Electronic Direct Marketing (eDMs), also known as email marketing, is an online valuable marketing tool used by savvy businesses to communicate regularly with their existing and prospective customers, team members and communities.
An important component of all marketing campaigns is to track and measure the performance of each element. Email marketing allows you to track results instantly, with most email marketing programs providing detailed analytics.
Some of these metrics include how many people opened an email, if and where they clicked, how many times they opened it and if you lost any subscribers. This information is valuable to improve your campaigns, uncovering what works best for your brand to maintain and increase your engagement and ultimately help grow your business.
eDM analytics can help you build profiles of your customers by linking their purchasing and click-rate data. This is useful for understanding customers to better tailor how you communicate with them.
Consumers subscribe to your email list because they want to hear from you. Perhaps they have purchased from you or are thinking about it. Using eDM is a powerful way to communicate and build a relationship your audience, whilst helping to strengthen your brand and position over time.
eDMs might include exclusive discounts, product/service information, previews, seasonal campaigns or your latest blogs to maintain customers’ interest, so you remain front of mind. The eDM can be single focused such as a birthday discount or contain a variety of articles.
The ability to segment your database offers unprecedented opportunities. You can segment on purchasing history, relationship with customer, geography, demographics, industry and more. By segmenting your database, you can develop unique campaigns and send information for each specific audience to make your conversation more personal and relevant.
Michele Levine – CEO, Roy Morgan Research, says, “nearly three quarters of Australians use one (or more!) of these big four email services (Gmail, Outlook, Bigpond Email and Yahoo!7 Mail) in an average four weeks.
Email is a very popular form of communication, used extensively in business, education and professional services. Response rates for eDMs are high, as 50% of the population open their emails on their phone which they are usually always connected with.
Image: Litmus
With algorithms and competitive paid advertisements, you may not reach your entire audience via social media or rank highly on search engines. Social media platforms constantly update their rules and algorithms, controlling what the customer sees, which can be difficult to make your efforts fully effective. Businesses would be wise to remember that they don’t own their social following, and at any time, any of the social media platforms can close your account or cease business altogether. So the aim should always be to get your customers off social media and into your database.
As you own your email marketing database, there is no risk that this can be taken away from you as it is part of your business’ intellectual property. You have complete control over your database, including how, when and to whom you communicate.
eDMs should reflect your business branding. Most email programs allow customisation including adding in your logo, using your brand identity elements including fonts, colours and social media handles. The content can include words, videos, and graphics and should include hyperlinks to your website to extend the interaction for your readers and to monitor click throughs (ie. interest). All of these communication touch points ensure that your customers understand your brand voice and what you stand for.
When it comes to email marketing there is a lot of freedom and creativity that’s possible. To improve responses to your emails, ensure you capitalise on the opportunities within your content and use other marketing strategies such as a call-to-action technique, which you can learn more about here. You can also connect your audience to other areas online where your business has presence ie. your blog, to consistently inform and connect to your target audience.
Furthermore, eDMs can be a key part of an integrated marketing campaign, ensuring that your marketing messages are received by the greatest possible number of people in your target market. Email marketing supports campaigns which use print/tv/radio ads, in-store promotions, event participation, seasonal campaigns and more.
Emails are more sustainable than posters, brochures and merchandise, as there is considerably less cost and waste, which is often seen with print.
If there are less than 2,000 subscribers on your email database, some email marketing programs are free. Even if you have a large database, the costs are still lower than any print, radio or television advertisement and it produces a greater and more measurable reach in many cases.
Email marketing outperforms most marketing channels on return of investment (ROI) with FulcrumTech calculating that the average return for every dollar spent is $44.00.
eDMs are a valuable and worthwhile marketing tool to use within your business. Allocating time for eDMs and ensuring you are sending quality, timely content to your subscribers will help create a positive engaging experience for your clients with your business. Implementing a well thought out and targeted email marketing campaign is like having a powerful and successful sales employee staying in front of all your customers, at a fraction of the cost.
If you are using eDMs in your marketing strategy, what benefits have you seen for your business? Those who don’t, would you consider creating one now? Let us know in the comments below!
If you would like to work with ideapro to develop engaging email marketing campaigns for your business, get in touch with our team.
Creatively Yours,
ideapro.
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Hey, Thank you very much for sharing this article information about reasons to send EDMS and It’s very impressive and helpful for me, keep it up. Thank you:)
Thanks for your feedback Mark, we’re so glad it’s useful!
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