A report published in February commissioned by the DMA (Direct Marketing Association) and Alchemy Worx (a top London email agency) showed that blue-chip company marketers are planning on increasing their email marketing budgets in 2014 as return-on-investment (ROI) hits an incredible 2,500%. The report says that this has come from more targeted campaigns, a switch in focus from open & click rates to ROI, and integration with other channels.
In short, companies are understanding the true value of email marketing, which is why your business should too. Here are 5 reasons why you should consider carrying out email marketing:
1. Email is cost effective. It may cost to get an email designed and built, but once you have this valuable asset, consider that you are then able to very easily send your message to huge volumes of people, at as little cost as 0.005p per mail. And according to the report, for every £1 spent, companies see £24.93 in return, 77% of which come from segmented, targeted and triggered campaigns.
2. The best data is often the cheapest. By data, I mean email addresses of recipients to which you will send the email to. The cheapest data is free to you – it comes from someone signing up for an email on your site. And this person is likely to be the most engaged of recipients, because they’ve willingly requested that you contact them. This in the industry is called ‘owned media’. On the other end of the scale, the most expensive data is bought from a list broker, sometimes called ‘bought media’. If the broker is legitimate, they will have obtained the names from lists of people who have ticked to ‘receive related 3rd party emails’. This means that whilst they comply with data protection rules, these people are cold to your company, so your email will have to work very hard to warm up these prospective customers. The very worst data comes from ‘scrapping’ which means that an automated system has illicitly taken email addresses from sources available on the web. And this type of data could come at the biggest cost of all, as this is illegal. Read more on the Data Protection Act rules here.
3. Creating emails is getting easier. Traditionally emails are conceived by a designer, then coded by a developer, which takes time and money, and reduces your control. But if you’re willing to be a little restricted in layout and design, they latest deployment systems available mean you can do away with this traditional route, and create templates yourself. And the great news is that these templates are often “responsive” – adapting to different tablets or smartphones, which means they look cutting edge and will perform better.
4. You can personalise, segment & target audiences. What other marketing techniques are there that can adapt to each individual customer with the most relevant information for them? To begin with you can pull in dynamic fields from your data lists so that the email brings in the recipient's details. This helps customers to feel it’s more relevant to them. Good data will also allow you to target based on information you’ve obtained about your audience – age, demographics or purchase propensity, for instance. Then you can create unique messages that appeal to each of these target audiences, i.e. cross-sell products they may like based on previous purchase, feed up articles of interest based on their preferences or deliver gift ideas based on their demographics/lifestyle. The report shows 60% of email revenue came from segmented emails in 2013.
5. You can create a lifelong relationship with your customers. Emails don’t have to just be about the hard-sell. They can be used to create a dialogue with your potential customer that works to improve engagement with your brand and over time, eventually creating a life-long advocate. The report shows that the 2nd best performing email in 2013 was ‘welcome’ mails, and ‘survey’ mails coming in third. To create the best relationship, consider how you would treat a customer in real life. Welcome them to the company as soon as they arrive, reward them for showing interest by offering exclusives and special offers, give them the information they really want to hear about at the right time and reward them for staying with you.
This blog was written by Lydia Walker, who has over 12 years’ experience creating CRM campaigns for companies such as Disney, Panasonic and Microsoft. For more information on email marketing for small businesses, get in touch for a free chat to see if we can help you.
Sources:
http://dma.org.uk/toolkit/infographic-national-client-email-report-2014http://ico.org.uk/for_organisations/sector_guides/marketing
In short, companies are understanding the true value of email marketing, which is why your business should too. Here are 5 reasons why you should consider carrying out email marketing:
1. Email is cost effective. It may cost to get an email designed and built, but once you have this valuable asset, consider that you are then able to very easily send your message to huge volumes of people, at as little cost as 0.005p per mail. And according to the report, for every £1 spent, companies see £24.93 in return, 77% of which come from segmented, targeted and triggered campaigns.
2. The best data is often the cheapest. By data, I mean email addresses of recipients to which you will send the email to. The cheapest data is free to you – it comes from someone signing up for an email on your site. And this person is likely to be the most engaged of recipients, because they’ve willingly requested that you contact them. This in the industry is called ‘owned media’. On the other end of the scale, the most expensive data is bought from a list broker, sometimes called ‘bought media’. If the broker is legitimate, they will have obtained the names from lists of people who have ticked to ‘receive related 3rd party emails’. This means that whilst they comply with data protection rules, these people are cold to your company, so your email will have to work very hard to warm up these prospective customers. The very worst data comes from ‘scrapping’ which means that an automated system has illicitly taken email addresses from sources available on the web. And this type of data could come at the biggest cost of all, as this is illegal. Read more on the Data Protection Act rules here.
3. Creating emails is getting easier. Traditionally emails are conceived by a designer, then coded by a developer, which takes time and money, and reduces your control. But if you’re willing to be a little restricted in layout and design, they latest deployment systems available mean you can do away with this traditional route, and create templates yourself. And the great news is that these templates are often “responsive” – adapting to different tablets or smartphones, which means they look cutting edge and will perform better.
4. You can personalise, segment & target audiences. What other marketing techniques are there that can adapt to each individual customer with the most relevant information for them? To begin with you can pull in dynamic fields from your data lists so that the email brings in the recipient's details. This helps customers to feel it’s more relevant to them. Good data will also allow you to target based on information you’ve obtained about your audience – age, demographics or purchase propensity, for instance. Then you can create unique messages that appeal to each of these target audiences, i.e. cross-sell products they may like based on previous purchase, feed up articles of interest based on their preferences or deliver gift ideas based on their demographics/lifestyle. The report shows 60% of email revenue came from segmented emails in 2013.
5. You can create a lifelong relationship with your customers. Emails don’t have to just be about the hard-sell. They can be used to create a dialogue with your potential customer that works to improve engagement with your brand and over time, eventually creating a life-long advocate. The report shows that the 2nd best performing email in 2013 was ‘welcome’ mails, and ‘survey’ mails coming in third. To create the best relationship, consider how you would treat a customer in real life. Welcome them to the company as soon as they arrive, reward them for showing interest by offering exclusives and special offers, give them the information they really want to hear about at the right time and reward them for staying with you.
This blog was written by Lydia Walker, who has over 12 years’ experience creating CRM campaigns for companies such as Disney, Panasonic and Microsoft. For more information on email marketing for small businesses, get in touch for a free chat to see if we can help you.
Sources:
http://dma.org.uk/toolkit/infographic-national-client-email-report-2014http://ico.org.uk/for_organisations/sector_guides/marketing
