Have you ever been frustrated by the amount of work required to market your business in the digital world? Sometimes digital marketing can feel like a can of worms you wish you hadn’t opened. There is a lot of depth in the online world because literally everything is connected. It can be totally overwhelming to consider all the things involved: a well-designed website, and paid traffic, and capturing leads, and SEO, and CRO, and, and, and… That’s why today I wanted to focus on the digital tool that is the most accessible when it comes to the acronym you really care about: ROI.
If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a hundred times: Email equals revenue. I know it seems like a burden because it takes time to sit down in front of your computer and draft a well-thought-out email. That time was often spent working on projects for my clients and friends instead. But hear me out…for years I have been so focused on helping other companies grow, that my efforts toward marketing my own company were lacking. In 2018, I decided to change that.
The place I decided to invest the majority of my marketing effort was the one I knew I could start improving immediately. Email. And as soon as I began focusing on my email marketing game, I saw a 25% increase in business in less than 3 months! Yes – you read that right! I only had been regularly sending emails for a couple of months and there was already upward momentum. But don’t rely only on my personal experience – there are lots of reasons why email is where I chose to invest my efforts. Below are just of the few I find most important:
4x higher ROI
According to an Emarketer study, email has a median return on investment that is 122% higher than social media, direct mail, and paid search. That’s more than four times the return than your next best digital marketing option! This is really all that should matter in terms of convincing you of the necessity of email marketing. The point of marketing is to make more money than you spend on promotion, and with email you’re basically guaranteed to do just that. Email can cost you nothing (other than time), particularly if your business is not yet at the level of needing a professional CRM software to manage contacts.
Potential customers are reading email
Right now there are 3.7 billion people in the world who check their email everyday (Consumer Report). That’s a LOT of potential customers! Most people are on their phones all day long, and they’re checking their inboxes regularly (28% between 4-10 times/day!) (Consumer Views Survey). That means it’s really important that your email (just like your website) be optimized for mobile! But it also means that your customers are definitely checking their email one or more times per day. If you aren’t in their inbox, you’re missing a major opportunity.
Almost 90% of consumers say they would like to receive promotional emails from companies they do business with at least monthly, and 15% say they would like to receive them DAILY (Statista)! That means your target audience is literally waiting for you to send them something to read – they want to hear from you! (Yet, that doesn’t mean you should just start spamming your leads with daily emails…more on this point later!)
No selling required
This point seems somewhat self-explanatory, but I wanted to round out this discussion by pointing out the bit of strategy in the email marketing game. When you offer something of value to your subscribers, they will want to read your emails. Providing free guidance sets you up as the expert on your given topic and keeps you on the top mind of your customer's mind. Then, when they are in need of a service or product you offer, they are more inclined to come looking for you! The reasons are simple: 1) You’ve built trust, 2) you’ve gained recognition, and 3) they know how to get in touch with you! Email marketing can make selling far more passive because your leads will already be thinking of you when their need arises.
There are many effective digital marketing strategies to grow your business, but everyone has to start somewhere. The easiest and most worthwhile place for YOU to start is with email. Now, that doesn’t mean you should necessarily just open a window and start sending – you’ll need to be intentional with your content. But you can effectively email a number of contacts today without having to invest in any new software or hardware. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned thus far is that depth is better than breadth when it comes to an email list – it is better to have 10 engaged email contacts than 1000 who don’t engage at all. So don’t be afraid to get started even with a smaller list! In the future, I’ll be sharing more of my tips on how to do email marketing the right way, as well as some ideas for content! So stick around and get ready to get some ROI!