Don’t listen to anyone who says that E-Mail marketing is dead! DMA Insight says that 99% of us check our e-mails every day, and in fact the typical person checks his/her e-mail 20 times every day. In addition, we send more than 78 TRILLION e-mails every year, and that number keeps getting bigger every year.
What is fascinating is that when the only way to get e-mail was on your desktop computer, people did what they could to check it periodically. But now that e-mail is readily available 24/7 on your smartphone, people have actually expanded their use of e-mail.
So How Do You Win the E-Mail Marketing Game?
Winning this game comes with huge benefits. According to E-Marketer, the median ROI of e-mail marketing is four times greater than any other digital marketing channel.
I can tell you from my own experience that we’ve helped clients generate ROIs of more than 10:1 utilizing the proper e-mail strategies and tactics…meaning that for every dollar they spent on e-mail marketing, they’re getting $10 of revenue in return!
Truth is…there is much to say on this topic, but to give you some of the highlights, let’s break it down into three core themes…I’ll call them the “Big 3 Cs” of e-mail marketing:
- Capture
- Content
- Cadence
Do these three well and you’ll be off to a good start!
Strategy #1
Capture (Their E-Mail Address)
Whatever business you’re in, if you capture someone’s e-mail address, you’ve now opened a direct “conduit” to inform, entertain, and incentivize potential new or existing customers, and build a long term relationship with them.
So how do you do this? I tell clients that they have to put themselves in the customer’s shoes…the customer who you’re asking to provide an e-mail address. You need to answer the customer’s burning question… “What’s in this for ME”? If you want to get something from him/her, you need to provide them a reasonable and potent “value exchange”.
Offer up powerful sign up incentives, the promise of ongoing discount offers, “be the first to know”, special ‘members only’ content, tools and games, exclusive member benefits, etc., and therefore make it compelling enough for them to want to give you their e-mail address; and even better yet, their mobile number!
We’ve helped companies grow their e-mail databases from 100,000 to a few million households in short order. And the incremental revenue generated from such list growth ran into the tens of millions of dollars. This can be very powerful for anyone’s bottom line!
Strategy #2
Content
It goes without saying that any e-mail you send must contain great content…relevant articles, tips, recipes, games, videos, cutting edge thought leadership in the business category you compete in, seasonally relevant information, etc.
And over time, you can really succeed by using e-mail marketing campaigns to tell your customers about your new products, cross sell them your existing products, educate them about the category you’re in, give them trade show previews, and highlight special discount offers…holiday oriented, or as appropriate.
Finally, if you can personalize the-mails to match the customer’s specific need, this takes the quality of your newsletter up another notch. This is especially powerful if your target is millennials.
Strategy #3
Cadence
The rule of “the more the merrier” does not typically apply to the world of e-mail marketing. You want to provide good content periodically, but you don’t want to make the recipient crazy with multiple e-mails every day. So how often should you be sending your e-mails?
The key to succeeding in the cadence aspect of e-mail marketing is to insure that your e-mails are a positive information source, not an “inbox annoyance”. While it really depends on which industry you’re in, if you’re providing positive information, a monthly newsletter would certainly not be going overboard.
I recently subscribed to a financial newsletter. Little did I know that I would be bombarded with 3 or 4 e-mails per day…most of which were just blatant sales oriented e-mails trying to sell me other more expensive newsletters. That’s a great example of “inbox annoyance”.
The Bottom Line
E-mail is not dead at all. In fact, it’s very well, alive, and still very profitable…and it is here to stay! Will you capitalize on it in a positive way?
