Chapter 1 – What’s Email Marketing and Why Your Business Needs It
Email marketing is a kind of Internet marketing that allows the user to send customized messages in the form of an email to their readers to inform, advertising, or to solicit certain actions from their readers.
There are certain essential components of email marketing that include:
Message automation
HTML responsive layout
Advance list maintenance
CAN-SPAM compliance built-in
An easy integration
A dedicated IP address
Help for deliverability
Message Automation
The message automation is the feature of email marketing that allows you to send different emails in response to a particular action. If a consumer just signed up for a discount, they will receive an automatic welcome message that will serve as a confirmation of the subscription. Message automation can also be set up to send proof of orders when someone makes a purchase on your website.
HTML Responsive Layout
The HTML Responsive layout will allow you to send customized emails in plain text or HTML format. It also allows you to make use of HTML and CSS to create responsive templates that can adapt to all devices in the world.
This makes email marketing campaigns capable of being read on mobile devices. The good part is that you don’t have to learn how to code HTML because this feature is automatically loaded with the software.
Advanced List Maintenance
This feature allows you to add and remove email subscribers from your list quickly. You can use this feature to automate subscription and opt-outs. It helps you keep your email lists updated.
CAN-SPAM Compliance
This is a feature that is designed to check compliance with the unsolicited pornography and marketing, CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. This act has given the United States Federal Trade Commission the right to enforce all necessary standards to protect email owners from unsolicited contents like pornography.
Easy Integration Feature
This feature allows for the integration of other services into your email marketing campaign. You can incorporate your e-commerce website with your email campaigns through this feature, and you can also include several mobile apps, loyalty programs, and social media apps to your email marketing campaign.
You can connect Google analytics to your email campaign through Easy Integration feature so you can track the clicks on your email, as well as incorporating product recommendation features into the email, through the use of this feature.
Dedicated IP Address
A dedicated IP address is incredibly essential for the integrity of your email. This IP address should be one that is solely dedicated to your business, and it should be the only one used to send emails to potential customers. Your email recipients will have peace of mind when they receive your emails with this dedicated IP address.
Deliverability
Deliverability is a feature that is included in an email marketing software that ensures that your emails are delivered to the right place. If your emails aren't delivered, then your marketing strategy just won't work. This features constantly deploys the tools that you need to track down deliverability issues with your emails.
Why Your Business Should Implement Email Marketing
Email provides you with the opportunity to send a message to your audience for any purpose on any day of the year that costs you next to nothing. This makes email an incredibly powerful way to communicate with your target audience.
When you are able to create a solid email marketing campaign and send the right messages to the right people at the right time, you are sure to build an audience of highly engaged fans that can't wait for your next message to hit their inboxes. Additionally, they are ready to buy whenever you have a product or service to promote. There are several compelling reasons why you need to start implementing email marketing for your business.
Generates Massive ROI
A recent study conducted by the Direct Marketing Association found that businesses will earn an average of $43.00 for every dollar invested in email marketing.
In fact, marketers have consistently ranked email marketing as the single most effective strategy for generating awareness, acquiring leads, generating sales, and improving customer retention, compared to the other marketing strategies most commonly employed.
Generates Long-Term Results
In 2010, the company MarketBeat first started collecting opt-ins for their newsletters. Almost two decades later a good number of subscribers that signed up during the first year continue to read their content, engage with their advertisers, and buy products and services from their business.
Your email list is a long-term asset that will continue to generate revenue and social capital for your business well into the future.
Most Customers Want Email from Companies
MarketingSherpa conducted a study that showed that 72 percent of U.S. consumers say that email is their favorite way to communicate with the companies that they do business with.
They also discovered that 61 percent of consumers like to receive weekly promotional emails from their favorite brands, while 28 percent of consumers would like to receive promotional emails more frequently.
Additionally, 70 percent of consumers say they will always open email from their favorite companies, and 95 percent of people who opted in to receive an email from brands say that the marketing emails they receive are incredibly useful.
Outperforms Social Media Marketing
A recent study found that businesses are more than 40 times likely to create a new customer from email marketing than they are through social media. When it comes to email marketing, many marketers feel that it delivers a better return on investment than social media marketing.
Email is Universal
Almost 87 percent of the U.S. population has access to the Internet in their home, and 95 percent of consumers use email. With email marketing, you don't have to worry whether or not your target audience has an email address or not, unlike social media.
It’s a Resilient Technology
Email has existed in its current format since the early 1980s, a full 15 years before most homes had a personal computer and Internet access, and 25 years before the first iPhone was released. Despite the world's massive amount of technological progress and the proliferation of smartphones, personal computers, and tablets, the technical specifications for email have only been updated a handful of times.
While other communication technologies have come and gone, email continues to withstand the test of time. When your business invests in email marketing, you know that a bigger and better thing won't replace it in the next couple of years.
Email Marketing Is Federated
When you build an audience on YouTube, Facebook or Instagram, you are at the mercy of companies whose best interests aren't aligned with yours.
You can put a lot of time, energy, and money into building an audience on one of these platforms only to have that platform change the rules in a way that kills the profitability of your campaign. That will never be the case with email because no one company has control of the technical specifications for email or control over the technology infrastructure that allows email to be delivered to the world's six billion inboxes.
Email marketing will continue to be one of the most effective and most resilient marketing strategies for both brick-and-mortar companies and digital businesses. It is hard to match the potential ROI offered by email marketing, and you can rest assured that your efforts will continue to generate revenue well into the future.