Ah, e-mail…it’s so easy to hit ‘send’ after typing out a letter to your loved ones, isn’t it? It certainly beats having to send mail via bird carrier. While receiving post via bird works out in books a la Harry Potter, e-mail is the go-to option to send out messages even while social media remains a giant among communication and in marketing. That’s why e-mail marketing is still around.
If you’re a business owner with a website or just starting out with a new one, you may find there are a lot of benefits to find in e-mail marketing if you haven’t considered it already!
The Numbers Back It Up
Statistics based on e-mail marketing continue to grow as time goes on. According to Statista, in the US alone it is estimated that the number of e-mail users will grow from 233 million to almost 254.7 million by 2020. That’s a lot of e-mail recipients! To this day, e-mail remains one of the leading means of marketing to customers on a B2B level.
You may want to look at these other numbers, too:
- Click-through rates are higher by 47% for business to business (B2B) e-mail newsletters than business to consumer (B2C) ones with a 23% high click-to-open ratio.
- 86% of retail owners say that e-mail marketing is their greatest driver of customer retention, with social media being the next closest channel.
- 28% of e-mail users would rather receive e-mail promotions more than once per week.
There’s great news for those who work in the veterinary field: e-mails related to pets and the animal services industry had the highest average e-mail marketing open rate in the U.S. as of 2016—22.1%.
With these statistics, how can you ignore e-mail marketing now?
It Helps Your Website, Too!
Having a newsletter sign-up option on your website helps grow your e-mail newsletter list naturally, and having one informs your visitors that you have something valuable to offer them. This is the ultimate goal of incorporating e-mail marketing into your regular campaigns—to increase sales and generate interest in your company without being intrusive about it the way advertising is.
E-mail and Social Media Go Hand in Hand
Rather than approach e-mail marketing as if it’s anti-social media, think of it as a means to encourage your e-mail users to get more engaged with your business. If you’ve started with social media before your e-mail campaign, make the announcement about your up-and-coming newsletter on your social media accounts first; this is another effective way to grow your e-mail list naturally.
In vice versa, those who are receiving your e-mail newsletter may be unaware that you have social media until they receive your first one, because part of your target audience may strictly be e-mail users, thereby growing your social media interest as well.
In order to send out an effective e-mail newsletter though, you need content.
Speaking of…
It Makes Use of Your Content
Let’s just say that before you start sending out e-mail newsletters, you need content first. Why? Because, and we feel we have to drill this into our readers, content is king.
Those descriptions about the discounts you’d like to offer? That counts as meaningful content. Those blog posts you’ve been putting time and effort into posting? Put them in your newsletter. That ebook you made just recently? Make your next e-mail newsletter an announcement about it. Those products you’re trying to sell that have a common theme? Put them in a deal or discount, form a theme around them, and create a newsletter based on that.
See? Content is king, and what we just described makes for excellent e-mail newsletter campaigns too.
So…how do you feel about e-mail marketing now? Are you ready to set up a campaign? Or are you struggling with yours? If you need help, contact us at V3 Media. Whether it’s to install a newsletter sign-up feature, help protect your e-mail from spammers, or consult you on your current e-mail campaign strategy, we’re always around for a chat!