Email can be used to turn thos e with no interest in your product into prospects, prospects into customers, and then follow-up with customers within a predefined number of days after a purchase, helping them become repeat customers. Imagine if this process could be automated. That would free your mind to think of so many new ideas, rather than dealing with the tedious task of emailing prospects and old customers daily.
Email marketing is one of the most powerful marketing tools available today. It's easy, affordable, direct, actionable and highly effective. According to surveys, customers and prospects would prefer to hear from you via email than any other way. And when you add email to your marketing mix, you spend less time, money and resources than with traditional marketing vehicles (for example, direct mail or print advertising). Your time-sensitive information is sent in minutes, not days or weeks, and you can see the results of your efforts instantly.
Email marketing also enables you to proactively communicate with existing prospects and customers instead of passively waiting for them to return to your website, visit your store or office, or call you on the phone.
No matter how your prospects and customers found you -- perhaps you paid for search engine placement, met someone at a networking event, collected contact information in your place of business, sponsored a newsletter, placed a banner ad, distributed a flier or sent a postcard -- email marketing adds to your bottom line because it allows you to maximize your investment and improve the return on investment (ROI) of every dollar you spend to obtain new business.
Email marketing allows you to communicate more information, more often. Your communications can include newsletters, preferred customer promotions, sale notifications, new service announcements, event invitations, greetings and much, much more. Communicating via email is an affordable way to stretch a tight marketing budget -- it can cost as little as fractions of a penny per email. With a better response rate than direct mail, email marketing is the most effective way to increase your visibility and ultimately drive sales.
The key to turning your first-time customers into repeat customers is by building relationships. Even though email is faceless, it can still greatly assist you in building a solid relationship with your customer base. Tough competition will attempt to draw your customer base away by undercutting your costs and doing whatever possible to switch your customers over. The best way to prevent your customers from jumping ship is to build a relationship with them over time. What better way to do this than to provide useful information right to their email inbox? Providing helpful hints or coupons in an email message is a great way for recipients to want to continue receiving your email, and coupons will motivate action on the part of the consumer, providing you a way to instantly obtain feedback on your campaign. The better providers of email list management software offer open and click-through tracking, giving your marketing department instant feedback on the email’s effectiveness.
Email marketing gives your brand an edge in a tough market. Daily, weekly, or even monthly emails will keep your brand in your target consumer’s mind. As more and more of the population begins to use email; email marketing will become a standard in the marketing industry. Finding another marketing method that comes close to all the benefits that email marketing offers is nearly impossible. |
