The advantages of email marketing provides one of the most efficient and cost-effective ways to reach out to your customers and prospects. It’s a great way to keep in touch with your audience, promote new products or services, and drive website traffic. In this article, we’ll take a look at the advantages and disadvantages of email marketing. We’ll highlight some topics in the advantages and disadvantages (below) for getting the most out of your email marketing campaigns.
Advantages of Email Marketing
Check email daily
Most people check their email at least once a day, making it a great way to reach your audience quickly and easily. Leverage this by ensuring your email is sent at optimal times.
Increased conversion rate
Compared to other forms of marketing, email has a higher conversion rate. In fact, some studies have shown that email is up to 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than social media. You can take advantage of this by revisiting your marketing budget and planning accordingly.
More cost effective than traditional marketing
Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective forms of marketing, especially when you consider the return on investment. For every dollar spent on email marketing, you can expect an average ROI (Return on Investment) of approximately $38. Consider the returns on other investments in your advertising budget, and where possible, reallocate funds. This (arguably) is one of the driving advantages of email marketing adoption.
Sales cycle automation
Automating your sales cycle can save you a lot of time and energy. Email marketing makes it easy to send automated messages to your prospects at key points in the buying process. Improve the productivity of your sales and marketing initiatives – Email automation can not only improve time management, but provide a much better financial return! Also, your sales people will thank you for this!
Drives website traffic
One of the best advantages of email marketing is the ways it increase es website traffic. In fact, email is the third most effective means of website traffic, behind search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search. Coordinate the activities of SEO, and online advertising, with email marketing to maximize not only the returns, but also the effectiveness of SEO and paid initiatives.
Easy to manage and track
Email marketing is one of the easiest forms of marketing to manage and track. All you need is a good email marketing software tool, and you can easily see how many people opened your message, clicked on your links, and more. Additionally you can take advantage of this by combining these stats with the analytics of your landing page(s) – Doing so helps you to better focus your email marketing (and overall marketing) for maximum effectiveness!
Increases brand awareness
Email marketing can help increase brand awareness by keeping your name in front of your audience. This is especially useful when you’re building brand awareness. keeping your brand in the mind of your market (and at the right times), enhances not only your visibility, but also your bottom line.
Personalized targeting
In my opinion, this is one of the most effective advantages of email marketing! With email marketing, you can target specific groups of people with personalized messages. This helps to improve the chances that they’ll engage with your message. Think of it this way… A personalized email to specific pre-qualified people is far more effective that traditional advertising (which is far less personal) – And helps to elevate your marketing initiatives above your competitors.
Builds credibility
When you send high-quality content to your audience on a regular basis, you build credibility and trust. You’ll be leveraging your expertise (and demonstrating it) – This increases the positive reaction people have to your offerings, and more often then not, strong credibility leads to stronger sales figures.
Builds relationships
Email marketing is a great way to build relationships with your customers and prospects. You can use it to stay in touch, offer valuable information, and provide customer service. In any marketing campaign (including email) a hard sell is not a long term solution – When you take advantage of building relationships, your customer retention increases, and over the long term that means greater revenue, and happier customers.
Easy outreach
Email marketing makes it easy to reach out to your target audience. You could contact them directly (which is time consuming and short term), or you can use email for long term growth to promote your content and attract new readers. Easier outreach provides you the ability to move faster, and be more flexible (and more personal) than competitors – Take advantage of that!
Boosts sales
Email marketing is a great way to boost sales by promoting your products or services to your audience. Think of it this way… Your sales are boosted because you are getting your message directly in front of the eyeballs of people (who are already interested in what you have to say). Growing a small business is a long term commitment (not a short term sprint), so it helps to leverage initiatives that can continue to boost sales for the foreseeable future.
Builds leads
Email marketing is also a great way to build leads by providing valuable information to potential customers. Email marketing can help hook your lead, better still, if there is an automated sequence that provides value to your leads, at some point they are going to convert to clients – Well orchestrated email campaigns have a habit of doing this.
Disadvantages of Email Marketing
Spam
One of the biggest disadvantages of email marketing is spam. If you’re not careful, your messages can end up in people’s spam folders. To avoid this, make sure to use a good email marketing software / service tool that includes spam filtering.
This is actually a big deal – Make sure your messages are of high quality and follow the “rules” surrounding email (bulk) mailings. Using a bonafide bulk provider will help you be compliant with CAN-SPAM, CASL, GDPR, PECR, and others.
Undelivered messages
Another disadvantage of email marketing is that some of your messages may not be delivered. This can happen for a variety of reasons, including bounced emails and invalid addresses. But… This can help you with ensuring your mailing list is “clean”. Ensure undeliverable email addresses are removed from your lists – Some providers have filters to suppress delivery to email addresses that fail, while others have the option to remove them.
Email size issues
Another issue you may run into with email marketing is email size issues. If your messages are too large, they may not be delivered. To avoid this, make sure to use a good email marketing software / service tool that includes compression features. This is the “theory” of the issue.
In the practical world however, here’s the rub… Your email messages should be to the point, and focused on an objective that provides a win-win for you and the recipient. (This is also a fancy way of saying… Don’t compose long email messages, or include excessively large images in them – Doing so won’t work as well).
Resources and skills
In order to be successful with email marketing, you need to have the resources and skills to create high-quality content. This includes writing compelling copy, designing attractive emails, and tracking results.
In other words, if you don’t have effective skills in some areas, get the assistance of a professional – While there can be an initial (or ongoing) cost, over the long-term the rewards will far outstrip the expenditures. In other words don’t try to do this (if you don’t have the skills) do email marketing right, or not at all.
Excessive promotion
Another potential downside of email marketing is that you may be tempted to promote your products or services too much. This can lead to unsubscribes and complaints. To avoid this, make sure to strike a balance between promoting your content and providing valuable information. Leverage this opportunity.
It’s not about jumping in with guns blazing, in everyone’s face (that’s a major turn off) – Instead, it’s about conducting a streamlined, focused, effective campaign. Your email should take to people as you would, in a professional atmosphere, with consideration and respect.
Conclusion
Email marketing is a great way to build leads by providing valuable information to potential customers. Email marketing can help hook your lead, better still, if there are automated sequences that provide value to your leads, at some point they will convert into clients – Well orchestrated email campaigns have the habit of doing this.
It’s not about jumping in and getting in people’s faces – instead it’s about conducting a streamlined focused and effective campaign that takes people as you would, without being obnoxious or pushy. Your email should take them on an experience where they feel like you’re listening to their needs before asking for anything from them. Make sure when using images in emails don’t include excessively large ones since this won’t work well either.
You can learn much more about email marketing by visiting our Small Business Email Marketing posts.