Let’s face it; email has been around forever. It is still the preferred method of communication for business and shows no sign of disappearing for personal communication despite the growth of Twitter and Facebook. In fact, your newsletter can be sent out via email, then archived on your website with tweets and Facebook links pointing to it. An approach that covers all possibilities!
Some 90% of internet users are sending or reading email. Some activities such as photo sharing and status updates are now covered more efficiently by other applications but email remains as the one online communication tool that everyone understands.
Where websites rely on you visiting them, an email comes directly to your inbox and therefore feels more important and more personal. Every day businesses send email to their clients, subscribers, suppliers and partners. Commercial email marketing still provides the highest return on investment of any form of marketing. Email is a low cost, high return medium that appeals to business and gives them an efficient way to communicate with their customers. Done properly, email is a powerful tool that can produce real value for both the sender and recipient.
Seven of the biggest advantages are:
- Email is cost effective. Of course although there are costs involved in copywriting content and the page or template design, production and delivery costs are significantly less than direct mail.
- Email builds relationships. It is the least intrusive method of connecting with your audience. The recipient can respond at their leisure. Well thought out email campaigns can create and strengthen customer loyalty.
- Email is active. Email marketing actively sends your message to people who have expressed an interest in your business, rather than relying on them finding you.
- Email provides timely results. The time between distribution and delivery of your campaign can be measured in minutes. This allows you to deliver your messages with precision and the monitoring of results can be seen almost immediately.
- Email contains direct hyperlinks. With the click of a mouse, your customer is taken from your message directly to your product or online checkout. Enabling you to effectively put your product and the means to purchase it directly in front of your customer. When someone buys from you, that’s only the beginning of the potential purchases that lie ahead, as long as you keep nurturing the relationship. Email marketing newsletters can do that, regularly keeping you in front of your customer.
- Email marketing can be targetted. Email is agile, allowing you to vary the content sent to customers on your distribution lists. You can split your lists depending on geographic location, interests, age, gender, etc. and send completely tailored content.
- Email can be shared. People spread the word about content they like, whether it’s your writing, pictures or video. Your newsletter can be a mix of all three. As long as it’s great content people will want to share it across all social media platforms, giving your company greater exposure.
Ultimately, content has value. The more use you can get out of it, the more value it has. A newsletter can be repurposed content from your blog, website or Facebook posts. Likewise, it can be the content for any of those. Think “write once, use repeatedly” and you’ll find your newsletter content is both fed by and feeds several other sources.
At 247 Creative we run a dedicated email mailing system which effectively puts content directly in front of your customers. We take care of the whole process from inception, though the design, copywriting and mailing. Clients are given a login so they can monitor the effectiveness of the campaign from the moment it is sent. Please call us for further information on how this can benefit your company