why email marketing is important

 Why is email marketing important for e-commerce?

1. Great ROI

Talk about any of the marketing channel and emails stand atop all of them in terms of bringing huge ROIs. As a matter of fact, according to a recent research by Direct Marketing Association emails bring 3800 % ROI – can you beat that?

Why such high numbers? The simple reason behind this figure is that with email marketing you can choose to target a particular segment on your list. The fact of the matter is that you can use emails in quite a number of ways to reach your potential audience. From newsletters and drip emails to abandoned cart reminders and festive discounts – there’s so much that you can do using these emails.

2. It’s Extremely Effective

You want your marketing messages to reach your customers and potential customers. Email is your best bet for that.

The numbers back it up. Email reaches a minimum of 79 percent of the people you send it to, and, according to some research, perhaps even closer to 90 percent. Emails have an average open rate that can touch the mid-30 percent range.

Most important of all, 4.24 percent of visitors from email marketing go on to make a purchase.  That’s nearly double the rate of visitors from search (2.49 percent of whom make a purchase) and more than seven times the rate of visitors from social media (only 0.59 percent of whom buy something).

3. It’s Cost Effective

Email marketing is a relatively cheap marketing solution, especially given its effectiveness. You’ll pay around a penny or less per email sent to your marketing list (for our customers at Jilt, for instance, it can get down to fractions of pennies depending on how many emails you’re sending).Meanwhile, email marketing has the highest ROI of any form of marketing—$44 for every $1 spent.

4. More Conversions

The effectiveness of a marketing channel is measured by the revenue it drives. And, according to Monetate email marketing drives more sales than any other marketing channel. This goes to prove that emails are the best thing for an e-commerce business.

Emails allow you to build a relationship with customers. As your emails are present in a personal space of the customer you can eventually build a connection with them, and gain their trust. And, this trust plays a big role in their purchasing decisions. In fact, if a Nielsen study is to be believed then more than 66% of customers online prefer to buy products from a brand they are already familiar with. Emails provide you this opportunity to become familiar with them!

Now the question is – how can a business make the most of email marketing? After all, if it was just about sending emails then every business would be making money hand over fist.

5. Know Your Customers

Before you interact with your audience using emails, it becomes important to know what their needs are. You can use sources like Google Analytics, Facebook Insights and more to gather information about your audience, and use this information to craft engaging content for your customers.

Information from these sources can play a massive role in creating content for your emails. Based on their interests, demographics and more you can plan your email campaigns and hit the bullseye!

6. Your Customers Actually Want it

If someone signs up for your email list, it’s because they really do want to hear from you. 61 percent of customers say email is their most preferred method of communication from businesses. And more than 90 percent of people say they want to receive promotional emails from companies with whom they do business.

7. It’s Extremely Measurable

Email marketing is an extraordinarily measurable form of marketing. There are stats like open rate, click through rate, and conversion rate to gauge the effectiveness of your email copy and design. Stats like bounce rate, spam complaint rate, and unsubscribe rate give you a clear window into the health of your list. Even stats like email sharing rate and list growth rate can indicate the trajectory of the popularity of your business.

The biggest advantage of being able to track everything is the ability to diagnose where there’s room for improvement. Seeing a low open rate? Work on your subject lines. A low conversion rate? Consider using landing pages to convert clicks into sales. A high unsubscribe rate? Examine your email marketing frequency to make sure you’re not overdoing it.

8. Know Different Types Of Emails

In order to get the best out of your email marketing endeavors, the first thing you ought to do is to become familiar with the different types of emails. We all know about the good old promotional emails, but there are a few other types as well –

-Relationship emails like newsletter, product updates, relevant information and more

-Transactional emails like subscriber signup confirmation, welcome messages, acknowledgments and more

You can send these different types of emails to your customers from time to time to keep reminding them of your presence.

9. Create Powerful Content

Continuing from the last point, it is imperative to create powerful and engaging content for your email to bring desirable results. One of the most important part of the content is the subject line of the email.

Once you have a powerful subject line ready, you can work on the body and call to actions to be used in the email. Focus on creating great content, and you will surely drive great results with your email marketing endeavors. After all, content is the KING!

10. Don’t Forget To Follow Up!

Most important of all, email marketing is not just a onetime game. It is a continuous process in which you have to keep reminding the customers of your presence. You never know when and what might click.

This is the reason that follow up emails become so crucial in email marketing.

Plan a strategy which contains the type of email you are going to send based upon the relationship with the customer – potential or existing. Don’t overdo is otherwise you might end up losing them.

And, that’s about it!

This simple approach can eventually help you achieve great results in your email marketing endeavors. All you need is a little conscious effort, some number crunching to understand your potential customers and sincerity to achieve your goals.

The BIG question is – are you ready to put all these efforts? If yes, then email marketing is the best friend for your eCommerce business. Without giving it a second thought get on with your email marketing endeavors, and let the results flow!