Email marketing is a cost-effective and simple solution companies use to grow their small businesses. However, many don’t realize the major growth opportunities that come with it when starting a new campaign.
For example, email marketing is invaluable when retaining existing customers, which is less costly than acquiring new customers.
In fact, research shows that it can cost businesses six to seven times more to attract new customers than to keep existing ones.
With the right email campaign, you can achieve all types of goals for your business, including:
- Sales
- Lead generation
- Engagement
- Website traffic
- Enhanced communication
Let’s look further at the growth opportunities that good email marketing campaigns can provide.
6 Growth Opportunities You Can Unlock With Email Marketing
1. Effective Sales Generation
Email marketing campaigns are effective at improving your sales. Whether you’re acquiring new customers or retaining existing ones, email has proven to be the biggest source of ROI for marketers.
In fact, for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect $36 in return from your investment. The ROI could be even higher depending on your industry.
Within your email marketing campaigns, you can easily incorporate targeted messages that encourage your audience to purchase a product or service. Users are more likely to buy from you because they’ve opted-in to your list, meaning they trust your brand.
Additionally, email marketing helps with automating part of the sales process. When creating an email campaign correctly, you can increase your sales by driving traffic to your website to get consumers into your sales funnel.
2. Personalization
Personalization is key to driving those open and clickthrough rates. When you address your recipients in a personal manner, they’re more likely to open it because they don’t see it as spam.
For example, addressing your recipients by name in a subject line is the first step in creating a personal message.
From there, you can encourage click-throughs by using these strategies:
- Sending an email to subscribers on a special occasion, like their birthday.
- Sending product recommendations and discounts based on purchase history.
- Creating relevant topics in the message that is of interest to your audience.
Keep in mind that personalization is more than mentioning a subscriber’s name. You have plenty of ways to get personal, so it’s up to you to test it and see which option suits you best.
3. Highly Targeted Emails With Segmentation
One of the top benefits of email is that you can send highly targeted campaigns based on your audience’s interests. The primary way to achieve this is through segmentation.
Chances are you have various people on your list that fall into different buyer personas. To ensure you're sending relevant content, email marketing experts recommend that you segment your database.
Businesses that use segmentation are likely to have higher sales. Therefore, the smaller the group you create, the more possible outcomes you achieve from your campaigns.
Some of the possible ways to segment properly will involve your subscriber data, including:
- Demographics
- Engagement
- Purchase history
- Their position in the sales funnel
4. Re-Engaging Inactive Customers
No matter what business you’re in, the loss of subscribers is inevitable. However, one major growth opportunity that email marketing campaigns provide is re-engaging inactive subscribers.
As mentioned previously, retaining existing customers is more cost-effective than acquiring new ones. If you have a quarter of your list who has been inactive for quite some time, use this opportunity to your advantage.
With the right strategy, you can focus on creating a re-engagement campaign that can help win back your customers.
Some types of re-engagement campaigns that businesses send are discounts or promo codes with a “We Miss You” subject line.
However, it might be time to clean up your list if you send several emails and they still don’t respond. Ask them about their email preferences or have them removed.
A regularly maintained list of active subscribers is better than spending your resources on ones that won’t come back.
5. Traffic Generation
When you produce content relevant to your audience, you can drive traffic to your website and improve your search engine optimization simultaneously.
Email marketing campaigns are a wonderful way to keep your audience engaged with your business and site. That’s because you’re providing value to your audience with the right content. Therefore, you get to generate more traffic and potentially increase your sales.
When creating your campaigns to drive traffic, remember that every email should contain links and a call to action. That way, users can visit your website and discover more about your brand.
6. Reaching Your Customers at the Right Time
Timing is everything when sending out a new email marketing campaign. The biggest benefit you can receive from timely email campaigns is that they don’t take as long to plan as a traditional marketing campaign.
Therefore, you can create an email campaign on shorter notice and ensure it’s sent at the right time. You want to send your emails at the right time because you’re increasing your engagement with customers.
Of course, there’s no one-size-fits-all time for sending an email. You’ll have to incorporate various tests to find the ideal time to message your users.
In return, you can increase engagement with loyal customers who anticipate your new content. Plus, you can improve your open and clickthrough rates and ensure you’re always at the top of your customers’ minds.
Leverage These Email Marketing Growth Opportunities
You can see that email marketing can provide you with numerous growth opportunities. Many businesses are using it today as an effective form of digital marketing. It’s a good way to stay in touch with your customers and maintain a relationship with them.
Remember, an email marketing campaign can only produce effective results when you use the right tactics. Align your email marketing campaign strategy with your business goals, then test out which tactic works best for your business.
As soon as the results are in, you can then determine which way to proceed to achieve the most success.
Eleanor Hecks
Eleanor Hecks is editor-in-chief at Designerly Magazine. She was the creative director at a prominent digital marketing agency prior to becoming a full-time freelance designer. Eleanor lives in Philadelphia with her husband and pup, Bear.