Even into the 2020s, email marketing continues to be highly effective. The fact of the matter is that emails still make their way into the inboxes of their intended recipients and some of those individuals take action on them. The way people use their emails and the regulations around data handling has indeed changed, but intelligent use of email may still have an important role to play in your digital strategy.
Email marketing
Over recent years, email marketing has proven itself to be synergistic to social media and even search marketing and a strong mailing list should be the source of highly qualified web traffic and new business. What is key is that the list itself is full of high-quality, engaged contacts and that the content of the emails is compelling. Without either of those ingredients, mass mailing can be largely ineffective.
Here’s why email marketing is so powerful:
- Instant boost in awareness or web traffic
- Highly trackable user journeys and ROI
- Stay in contact with your audience regularly
- Provides an easy way for people to refer you to others (by forwarding the email)
- Fast feedback on marketing messages
- Direct people to social content to increase reach
Here’s the thing:
Anyone who tells you email marketing no longer works doesn’t send good emails. The key is in sending emails to an engaged audience and keeping them engaged by adding value to their day – not just selling your wares to them! Millions of marketing emails are sent and opened every day; for decades it has proved to be a great way to keep in touch with and expand your online audience. Even as we move deeper into the 21st century, email marketing remains relevant and should play a role in an all-encompassing strategy.
Email and social media – the perfect blend
In the same way that blogging represents another channel through which you can engage with certain segments of your audience, emails are the preferred method of correspondence for some people. Newsletters are a perfect way to keep people up to date with developments in your business or your sector, to generate clicks to your website, perhaps a new blog or a squeeze page, or even to make people aware of your social media pages.
Here’s the thing:
In all likelihood, your audience will be diverse in how they best engage with a brand, twice-monthly emails might be the perfect medium for some of them whilst others will prefer lots of short and sharp insights over Twitter, for example. Your content should adapt to both the medium through which it is consumed but also the type of consumer using that medium – do they tend to be older than your Twitter followers? Are they more au fait with your business? Will they be more or less receptive to humour or overt selling tactics?
As a specialist social media agency, helping to maximise our clients return on their email marketing simply comes with the territory!
But this is the biggest mistake people make:
Some marketers and business owners confuse cold, mass email marketing with nurturing an engaged mailing list. Building a loyal mailing list that looks forward to receiving your news is the key to generating return from your campaign and that’s exactly what you should be looking for from every piece of marketing activity you undertake.
And this is the best bit:
The proof of effective email marketing campaigns
The beauty of email marketing is that you can see exactly how successful the campaign has been as well as which individual has clicked on certain links and how many times! All of our clients achieve higher than average open and click rates for their industry because we know how to make people open their emails and, most importantly, do something with them!
But I don’t want to come across as needy and spammy! I hate receiving spam – won’t my audience hate me?
Why would they hate you if you’re providing valuable information or things to read that they’ll enjoy? If you’re giving, giving, giving to your audience, it won’t look needy, either. Social Media Examiner’s newsletter goes out to over 400,000 subscribers every single day under the guise of ‘free updates’. But even these guys sell to their audience – they just manage to cram in enough value that people stay tuned – they don’t want to miss anything useful.
You can see the contrast between spammy, sales emails and a useful newsletter or ‘updates’. You need to grab people’s attention and keep them hooked – get them clicking your links and even sharing the newsletters with their contacts. Integrating social media and newsletters with great content is a great way to achieve a number of marketing goals.
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We use specialist email software to deliver and track our campaigns and continually feed back to our clients so we can make each and every campaign bigger and better. We can help advise on email marketing strategy if the client would like to take care of it themselves and also provide solutions to growing your mailing list.
If you’d like to know how we can help you integrate newsletters into your digital strategy, get in touch here.
A brief word on GDPR
Yes, data protection has affected how businesses handle data but it shouldn’t put you off sending emails if you’ve collected email addresses in the right way. The main issue is that the individuals on your mailing list must have given you permission to use their personal data in this way.
It’s also important that you keep those email addresses safe and not disclose them to third-parties beyond your company. If you’re in any doubt, find some reputable sources of information online, but as long as you’ve followed the rules, you’ll be fine.
