What is it that makes email marketing so important? The money is in the list… I bet you’ve heard that by now right? Let’s take a look at why you should start building your email list as soon as possible and what makes email marketing such a vital part of your marketing strategy.
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You Own Your List
This for me is the most important and exciting part of email marketing. When you build a list you own it. Just think of what could happen if for example your website got penalized by Google today. No more organic traffic? Not good right?
What if something happened to Facebook and you lost all your followers?
Your list belongs to you and nobody else. This is something that cannot be taken away from you. It is a way you can keep in direct contact with all of your readers no matter what happens.
This alone makes it the most important marketing tool.
Email Marketing is Cost Effective
The price per email is very low, which makes it very cost effective. When you first start out you can use Mailchimp which is free for the first 2 000 subscribers and you can send up to 12 000 per month. This is a great way to get started building your list at no cost.
Once your list has grown I do suggest moving over to another email autoresponder that offers more features such as Aweber. Packages start at $19 per month.
With Aweber you can automate blog broadcasts, a series of emails and also send out broadcasts when needed. This will take some time to set up in the beginning but once you have done this it is completely automated which will save a lot of time in the future. Remember time is money. This won’t take the same amount of time on a continual basis like for example social networks will.
Spend the time in the beginning to set it all up and it runs on its own. What’s not to like?
Email Marketing has a High Conversion Rate
Email marketing has proven over and over again to have a high conversion rate. Email subscribers are ready to engage and they want to hear from you. This is clear from the fact that they have given their email address to you.
The fact that you can send out a series of emails to a new subscriber means you can build a relationship of trust while keeping in mind the customer life cycle. Once your subscriber has received all the newsletters in that series the chances of a conversion are much higher. This makes email marketing incredibly relationship focused.
Once a subscriber is purchasing from you, you also have the chance to keep making sales to that customer over and over again when you have new products on offer. This is invaluable.
Email Marketing is Personal and Customizable
You can send messages to individual people or groups of people, you can include their names and make them feel like you talking right to them. This makes it very different to social media where messages are sent out to the anyone and everyone.
You can also choose who receives a message and who doesn’t, ensuring that your audience gets exactly the right message at the right time.
Email Marketing is Measurable
This is a wonderful aspect of email marketing. It is easy to track opened messages, bounce rates, delivery rates, click through rates, conversions and unsubscribes. This means you can go back and see what works and what doesn’t. Over time you can tweak your campaigns to be hugely successful. You can also do split testing which will help you to find out what works best.
Email Marketing is more Popular and more Effective than Social Media
Email communication is the number one form of business communication and I can’t see this changing any time soon. You can’t even open up a social media account if you don’t have email.
What is the first thing you do when you get to work? I’ll bet it is check your emails right?
Email is very actionable too, every email requires an action.. even if that action is delete or unsubscribe. It requires the recipient to do something with the email.
Sending an email message also means the message is direct to your audience, the recipient might not read it immediately but it has found its destination and it will stay there until an action is taken.
Social media on the other hand is very different. The life span of a social media message can be hours, sometimes even only a few minutes. If your targeted reader is not there at the right moment the message is missed. I recently read a statistic that stated only 2% of your Facebook Fans will see your message!
These are some great reasons to get started with email marketing, if you sign up with Aweber they will take you through how to set everything up and you will be on your way in no time.
Please let me know if you have any questions or perhaps you have something to add?
