EMAIL MARKETING, A CATALYST TO GROW YOUR BUSINESS

“Ignoring marketing is like opening a business but not telling anyone”

KB McKinsey

I can imagine what it’s like having what to sell and not having who to sell to. As a new business owner, this challenge poses lots of threats to the survival of your business. This is because you’re swamped with strategies to push your brand and have a considerable client base. Of course, getting prospects is complicated because of its demands – planning, test-running, and getting to know what works for your brand. As tough as this sounds for marketers and business owners, it’s still one of the effective ways of taking your products and services to prospects.

If the right foot goes in first, it’s an essential factor or strategy necessary for every brand or business to generate more leads and ultimately sales. The sole aim of every business or brand is to generate sales and convert as many customers as possible, and this is why knowing who your target audience is and what they want is essential.

Research shows that conglomerates and brands that make more sales, generate more leads have always tapped into viable strategies that convert customers without much persuasion or stress. It involves promoting products or services through advertisement and other methods, ultimately stimulating a target or potential audience to purchase certain goods and services.

Every brand intending to make significant sales must never underrate marketing.

No wonder, Steve Tobak said, ” Marketing is like sex: everyone thinks they’re good at it.”

As simple as it sounds, marketing appears very complex.

There are different types of marketing:

• Keyword Marketing
• Green marketing
• Viral marketing
• Digital marketing
• Social media marketing
• Affiliate marketing
• Email marketing

All these can be carried out online or offline with different approaches that may need the help of experienced digital marketers. However, one of the most converting lead/sales generation marketing methods is email marketing.

WHAT IS EMAIL MARKETING?

Email Marketing is a form of digital marketing that employs electronic mail to promote, advertise, or persuade an audience to purchase certain products or services or generate sales and leads. In a layman’s language, it is the act of sending messages to a specific group of people or audience through email. These emails are often sent to announce an offer or make the receivers buy a particular product or a service.  

It is a common strategy employed by brands and businesses to generate leads, brand awareness, promote customer relationships, solidify trust, skyrocket sales, and purchase goods and services. It is used to convert new audiences and make old customers purchase services again.

TYPES OF EMAIL MARKETING

There are several types of email marketing, but the most common are;

1. Email Newsletters

One of the known and most common types of email marketing involves sending a newsletter or engaging content to an audience or customers to enlighten them about existing or new services/ products. It also deals with building relationships with customers and generating responses.

2. Acquisition Emails

Small and medium-sized companies commonly use it. It is a mail sent with the sole purpose of converting new customers or cold audiences who have opted to receive your emails but have not been convinced about your services yet. It involves sending eye-catching content and mouth-watering offers to your email list.

3.  Retention Emails

It involves a bit of experience in email marketing campaigns which involves sending emails to subscribers as an overall strategy that converts and keeps customers around your business. No business wants to go into extinction, so this is a way to let them know you still have them in your business plans to keep serving them better. This way, they feel that you care about their welfare, and it registers your business in their heads.

4. Promotional Emails

This type of email marketing generates sales, leads, signups, and it helps you record a high conversion rate for your small business or medium-sized if you do it well. It involves sending persuasive email content to your audience to purchase a new or existing product and service. The unique features, exclusive offers, guarantees are well delineated in the mail. You don’t want to overpromise them in this mail because your integrity is on the line, so the best thing to do is under promise them and give them the discount you promised if any. The whole idea is, never promise what you won’t do, especially for this kind of email.

5. Thank-You Email

It is not commonly used, but research shows it brings about a little conversion rate. Good customer service is a catalyst for every business; the mail contains appreciative letters to patronizing customers and others coming with future patronage. It may include a gift or token like; discount on the next purchase and others. Such mail makes customers feel satisfied for appreciating them for their patronage; they tend to purchase again. Remember, everyone wants to feel like a king, so give them that feeling in your emails, and you can only experience an increase in your sales record.

How to get an email list (tips to note)

After an overview of email marketing, questions about how to get your email list must have come to your mind. Wouldn’t it sound frustrating when you have your well-curated mail content without having any audience to forward it to?

These are some tips on how to get your email list;

1. Use of Form

It is one of the easiest ways to collect the email address of your potential customers. After each transaction, roll out forms to fill in their information, which will include their email addresses; collect their email address and add them to your email list.

2. Leverage Social Media

Social media platforms are one of the best ways to get as many email addresses as possible for your business. You can open a page for your brand where you create contents that introduce and desirably place your brand, ask people to check out some of your product, and make them supply their information. You could consider Facebook and Instagram as some of the best platforms you can leverage on this.

3. Referral

The referral method is one of the most reliable but expensive methods of generating more addresses to your list. You can host a referral competition with an excellent price to be won. Ask interested participants to invite their friends, families to signup for your email list before their participation becomes valid.

4. Buy Email List

As weird as it seems, some people specialize in gathering email addresses from many people in different locations or niches. You can approach an email list vendor and purchase an email list; it alleviates the stress of gathering an email list. Though, this method is often regarded as illegal because the consent of the people receiving the mail may not be sought.

5. Lead Generation

This method is most effective when you have a website for your brand. You use a lead magnet, Call-To-Action, and other engaging and persuasive methods to persuade customers or website visitors to drop their email addresses before leaving your page or website. You could do this through the pop-up feature on your website that asks them to subscribe to your newsletter and upcoming offers.

ADVANTAGES OF EMAIL MARKETING

•Brand Recognition

Most of the recognizable conglomerates and brands today have consistently used email marketing to create awareness for their brands and have the edge over their competitors. If an email content is brilliantly curated, it creates uniqueness for your business; potential, existing, or new customers have a reason to choose you over your fellow competitors. It develops and grows your brand identity, even customers who don’t need your services can recommend you to their close ones and associates.

• Boost sales

Research from Marketing Week shows that email marketing generates approximately $37B sales annually. A study conducted reveals that 60% of marketers’ most significant source of revenue comes from email marketing. It provides an opportunity for impulse buying, an excellent marketing tool that improves sales by enticing, persuading, and converting audience and customers in a brief period to make a purchase.

•  Improves Customer Communication

Communication between brands and customers is crucial; it brings about a sense of loyalty to your brand. Email marketing has made communication between brands, customers, and audiences easier. Customers will always put your brands at heart if they need services that you can provide because after they patronize your brand, you still keep your brand name ringing in their ears with your regular email message.

• Builds customer relationship

The proper application of email marketing builds and maintains a strong customer relationship in every business. The effort applied to draft and curate a perfect email copy does not go to waste or go unnoticed. Customers notice your sales marketing strategies and content. This is why sending periodic emails to them is crucial for your business’ relevance.

• Economical and Affordable

Email marketing is ideal and economical for small businesses, especially those that cannot spend large amounts on advertisement like the big businesses that can afford advertising on television, billboards, radios, social media platforms. However, email marketing bridges the gap; it provides a way of advertising and marketing products and services to a large audience with a bit of money.

Conclusion

Email marketing is a form of marketing that is an economical, effective, and reliable

catalyst to grow your business. As much as it helps your business generate leads, it also enables you to improve sales, build brand recognition and awareness, and improve brand-customer communication.

Are you a small brand or business owner? Apply email marketing and experience a significant turnover with these tips.