Are you tired of trying to use Facebook to reach out to your customers online? It can especially feel frustrating to post blog content from your website to your social media only to not get as much interest or new customers as you’d hoped.
While we do encourage you to use social media as a channel for your content marketing (and if you don’t have a blog or strategy at all, get one on your website today!), there is another option. E-mail marketing is especially handy at growing your audience and even improving your sales.
Don’t believe us? Here’s why e-mail marketing still works for business websites and why you should get help with adding this feature to your site today.
Reason 1: People Still Use E-mail
Not everyone uses social media, but everyone checks their e-mail! In fact, according to research, more than 34% of the world uses email, with 196 billion emails sent out daily. In addition, out of those 196 billion emails, 109 billion of those emails is considered business email.
Social media is still an important factor in growing your business audience and retaining your customer base. However, if you want to really convert people into becoming returning customers time and again, you need e-mail marketing.
Reason 2: It’s Great for B2B Companies
E-mail marketing is a cost-effective strategy that works hand in hand with other marketing strategies such as content marketing and, yes, social media marketing. This is great news for businesses that are more business-to-business (B2B) than they are business-to-consumer (B2C).
Of course, both of these types of businesses can greatly benefit from e-mail marketing! For B2B companies especially it means improving engagement between them and their customer base, which in turns leads to more conversions and more sales earned for their services.
Reason 3: It’s Customizable and Flexible
Not every business is a powerhouse like McDonald’s or Apple. That’s why it’s a good idea to have an e-mail marketing strategy set in place so you can continue to grow your business! Some e-mail service providers (ESPs) offer customization for layouts and designs so that you can create e-mail newsletters that match your brand colours and positioning.
If you’re not sure how to start in terms of getting new e-mails for your campaign, look at it this way. Even if you decide to apply e-mail marketing to your website and your newsletter e-mail list only starts with you and your staff, it’s still a good first step forward to growing your customer base. You can ask customers visiting your physical location if they’d like to sign up. Make sure your staff mentions this whenever a transaction is being completed, or they can offer a survey asking for feedback with a question regarding the newsletter and if they’d like to sign up. This is a friendly and easy way to grow your e-mail list.
Using e-mail with social media marketing is easily done and it’s a testament as to its flexibility. One suggestion to do so is to promote the newsletter on social media using a contest involving signing up for the newsletter, with the prize being discounts or free prizes such as coffee mugs or t-shirts with your business logo. Be sure to follow up with a ‘thank you’ newsletter to those who signed up!
Reason 4: It Brings in Sales
Some campaigns can be used to offer first-time customers a special deal on their first purchase from your business. If the newsletter is designed properly, the people on your list can become returning customers. This in turn means more sales for your business! Discounts, coupons, and the like are all great means of making customers out of your regular visitors.
You can also use your business blog’s content to offer them tips and help related to your industry. This will encourage them to see you as a credible source of information and, if your business is service-based, follow through with making appointments and coming to you for your services.
Reason 5: It Adds an Attractive Feature to Your Website
On top of the most important pages on your website, specifically the about and contact pages, an e-mail newsletter can bring in traffic to these pages on your website as well—so long as you put in the effort to create the newsletter linking to them in the first place.
Pop-ups are one way to get people to notice the newsletter. However, a better and less intrusive means is to offer it in the sidebar of the website or around the footer, with a solid call to action included. That way, the newsletter CTA does not interfere with the site’s overall responsiveness the way a pop-up would.
Of course, with all this said and done, no e-mail marketing campaign—or any marketing campaign, really—will be successful if you don’t have a website for your business in the first place. If a new website is what you need, or you need a site do-over, give our professionals at V3 Media a call. We’ve built beautiful websites from the ground-up for the past 25+ years—adding sign-up forms for e-mail newsletters to websites is just a fraction of what we can do for you! If you’re not sure about e-mail marketing still, or how a website can even help you out, talk to us in a one-on-one consultation. There are no wrong questions to ask us—only unanswered ones!