Businesses today have so many different marketing channels to tap on. Apart from traditional forms of marketing, the landscape has evolved to include new, innovative digital tactics to reach consumers. With the gradual rise of social media marketing, is email marketing still relevant?
Yes, for various reasons.
#1 Cost-Effectiveness
Any savvy business would have jumped onto the social media bandwagon by now – creating an Instagram or Facebook page to engage with customers.
But it can be costly, especially so for small businesses.
It’s tough to have your content seen by customers organically. So to get your content pushed out there, you’ll have to spend money advertising on social media platforms.
But with email marketing, it is relatively inexpensive.
Designing an email is simple and only requires a bit of time to come up with great content. That keeps operational costs low, it can even be done by yourself if you are short on staff. Email marketing platforms such as Mailchimp has free plans that small businesses and start-ups can easily tap on.
And when you consider the return on investment (ROI) of email marketing, it remains as one of the highest among all marketing channels. There’s discrepancy on the average ROI, but most sources agree that it’s effective marketing tool. Some studies are suggesting that for every dollar spent, you get back about $38 in return.
Most estimates hover around that range, while in comparison, marketers expect every dollar spent to yield about $5 in revenue. So email marketing continues to outperform other channels, even in the age of digital marketing today.
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#2 Greater Ownership Over Means Of Communication
The rules on Facebook, Instagram or Google keeps changing. Your team might be working on engaging customers on social media or optimising SEO to appear on Google’s ranks, but there’s no guarantee that these platforms’ algorithm stays the same.
In comparison, email marketing provides a reliable, long-lasting way to connect with customers. Your email list is an asset you own, unlike your brand’s social media accounts that live on a platform. With email, you also get to own and control the content that you distribute.
So as you build your following on Facebook or Instagram, remember that you do not fully own your account or the content you publish. While it can, and should, be used as a marketing channel, it should not be your only platform to communicate with customers. Ideally, your marketing plan should be diverse, and it shouldn’t rely too heavily on just one channel.
#3 Ability For Personalisation And Customisation
For years, marketing has thrived as a one-way street. Billboards and television ads function as a message blast to the mass market, in hope that some of them will hit a target You don’t really get to choose your target audience, nor is it easy to measure the results. It’s a one-size-fits-all message.
With digital marketing, things get easier. You can now select your desired audience and there are so many metrics that can be tracked to analyse results. Most businesses rely on digital marketing to drive sales and growth.
But it doesn’t get as personalised as email marketing.
It can be as simple as using the customer’s name. Or you can leverage the data you have about them such as their gender, location, the last product they bought, to send a personalised message.
Or you can rely on email automation. Which means sending email messages based on specific actions that customers take, according to Mailchimp. Examples of email automation include welcome, birthday and abandoned cart (‘You left this behind in your cart!’) emails.
Such degree of personalisation remains exclusive to email marketing only and helps to grow relationships with your customers.
To maximise results, you can also consider A/B testing, where two email versions are sent out to a small group of recipients to see which performs better in terms of clicks or opens. The better-performing email is then sent to the rest of your subscribers.
Email Marketing (Still) Thrives
Email is not going anywhere for a long while. For small businesses, email marketing can be a cost-effective strategy to reach current and potential customers. If you are looking to dip your feet into email marketing, Mailchimp is a popular email marketing software for businesses.
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) can even get solutions such as Mailchimp at a discounted rate with the Start Digital Pack. With a minimum contract of 18 months, SMEs can have six months free under this scheme. To apply, submit a form to Start Digital Partners such as OCBC, before purchasing the solution.
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