Why Email Marketing – Infographic
Let’s start with a simple question: how many people you know doesn’t have an email? Chances are the answer is “very little”.
According to Royal Pingdom, there are 2.2 billion email users worldwide. The website also estimated that approximately 144 billion emails were trafficked per day. That’s about 20 times the world’s population. That’s a lot of emails zipping through the Internet, right?!
Email has become a part of our lives and is very much the chosen form of communication for many. This is the reason why email marketing works.
To illustrate today’s discussion, I have specifically asked my talented designer to come up with an infographic titled “Why Email Marketing is important“. This infographic will make understanding the email marketing topic must easy… visually!
Email Marketing and Why It Is Important
Email marketing is a powerful way for businesses to connect with people, allowing your business to send updates and information to your subscribers quickly and easily. Not only is that so but email marketing is also one of the most cost-effective way to stay in touch with your prospects and existing customers. Basically, sending emails is very easy and can be done by anyone!
Why email marketing is important? For most businesses, the key objective of using email as their marketing campaign is to create “brand awareness“. Other major benefits of email marketing include new customer acquisition and customer retention.
When your customers sign up for your newsletter, they expect to receive emails from your business regarding sales or new product release. In return, you get brand recognition and hence, helps promote your business. This will increase your brand and online presence’s reputations.
Let’s look at the benefits of implementing email marketing for your business.
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Increase Sales
Effective email marketing can increase your sales. Many of my clients have reported a jump in sales and profit after they started running email campaigns. In fact, email campaigns has one of the highest ROI among the many marketing methods.
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Builds Brand Awareness
Emails and newsletters let you stay in constant touch with your customers and prospects. By doing so, your brand increases its visibility and your messages get across faster. This is how a company grows and businesses make money!
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Lead Generation
Don’t just email blindly to your whole mailing list every time, this might be costly if you have a huge list and you are emailing too often. First, identify your potential customers by creating an ideal customer profile e.g. in terms of demographic. This helps you to segregate your mailing list and find prospects who are going to be interested in your products or services.
In your newsletter, you can also ask your current customers for referrals. In return, do offer them incentives. Alternatively, you can encourage your customers to share your emails and newsletters.
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Strengthen Customer Relationships
Once you acquire a new customer, you should continue to keep them in touch to retain them and strengthen customer relationships. What is easier than sending them periodic emails and newsletters? You can also request for feedbacks, suggestions or complains. Thank them for the response and act on any issues. Engaging your customers will make them feel appreciated!
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Remind Customers Who You Are
Since emails are easier to create and much cheaper than other forms of marketing, you are able to frequently connect with your customers. This subconsciously reminds your customers of your brand. Over time, it builds loyalty and trust in your brand.
Email Marketing Fun Facts and Statistics
Referring back to our email marketing infographic above, we can see the following fun facts and statistics.
- Email marketing is listed as the most preferred marketing channel for B2B (business-to-business) marketers for many reasons. Some of the reasons include the fact that it is affordable, quick and simple, direct and most importantly, it is measurable.
- According to Direct Marketing Association (DMA), the average ROI in 2011 for email marketing is an amazing $40.56 for every $1 spent!
- Meanwhile, the 2012 Marketing Channel and Engagement Benchmark Survey has found that 63% of its respondents agreed that email delivers the greatest ROI. This is compared to just 10% who supported social media.
- Statistics shows, a good email message has a very successful average delivery rate of 84% and a pretty encouraging 24% chance of being opened.
The Do’s and Don’ts of Email Marketing
There are not many hard and fast rules when it comes to marketing your products and services through emails. It really depends on your type of business and the trial and errors in determining the perfect email. However, there are a few recommended do’s and don’ts of email marketing.
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Do Keep The Subject Line Under 50 Characters
Your subject line is not where you write an essay. It is your first chance to impress upon your subscribers that they should open the email and not delete it. Your subscribers are scanners, meaning that they will quickly browse through the list of senders and subject lines before determining which to open and which to delete. So do keep your subject lines to below 50 characters or risk ending up in the Spam folder.
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Do Include 1 Call to Action
Emails by nature are transactional, meaning that email recipients expect to take action for the emails they receive, whether to reply, forward or click-through. Therefore, businesses should take advantage of this to convert the recipients into customers.
You can do so by including call-to-actions, at least one and not too many that it congests your email. Link this call-to-action to the special promotion that you were talking about or the new product that was recently launched. Remember to link directly to that particular page because not many people will be willing to search your entire website for that specific page.
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Do Stick to 3 Fonts and 4 Colors
To a certain extent, your layout design does have an effect on the success of your email campaign. The style should be simple and has to be consistent throughout the email. Try to stick to 3 types of fonts and 4 types of colors, the most.
Complicated designs are confusing to the recipients and may end up in the trash folder. In addition to that, an email with lots of images and tables may result in the email looking distorted in some email clients.
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Do Send Out On Tues 10am – 1pm
There have been many studies on the best time for an email marketing campaign. Mondays are out because most people are at their busiest. Fridays are not good too because many are preparing for the weekend and wouldn’t pay much attention to your email. Weekends are no-no because most of them are not at their computers. So, that leaves Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.
Most of the studies found that by sending emails on Tuesday between 10am and 1pm, there’s a higher chance of emails being opened and registering a higher click-through rate.
However, having said that, with the increase of Internet-connected mobile devices as well as globalization, people are accessing their emails anytime and anywhere. -
Do Put Your Logo In the Upper Left Corner
Highlight your business at the beginning. Don’t let your recipients go through the entire email trying to figure out who sent the email. You may have your company’s name listed in the sender column but a logo is easier to remember. So, place your logo in the upper left corner of the email. It has been proven that this is where most people are likely to notice first.
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Don’t Have Larger Than 600 Pixel Width
Keep your email to a maximum width of 600 pixels. You see, a typical email window opens up to 540 pixels while preview panes display about 200 pixels. So if your email is within this range, the recipients will see the entire email in their Inbox. If it’s more, your recipients will have to scroll up and down or left and right. This is troublesome for many who just want to speed read through the email. Don’t sabotage your success rate because of a few pixels!
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Don’t Use Spam Words
There is a long list of spam words that you should be aware of in order to avoid the spam folder. Spam-trigger words like “confirm”, “join”, “assistance”, “speaker”, “press”, “social”, “earn money”, “free” and the suspicious “this isn’t spam” should be avoided if possible. Choose your words carefully and you will increase your chance of being delivered to Inboxes.
Email marketing is indeed a priceless application for many businesses. However, this is subject to implementing effective email marketing rather than flooding your subscribers with promotions and newsletters. One of the ways to ensure effective email marketing is to select a reliable bulk email marketing software. One such mass email marketing software is Thunder Mailer.