Email newsletters may be viewed as an obsolete marketing tool, but their impact is undeniable: on average, they boast 4,300 per cent ROI – or about $42.08 for every dollar spent, according to a recent Direct Marketing Association report.
Although “social media” is the latest buzzworthy term being tossed around the boardroom, executives shouldn’t neglect the countless benefits of email marketing. These include:
• Increased brand awareness, which then enables trust and consumer loyalty
• Directing consumers to existing web content
• The opportunity to share various pieces information, ranging from new product offerings, event updates, survey data, and more, all in one place
• The ability for readers to share content simply by clicking their inbox’s “forward” button
• Engaging a company’s base of followers, all of whom are potential sales leads
• Data captured by email campaigns can be used to refine messages and target customers on an individualized basis
Perhaps the biggest advantage, though, is the opportunity for companies to increase traffic to their websites. But in order to do so, newsletters need to contain relevant, useful, and topical information.
“If companies are already blogging about industry topics (and they should be), including a roundup to their blog posts can be great, relevant fodder for newsletters – and that way, the newsletter will end up driving traffic back to their websites,” said Ginny Soskey, editor of content at HubSpot. “Talk about a win-win!”
This will become especially pertinent in 2015 and beyond, as e-commerce and one-click purchases increasingly become the financial norm. To capitalize on this trend, it is crucial that subscribers who arrive at a company website are encouraged to take further action.
“Obviously you want to have a blog post created, but you always want to have something on that blog post that drives people to want to engage with you further – a call to action, a form that can be downloaded or a pdf that contains more information,” said Sam Insalaco, digital marketing specialist and owner of theBrewRoom, LLC.
In addition to digital engagement, Epilson recently found that 67 per cent of readers have purchased items in a retail store as the direct result of an email newsletter from a commercial company. Thus, it is clear email marketing is beneficial for many channels, in the digital sphere and beyond.
