If you own a business, you should be doing email marketing.
You might think that your business is too new, too small, or just wrong for email marketing, but you’re wrong. Every company could benefit from email marketing. Even if you haven’t launched your business to the public, you should still be working on an email marketing strategy now so that you can achieve the best results possible when you do launch.
You don’t have to take our word for it. The numbers tell the story of email marketing, and the moral of the story is that it works.
Email Usage by Population
When people talk about how people talk on the internet these days, they like to focus on social networking sites, but in reality, email is still the backbone of online communication. The truth is that email use is still going strong and even growing. A 2018 study by the Radicati Group estimated that this year the total number of email accounts worldwide will top 3.82 billion by the end of 2018. Extrapolating from that data they predict that this number will grow by 3% every year, reaching 4.26 billion users by 2022. This is a vast pool of people, especially when you compare it with the broader internet using population.
Another study estimated that there are around 4.02 billion internet users in the world as of 2018. This means that there are email accounts for approximately 95% of all the internet users in the world! This is a population that you simply cannot afford to ignore.
Total Emails Sent
The number of people who use email on a regular basis is impressive enough but the sheer volume of emails sent every day is even more amazing. If you look back at the Radicati study, you’ll see that they found that there are 281.1 billion emails being sent across the globe every day. That’s over 3 million emails every single second! This number is also growing, with Radicati projecting that around 4.3% more emails will be sent each year until the number hits about 333.2 billion in 2022.
The numbers don’t lie; email is an incredibly durable and popular mode of online communication. This would be reason enough to invest in email marketing, but we’re just scratching the tip of the iceberg.
Email Marketing ROI
The power of email marketing doesn’t just come from the number of people who regularly communicate via email; it comes from just how responsive people are to good email marketing. Studies done on the return on investment offered by email marketing have shown that it provides companies truly remarkable results for their advertising dollar. A survey done by DMA found that in 2017 their respondents reported an estimated average ROI of 3220%.
It’s also worth noting that these results are part of a positive trend. The same DMA study found that respondents saw an average ROI of 3000% in 2016. Email marketing isn’t just a good investment; it’s a consistently good investment. It has offered fantastic ROIs for years, and there’s every reason to believe it will continue to offer them for years to come.
Business Growth
If you’re looking to grow your business, then email marketing is a tool you can’t afford to overlook. It’s far more efficient at getting you new customers than social media. A McKinsey iConsumer survey found that email was actually 40 times more useful when it comes to customer-acquisition than social media giants like Facebook and Twitter.
Emails get people engaged, and this can go beyond your email list. Quicksprout found that email subscribers shared their content almost four times more often than other visitors. If you want your message to go viral, your best option might be sending it via email. If you provide real value to your subscribers, they will start to share your message for you.
Newsletter Design
In order to make sure your business starts growing in the quickest way, it is possible to take advantage of newsletter email templates. They will turn out to be a powerful tool that allows building a solid online-marketing campaign. Each of them has a fully-responsive design that easily adjusts to multiple devices and their screens. In such a way, it becomes possible to generate the biggest number of subscriptions and leads. As an example, you can pay attention to the email newsletter featured below that will certainly allow you to get the best feedback and capture the attention of your target audience.
RKMail - Engaging Responsive Email Template
If you’re looking for a professional and feature-rich newsletter theme, RKMail is the feature-rich template that will please businesses in different niches with its precise audience targeting and high conversion optimization. Thanks to the Stampready editor, you can customize this theme fully in drag-n-drop mode. So, you’ll need only your mouse and good content to power an exciting newsletter with RKMail. Moreover, RKMail fully embraces MailChimp and is capable of supporting CampaignMonitor. Other features:
- Cross-browser compatible
- Litmus tested
- Supports background images in Outlook
- Clear documentation
- 24/7 support
Synergy - Responsive Multifunctional Email Template
Synergy is an effective newsletter theme with a welcoming design and numerous lead generation and conversion points. This lightweight newsletter theme can be fully customized within the pre-built Stampready builder. With this intuitive builder, customizing Synergy will be a highly comprehensive and entertaining process. Moreover, you can easily integrate CampaignMonitor and MailChimp to your Synergy theme. Finally, this theme supports all modern browsers and numerous email plugins. Other features:
- Browsers supported: Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari
- Numerous email clients supported
- Fully responsive
- Drag-n-drop editing with Stampready
Perfy - Attractive Responsive Email Theme
You will hardly find a more appealing and modern newsletter theme than Perfy. It’s built for effective presentation of your company and services in your client’s email boxes. The design of Perfy is optimized for conversion and compatible with such popular solutions as MailChimp, MyMail, Mailster, etc. Fortunately, you don’t have to ever touch a single line of code when editing Perfy. Finally, this newsletter theme is fully compatible with the visual Stampready builder, which turns customizing your newsletter into a piece of cake. Other features:
- Creative responsive design
- Major e-mail plugins supported
- Supports all modern browsers
- Stampready drag-n-drop builder
Tego - Inspiring Responsive Email Template
Tego is a wonderful clean newsletter theme that’s been praised in a number of editorial reviews. It’s a multifunctional template that will be a perfect match to a number of businesses. To customize it, you don’t have to know HTML code. Thanks to the WYSIWYG power of Stampready, you can adjust every element of this email theme in just a few clicks and mouse movements. Moreover, Tego has a highly informative footer with all your contact details, social buttons, and Google Map included. Other features:
- Major mail client support
- Full responsiveness and cross-browser compatibility
- Supports Apple Mail, all Outlook versions, Thunderbird, Yahoo Mail and more
- Built with easy-to-understand well-commented code
Panda - Present-day Responsive Newsletter Theme
Panda is an exciting newsletter theme that you can edit in WYSIWYG mode. This theme includes a great number of diverse blocks for introducing your team, presenting services, sharing testimonials, creating pricing tables, and much more. Panda also features the full set of social sharing options ensuring that the support of your business in social networks grows. Moreover, it works with the majority of present-day mail clients and browsers. Finally, thanks to the gorgeous Stampready editor, styling the Panda email theme to your needs is a non-issue even for newbies. Other features:
- Numerous color options
- Browsers supported: IE, Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari
- Various email clients supported
- Fully responsive
Finally, email marketing doesn’t just attract new customers; it can also help to keep existing customers informed. Growing your business isn’t just about branching out in new directions. It can also mean strengthening your existing customer base.
Email Marketing Effectiveness vs. Other Channels
Effective marketing is all about making choices. Every dollar you invest in one area is a dollar you can’t invest in another. This is why it’s important to compare different channels to see which offers you the best results for your marketing dollar. Once again, the numbers show that email marketing comes out on top.
According to a survey of marketing professionals done by Econsultancy, email marketing has the best reputation in terms of ROI out of all major online marketing tools. Of the respondents, 74% reported experiencing a good or excellent ROI using email marketing. Coming behind email was SEO at 70%, PPC at 62%, content marketing at 61%, social media at 39%, and online display advertising at 36%.
Another interesting detail about this survey is the fact that email marketing’s rating has improved over the years. In 2008 just 66% of respondents rated it as excellent or good. While naysayers have been writing obituaries for email marketing, it has actually been growing in reach and stature.
Conversion Rate
Just getting traffic to your site isn’t enough.
If you want to make money, you need to convert traffic into profits.
This is where email marketing excels over other channels. A well-crafted email won’t just drive people to your site; it should also prepare them to convert.
A report found that 66% of people surveyed reported that they’d purchased a product because of an email while just 20% of those surveyed did so because of some form of Facebook advertisement.
With emails, you get two chances to make a sales pitch: in the email and on the landing page. You’re also speaking directly to people who have already shown an interest in your business. If you want a high conversion rate, you need to market via email.
Business Communication
Not all forms of communication are created equally.
It’s not just enough to put your message online; you need to do it in a manner that is congruent with your brand identity. Social media might be great for sharing pictures of your kids and pets but if you want to look professional then email is the way to go. According to Hubspot, an overwhelming 86% of working professionals view email as their communication tool of choice when they are operating in a professional capacity.
Email is like the suit and tie; it might not be flashy, but that’s part of its appeal. While other modes of communication have come and gone, email has remained a constant in the business world for decades.
Frequency
Email marketing is a powerful tool, but as with any tool it needs to be used correctly to achieve the best possible results. There is no such thing as a magic frequency rate that you should use. Every business needs to find its own frequency rate. Fortunately, there are now plenty of tools you can use to keep track of how engaged people are by your emails.
One study published by the Database Marketing Institute found that companies get the best click-through rates when they send two emails a month. However, while the average open rate seems to decrease as frequency rises, this doesn’t mean that sending fewer emails is better. More emails mean more chances to create engagement and conversion and the open rate decreases relatively slowly over time.
It can take some time to find the right frequency, but once you’re tuned in with your audience, you’ll have a unique opportunity to speak directly to your current clients and potential customers regularly.
Transaction Rate
If you’re looking to pump up your transaction rates, then email marketing offers just the thing you need.
With email, you have the power to personalize the message you deliver and dramatically improve your results. A study by Experian Marketing Services found that if you personalize the emails you send could see a 600% increase in transaction rates.
In this day and age, people want to be addressed as individuals. They’re tired of being treated as interchangeable commodities. Email marketing allows you to communicate on a massive scale while still appealing to people on a personal level.
Mobile
The rise in mobile computing means that modern internet users are carrying their inbox around in their pocket at all times. Gone are the days when people only read their emails on desktops or laptops. Now when you send someone an email, it might reach them on their commute. A study by Google actually found that 71% of smartphone users regularly use email apps and 55% of those users mainly use their email apps when they are out of their home.
Instead of hurting email marketing, the proliferation of internet-connected smart devices has been a boon to email. Mobile internet means that compelling email advertising can now reach people wherever they are. If you tailor your emails to the mobile market, you can achieve amazing things.
What Businesses Should Be Doing with Email
If you haven’t put much thought into email marketing, then you might think that it’s a simple tool. After all, isn’t it just writing emails and sending them off? The truth is that email is a very powerful and flexible tool that can be used in a myriad of ways.
Here are some of the ways you could be using email to promote your business:
- Signup form on website and social media. Before you can start to email people, you need to get their emails. The more signup forms you have, the bigger your email list can grow.
- Welcome Email. Your welcome email is the most important email you can create. One study found that when you compare welcome emails to average marketing messages people are four times more likely than average to open welcome emails and five times more likely to click-through them. Another source suggests welcome emails are 320% more profitable than other emails, so take the time to get your welcome email right.
- Newsletter. Even in the age of social media, people still prefer to get information emailed directly to them. A survey by the Nielsen Norman Group found that people preferred email updates over Facebook updates by a ratio of 9 to 1.
- Promo Emails. People love deals. A MarketingSherpa survey found that 91% of those they surveyed wanted to receive promo emails from companies they did business with. Promo emails are a rare opportunity where people are literally asking for you to advertise to them.
- New products/services. Another leading reason why people sign up for email lists is to receive announcements about new products and services. If you want to create awareness for something then new email is the way to get the message directly to those who will be most receptive.
- Product advice. If you want to keep people engaged and informed about your product email is a great way to provide them with a continual stream of information. By giving advice to customers, you also help to develop your authority and reputation.
- Training/education emails. Do you have a complex product that your customers might not fully understand? You can keep them engaged with your brand while ensuring they get the most out of their purchase by sending them educational updates. This is a fantastic strategy if you want to keep users engaged with a service or product over long periods of time.
- Purchase cycle/reorder emails. One order is great but two is even better. Keep the profits rolling in with regular emails reminding your customers that they would benefit from a reorder. A study found that remarketing emails that include coupons actually have an 82% greater click rate than average emails.
- Testimonial emails. Glowing testimonials from previous clients are fantastic for warming up potential clients. One survey found that 88% of those interviewed believed online reviews and testimonials to be as persuasive as “personal recommendations.”
Wrapping Up
Hopefully, we have made it clear that email marketing is an advertising tool that you cannot ignore if you want to grow your business in the most cost-effective way possible.
Email as a communication tool has stood the test of time. A commitment to developing your email marketing strategy is a move that can pay dividends for years to come.
The longer you go without using email marketing, the more opportunities you let pass you by. Don’t limit yourself. Start looking into email marketing today. You have a message and your potential clients have inboxes; it’s time to bring the two together.
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