If you have your own business or side-hustle, you’ve most likely had to think about a marketing strategy. But marketing is not a simple, set-and-forget process. There are a myriad of marketing channels that form an overall marketing plan, and they never stay the same. It can certainly become overwhelming.
There is one marketing medium that has stood the test of time and maintained its claims to fame. Email marketing still hits it out of the park when it comes to reach, engagement & conversions. Countless surveys tell us that email marketing is still the most effective marketing tool, even more than social media marketing. It can be one of the most cost-effective digital marketing strategies with one of the highest ROIs.
Read on to learn the top 3 reasons why we think email marketing is here to stay, and how you can use it to boost the success of your digital marketing strategy.
As marketers, we’re constantly bombarded with stats about the growing audience of social media. But it may surprise you to know that email actually has a much larger userbase than any social media platform. A quick google search tells us that email has over 4 billion users worldwide in 2021. Compare this to 2.9 billion facebook users worldwide.
Makes sense, right? Because we all have an email address. When you’re shopping online, you need an email to be able to buy anything. You also need an email address to create a Facebook or Instagram account. Email is your passport for the internet, and anybody who’s active online has one. So you actually have a much bigger audience to capitalise on when you focus on email marketing.
How you can leverage this:
Of course, the success of your email marketing efforts depends largely on your mailing list. The best way to build your list is organically. Add potential leads to your mailing list when they contact you via your website. Import existing customers by downloading contacts from your invoicing program. Invite your social followers and website visitors with a link. You can also use automation tools such as Zapier to automatically add leads and customers to your mailing list when they fill in a form on your website, receive an invoice from you, or follow you on social media.
If you’re active on socials, you may have seen a post or two bemoaning the dreaded Algorithm ????. Basically, social media content is filtered to reach only certain people in your audience, based on a lot of factors that can be out of your control. The worldwide average organic reach of Facebook posts vs the number of page likes was only 5.2% in 20211. On the other hand, email has a very high deliverability rate. As of October 2021, the average email deliverability rate was 85.3% across various email marketing platforms tested2. In a nutshell, more of your email audience are actually seeing your content than your social media audience.
How you can leverage this:
Maintain that list! List quality is important, keep it neat and tidy. Watch your bounce backs. If you know someone has recently updated their email, go in an update it. You can also segment your audience by existing customers, leads, etc. Keeping the details of your list up to date also ensures you remain a trusted sender, and you can make a conscious effort to only send content relevant to them.
Let’s be honest, this is what it’s all about. Turning leads into paying customers. And it starts with a click. Your email audience has typically actively subscribed to your marketing messages or enquired directly about your products or services. They are much more receptive to clicking your email links. This isn’t usually the case with social. They may follow you, but they didn’t sign up for your ads or to be marketed to. Those who enquire about your services are leads, they want to learn more about what you sell! So show them what you’ve got!
Lets take another look at the cold, hard statistics; the average click-through rate of an email campaign is around 3%3 of recipients, by comparison the average click through rate of Facebook ads across all industries is 0.9%4. Stats don’t lie!
How you can leverage this:
There is no substitute for providing quality content. Delivering interesting and relevant messages that fulfil the needs of and offer value to your audience will always get you clicks. And say it with me, no spamming! It is so important to send an appropriate number of emails and not always be bombarding people with too much information. The only thing they’ll be clicking on is unsubscribe and that’s the last thing you want.
If you really want to connect with your customers, email can be a major game changer. While on social media you need to engage people first before they can become customers, email marketing has the potential to convert leads to sales in one fell swoop. But of course, the two work even better when used in conjunction with each other.
So we can all agree that email has an important place in your marketing strategy. The only problem is, who has time to devise and execute a targeted email marketing campaign? If you really want to capitalise on email marketing, we can help! We’re experts in social media and email marketing.
Give us a call to talk about taking your business to the next level on 03 5222 3328 or send us an email at hello@evolutiondesign.com.au to organise a meeting to discuss your next move.
