Boring emails straight to your spam folder? We say: no more. Social media is a great way to attract consumers, obviously. But, did you know that email marketing is still one of the most effective marketing tools to reach your costumers? 59% claims email marketing influences their purchase decisions. Compared to the 16,9% social ad revenue, that’s a lot! It is a booming business. Meaning: you should still invest in email marketing. Maybe now even more than ever.
What is email marketing?
Email marketing is all about using email as a marketing tool to reach consumers and promote products or services. You can send newsletters, recommend products for specific clients, coupons and discounts, relevant news and all sorts of great content (video, photo, text, buttons). Everything except order confirmations and responses to customer questions is email marketing.
Email marketing allows you to reach a large audience in a highly personalized way while staying on budget. Another great benefit is that you have complete ownership over your data. Compared to other social media – who work with their own algorithm – email is all yours!
With new developments in Artificial Intelligence and Data Analysis, you can use AI technology in email marketing. For example, you could use automated email subject lines. But AI can also analyze data and as a result, the algorithm figures out what type of content and copy are most effective for your audience. Put an end to boring standard emails and look at it from a brighter side and see email marketing for what it is – an interesting tool that keeps evolving.
Where do newsletters stand on the Content Marketing spectrum?
When creating a tailor-made communication strategy for a brand, we define formats and ideas around the hero hub hygiene strategy to guarantee continuity. Newsletters can help support the context you’ve created for all three of your content layers. In a way, you could say it is an always-on medium that lies within the hygiene-approach.
Hygiene is the ‘always on’ strategy. A continuous effort to keep your brand top of mind within your target group based on relevant and inspiring content. Want to know more about the hygiene-hub-hero content strategy? Read all about it here.
For example, The New York Times keeps their subscribers engaged by giving them a weekend preview – all the latest headlines nicely listed for you in short snackable paragraphs.
Let’s summarize the top 6 reasons why you should keep investing in email marketing:
1. It’s an essential tool for attracting and retaining customers
Customer Relationship Management retains customers and keeps them satisfied even after the purchase. The power of after-sale service is often underestimated. Nevertheless, it’s important to keep investing in your clients. It’s a great way to encourage them to repurchase a product or service or to recommend it to their friends. You can easily follow up with your customers through email and keep your brand top-of-mind.
Take the Ikea Family newsletter, for example. It gives you a product overview, IKEA Family activities, events, workshops and exclusive promotions. IKEA is more than just a furniture store, it turns shopping into an experience that goes on long after your purchase. It becomes a small part of your life and their newsletter keeps this experience going.
2. No matter what age – email remains a great way to reach your audience
82% of Belgians have email on one device or the other. This means that every company or brand can invest in it because you can reach practically every target audience from 18 – 65+ years old.
Let’s take a look at BILL, a youth brand that promotes culture for youngsters between 16 and 26. Their newsletter is all about new videos and articles full of tips, competitions and fresh calendar items.
3. Email has a higher engagement rate than social media & is low-cost
The high engagement rate in combination with the low cost makes email marketing a great way to spice up your content strategy. The average email open rate for all industries is 21.33%. This means that 21,33% of your audience opens the emails you send them. A higher open rate means your audience really resonates with the subject lines.
You can improve the open rate by targeting your audience into more specific groups, improving your subject lines (personalization!) and sending more or fewer campaigns. Don’t overwhelm your audience, but be there when they need it, right before they realise they need you.
Emails with one clear call-to-action increase sales by 1617%. Like we did for our webinar with Duval Union. The message? Join our webinar on influencer marketing.
4. It’s the perfect medium for personalization
We don’t mean the typical ‘hello, insert name’ types of personalization or the ‘hello x it’s Linda from…’. We are talking about real personalized content that triggers consumers.
The key is to have a lot of data at your disposal, so you can segment your target group but also the extra mile by segmenting your content. This means you can target a specific group. For instance, men. But within this group, you can segment deeper and target men that like specific products, preferences and buyer behaviour. The ROI of personalized messages is 122%.
A great example is BuzzFeed because there’s something for everyone:
5. It’s future proof – through AI & email marketing automation
Remember the part about the importance of personalisation? Well, these tools will help you out! Artificial Intelligence and email marketing automation are the best solutions when it comes to managing your email marketing in 2021. With AI and automation, you can personalize one on one, which prevents you from sending spam and unwanted emails.
A lot may change technology-wise, but the basics are still the same: communicate the right message to the right person at the right time. And technology, in this case, helps you do that.
What can AI do? AI-powered tools are being used today by brands to:
- Write email subject lines
- Personalize copy at the individual level
- Optimize send times
- Clean up email lists
- Automatically create email newsletters
6. Technology makes it extremely easy
You don’t need to be a developer to send out amazing emails. Marketing automation tools like Hubspot make it really easy to set up header flows or automate welcome emails to new subscribers immediately after they sign up. In addition to automated messages, you can set up a creative campaign in no time using the right tools. The world of email marketing lies in your hands!
Email is here to stay! On that note we’d like to conclude this article with 5 tips for powerful email marketing:
- Test, test, test and test again!
- Be relevant for your customer in your email content
- Make your design attractive & mobile-first
- Make it as personal as possible
- Analyse and use your insights from your data
If you’ve been ignoring email marketing, it’s time to reevaluate your strategy. MMBSY gladly help you define your goals and strategy. Need help developing and executing an entire newsletter flow? We’ll create email magic for you! Check out our website and contact us for a free intake meeting.
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MMBSY is a full-service PR & Content Marketing Agency. Buzzing with lifestyle brands, powerful connections, creative craftsmanship and fiery business brainery.
