.
Proactively building relationships
We may have mentioned this before, in our article on brand awareness, but building a relationship and trust with your target audience is a must when it comes to digital marketing. Outside of all the statistics and the data and the ease of use, email proves a powerful tool in creating this bond with customers.
How? Through being proactive about reaching out to your customers. Through personalizing these emails, tailoring them for your customers, and reaching out whenever you have news you think they’d be interested in. In doing this, you’re building trust with your customers and ensuring they’ll return to your website.
The use of email in digital marketing allows you to not just reach a new audience, but to reach out to past customers. Maybe a customer has left things in their cart and closed the website. Maybe a customer has used your website several times in the past, but hasn’t returned in a few months. Using a personalized email for customers like this helps build a relationship with them and show them that you are a brand that cares.
Strategies for email in digital marketing
There are a number of ways to utilize email to continue to build your brand and spread awareness. I’ll go through a handful of them here.
Know your audience
As mentioned earlier, email marketing services allow you to track how effective your email marketing campaigns are through a variety of different metrics. Now that you have these metrics, it’s time to target your audience differently.
Separate your customers into groups based on things like which campaigns they clicked on, what items them bought or based on their demographic. When you do this, your marketing efficiency jumps, and as a nice bonus, it shows you understand your customers.
Design
When I speak about design, I’m speaking about a couple of things here. First, the overall look of the email. This one feels like a no-brainer, but it’s still important enough that it deserves mentioning. No need to overdo it, because readability is incredibly important, as is accessibility on mobile, so simple works.
Design these emails in a way that speaks to your brand and make you stand out from the crowd. Luckily, most email marketing services provide customizable templates for you to browse through and find one that suits you. Add a visual—a poster from a current campaign, or an image of a product—and you’re set.
Also make sure that your subject line isn’t too complicated. We’ve all received spam-like emails, written in all caps that go on for too long—do not be one of them. Short, simple, and to the point. That’s how you capture the recipient’s attention.
We’ve talked about the power of social media before—and its strength lies in much of the same areas as email in digital marketing. It’s accessible due to mobile phones being a thing, and people use it every day. So take advantage of that—leverage your social media following into an email list.
Create incentives for people to sign up to your email list. Host contests and giveaways that allow users to sign up for email. You can also consider testing how responsive people are to marketing campaigns on social media before rolling them out over email.
Final thoughts on email in digital marketing
The bottom line in all of this is: email in digital marketing has been, and remains, an effective tool. With people glued to their phones at all hours of the day, no matter where they are, all it takes is the right campaign to hook customers in and build a relationship with them.
With so many email marketing services out there, with many of them offering free tiers for limited use, it’s never been easier to get out there and build your audience—not to mention cheap. Email is a cheap and proven marketing service, and with a few simple strategies in place, it can be incredibly effective in the success of your marketing campaign. For other articles you can use to help your business, check out our blog.
