While social media marketing has, in part, overshadowed email marketing in recent years, there are still many reasons why email is an effective and relevant way to reach consumers.
From email’s central role in an overall marketing strategy, through to the benefits of direct access, and an improved demographic scope, email marketing can deliver more personal and higher value promotion.
In this way, email marketing can be used to build a strong relationship with consumers, and can be adapted to suit the demands of multiple media networks, while maintaining a simple and effective identity that can encourage long term use amongst Internet users.
Some of these strengths are expanded on below:
Overall Marketing Power
Email marketing should be thought of as the basis for a number of other marketing schemes. With billions of emails a year, getting to consumers via their email accounts is still one of the most effective ways of starting a campaign.
Users that don’t have social media accounts will most likely still have some form of email, and will often check that email account many more times than they would with a social network page. As a result, email offers a first point of contact with Internet users.
Direct Access
Email also offers advertisers the potential for direct access and immediate results to consumers. An effective email marketing campaign can produce same day results, which can be measured through the use of metrics.
In the same way, email campaigns can deliver rapid feedback on a product or campaign, and can generate same day spikes in sales.
Better Demographic Results
Email marketing is able to be more focused in terms of its mailing lists and consumer databases than other forms of Internet marketing. Having a dedicated pool of users means that it is possible to tailor content for consumers that are willing to remain subscribed to a mailing list.
Differences can also be measured within this audience, with the aim of creating a campaign that responds to feedback and delivers the best products and services for that demographic.
Personal Messages
An effective email marketing campaign can be much more personal than other campaigns. Opt in marketing typically involves users that are willing to maintain a subscription to an emailing list, and will continue to check emails even if they don’t regularly click through them to a webpage.
Being able to add personal messages to these emails will also make it easier to maintain regular updates, and to make a consumer feel engaged with a brand.
Low Cost/High Value
Email marketing campaigns are still one of the most cost effective ways of reaching out to consumers. A mass mailing campaign need not spend a high budget on videos or other content, but can simply contain a link to another site, or a short message.
In the same way, a strong mailing list can be more cost effective to repeatedly target than trying to spend more money on delivering prominent paid content on social networks.
