Why 95% of Small Businesses Are Using Email Marketing

There has been a lot of technological change over the past few years. This change has brought with it over 40 different marketing categories, from SEO to video marketing. There is now more choice than there ever has been for marketers. It’s easy to understand why a category like Email Marketing might sound a bit dull compared with mobile analytics. You wouldn’t think so if you knew that for every $1 dollar spent on Email Marketing there is an ROI of $35! For most businesses Email Marketing is a crucial part of their digital marketing strategy. Here are the reasons why:

Reach:

The main goal of marketing is good exposure. Good exposure is exposure that leads to action, whether it’s subscribing or buying a product. There are many ways to boost exposure on many different platforms, but the best is an email campaign. There are currently over 3 billion people using emails today and 90% of them check their emails every day! There is no platform that comes even close to that figure. The difference between email and social media is that on social media you present content that people can either read or not and with email you send the content directly to them.

Open Rate and Analytics:

Through analytics you’ll be able to use key information to make strategic decisions. Email Marketing analytics includes stats on the click through rate, conversion rate, bounce rate, list growth rate, sharing rate and ROI. In addition to these metrics, another important one is the open rate. You will be able to see a percentage of how many people on your database opened your emails. Open rates are important because it’s possible to monitor if the subject line (which is what people see first) is effective.  

Where to Push a Brand:

Most people are used to getting messages from businesses on their email and not on social media. Concentrating your effort on social media has an inherent flaw. It is a social platform. Most people use these channels to interact with other people and not with products. People are likely to feel annoyed and not click on the advertisements. Studies show that over 70% of people prefer to get promotional content via email compared with 15% on social media! Email, on the other hand, is a place where business content is usually received without much irritation. And, software like MailerLite can let you send customized and targeted emails without much effort.That’s not to say that social media advertising is not important. It just means that it needs to be more strategic than when you send content by email.

Invest in the Long-run:

There are platforms that lots of resources are invested in, to get an audience, only to crumble years later because of market shocks. Email, unlike other platforms has been very stable. It has seen sustained growth for decades and there are no competitors. In the past you needed a developer to customize and change email templates. But now you can use highly advanced cloud-based software like ActiveTrail to design and lead email campaigns. Since email is the most stable database platform out there, it is a good idea to be investing in it.

ROI:

In case you missed the stat I mentioned above, Email Marketing yields approximately 3,500% for every dollar spent on it. In other words you’re getting $35 for every $1 spent. I suppose the question is why does Email Marketing generate the highest ROI out of every other marketing channel? Well, the kind of tools that software like MailChimp and SalesForce offer lets you customize your email according to the person’s past purchase history and details. The emails become more personal and targeted. This is leads to far more action than a standard post that everyone sees on Facebook or Twitter.

Marketing Automation:

Marketing automation is a difficult concept to explain. Imagine in the beginning of your business you have one-on-one relationships with all your clients, but as your business grows it becomes harder to maintain them. The processes such as customer segmentation, customer data integration and campaign management along with others were easy in the beginning but are now unmanageable. Marketing automation is a system that streamlines all of these functions on a large scale. It has become so necessary that Over 75% of successful companies are using Marketing Automation. Marketing Automation is not something small businesses need to implement, but as your business grows it’s something you need to consider.

There are many useful marketing channels and techniques that can be used. The one that has been and still remains to be the champion, despite what people might think, is Email Marketing. Considering the reasons above it’s obvious to see why. Systems like ActiveTrail are transforming email into a more detailed arena where strategic decision are made.

*Have a look here for more reading on email marketing.

About the author: Godrume Kriel is the Content Marketing Manager for DiscoverCloud and has contributed to sites such as GeekTime and actively contributes to DiscoverCloud’s blog. He is interested in Digital media with a strong focus on the SaaS-related industry. You can contact Godrume on LinkedIn.