Is Email Marketing still good for your business?

Imagine a family where the elder brother plays his duty efficiently for the family for all these while. But, suddenly his dominance is questioned. The family has a new hero. His younger brother with certain skill and charisma is now people’s favorite.

Confused?

Now think Email Marketing as older brother and social media as junior one and the present Email Marketing scenario will before your eyes.

After serving the worldwide digital business domain in last two decades, Email Marketing has become the victim of doubt. Will it help my business? Why should we use Email Marketing when we have better toolchannel? People are asking all these questions all of a sudden.

Better tool? Are you serious? What can be a better tool than a newsletter or a HTML mail? Email marketing loyalists were in shock till they use the Social Media platform.

A Facebook page to promote, a twitter button to sell – the mad rush begins in the virtual world with business possibilities in social media.

It leads to the inevitable question. Is Email Marketing still good for business?

Before finding the answer, let us know what is Email Marketing?

What is Email Marketing?

According to the Wikipedia…

Email marketing is directly marketing a commercial message to a group of people using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. It usually involves using email to send ads, request business, or solicit sales or donations, and is meant to build loyalty, trust, or brand awareness. Email marketing can be done to either sold lists or a current customer database.

If generalize, the “Email Marketing” is an effective tool to draw business through sending mails.

Show me example:

Email Marketing is best showcased in e-commerce. E-commerce tycoon Amazon is the best instance:-

• A report highlights Amazon has sent more than 200 million welcome emails.
• Amazon tracks the behaviors of their customers and sends mails to lure them with new offers, discounts.
• Be it the “Thank You Mail” ,or “Welcome Mail” or even going to the extent of “Can we help you finish the purchase” (when somebody drops out after adding to the shopping cart), Amazon is trying and testing every method in Email Marketing.

Now the question if Email Marketing is so effective, why there is doubt? 

Valid question and the reason is-

The omnipresence of social media platform, its easy reach and wide access.

Imagine you can do business in your Facebook or twitter accounts, will you then want to write and send scores of mails to your potential customers.

Let’s begin the number game:

• There are 3 billion active Internet users.
• Among them 2.1 billion people have social media accounts.
• 7 billion People have active social media accounts.

Another update reports “As of the start of 2016, Facebook has 1.59 billion active users per month. That’s over 20% of the global population”

The reported statistics show how fierce social media are as competitor of Email Marketing. But the smart guys are sticking to Email Marketing with tad changes in usage.

That means Email Marketing is evolving. Great news. But how? What are the ways through which Email Marketing can benefit me and my business?

Before that, we need to understand the core of the Email Marketing.

 Email Marketing Basic Advantages: Email Marketing wins trust for user friendly features.

1. Easy to share and track.
2. Multiple options to convince customers.
3. Targeted Customers.
4. Information Spreading.
5. Conversion from visitors to leads.
6. Email Marketing has still high ROI (Return of Investment) ratio.

Email marketing not only scores on these points but have certain advantages over Social Media.

Email Marketing vs Social Media

Email marketing is personal promotional tool. It is highly instrumental to build up a strong business relationship between sender and receiver.

In contrast Social media is cluttered with multiple posts on timeline. One will face huge competition to send message at destination here.

Email Marketing is direct. It has no veil. The content carries the business goal and receiver is ready to accept it.

People in general come to Social Media to chat with friends, have a trip in virtual updates. Business for most of users is here secondary. Therefore, the content needs subtle camouflage. In result the campaign can be a chase for wild goose. 

Incidentally, Email has been able to pass the test of time. Whereas Social Media platform has seen drastic changes. Old players like Orkut, Myspace took back seat. New ones emerged. And the cycle is still rotating. 

Now the question is what’s the way out? The way out is old trait of human existence.

Change and Adaptability.

 In last two or three years digital marketing has changed. So does Email Marketing.

 Decoding the Email Marketing Evolution:

The thumb rule of survival is easy. One needs to evolve. Email Marketing has done that with grace. Email marketing fans have eked out new features. Scroll down to explore…

Give your Email Automation advantage:

Email marketing automation means placing the mail at a certain place which will be available to the visitors after a certain action. Receiving a newsletter after buying a product is example of automation. It depends on how the service provider wants to engage its consumers.

The benefits of Email Marketing Automation is…

• Message is targeted and henceforth chances of conversion is high.
• It will be delivered to the right people at the right place at the right time.
• Automation messages are various. Engage new customers with “Welcome Mail”, retain old ones by “Thank You Mail” and draw new ones with “Promotional Mails”.

Select your Email visitors through Segmentation:

 Email Marketing Segmentation is the new favorite tool of users. Through this one can-

Know and fix the target audience. And attach a certain personal tone to the mails.The segmentation can be differentiated on:

• Segment by sign-up date.
• Demography
• Behavior of the customers
• Interest groups
• Subscribers Activity Reports

Segments assures higher rate of engagement. Because the mails are not only sent to the targeted audience but the targeted audiences have been segmented after a research.

 Make your Email Marketing Mobile:

Sticking at desktop for Email Marketing is a serious suicide. Most people now access to their mails from mobile. Why not expand reach through mobile.But considering the serious competition one needs to keep few things in mind. These are-

Text should be catchy and short. It needs to arrest people’s attention quickly. Templates will be mobile optimized.

Benefits of Mobile Email Marketing is higher engagement as it…

• It focuses on the target market and brings better result.
• CRM rate or the Customer Relationship Management is quick.

Embrace Social Media for better Email Marketing:

Intelligent people will never draw a fight between Email Marketing and Social Media but will find a peaceful union. And trust us, it’s the best revolution of Email Marketing. Just link up your email campaign with social media. Result is maximum growth.

There is an array of process to make the task feasible. But, here we will just contain ourselves to generic tricks which can trigger a massive responses.

To initiate a perfect email marketing and social media conjugation, one needs to-

• End the void between Email Marketing and Social Media. Integrate social media page in such way that one can find your mail ID everywhere, be it Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

• Use social media for promotion. Make a time for posting your new promotion or discounts in social media platforms. So, if your newsletter is about your new product, why not promote it in twitter or Facebook with a real life picture or few details.

Email Marketing will never be irrelevant. It is here to stay. But, it will definitely be evolved through customers and market change. So, those who are ready to adopt and are flexible will continue to get benefits.

What’s your thought on Email Marketing’s new appearance? Do you think Email Marketing be always in your favor? Will you keep your bond with Email Marketing? Tell us, the MailChimp expert.