Email has now for many people become a big of their lives. Whether it is for personal or business purposes, email is so powerful that it allows anyone at any time to communicate with others around the world almost instantly. Global communication is pretty simple, easy-to-use and most importantly free. Any business, no matter how big or small, how international or local should learn to embrace this tool as an effective way to reach a larger target audience and also communicate with stakeholders whether that be shareholders, customers, suppliers or even staff.

Through the use of email marketing, businesses can now build a trustworthy, strong and interactive relationship with their existing and new customers and clients. But why? Why should a small company use email marketing? There are so many other ways so why email? We look at 5 reasons as to why experts recommend small businesses to use email marketing.

As a small organisation all you ideally want, is to keep the existing customers coming back and the new ones to coming in. However, you know it means resources. It means time, money, staff and you kind of don’t know what would work and what would not. If you results, email marketing is probably your best choice.

Email marketing is a cost-effective solution that gives businesses the power to reach customers in a place most place most people visit every day – their inbox (Forbes, 2015). By doing this, you as an organisation are effectively sending email messages to a list of potential or existing customers with information as a way to promote the products and services your business provides (Truex, 2015).

The real truth is, it has worked before so why wouldn’t work now? Despite the rise of social media being used to digitally market companies, email is still one of the biggest and most commonly used platform. For example, a recent study has revealed that 91% of consumers check their emails every day; this number is far higher than the number of people who use Facebook, which is the most popular social network. It is also said that email is almost 40 times more effective than Facebook and Twitter combined in helping a business acquire new customers (McKinsey, 2014).

So why should you really use email marketing? Content Manger at Forbes, Ryan Pinkham breaks it down and we look at the top 5 reasons and how if you were a small organisation in London could benefit from email marketing.

#1. Build credibility

As a business, you want your customers to feel like they’re doing business with people they know, like and trust. Email allows this to happen and gives you as business the opportunity and platform to build that credibility with your customers and clients by sharing and giving them access to helpful information in the hope that those customers will soon become loyal.

#2 Boost Sales

It’s pretty simple and probably the obvious benefit of email marketing. Ideally, the more people who know about you, the more they’re going to come to you. By receiving updates, deals and offers, you will think about your target audience and meet their needs in order to effectively meet yours.

#3. Strengthen relationships

To build that strong foundation and relationship with your customers and clients, every business no matter how big or small should and effectively must have a great, working and efficient communication tool. This tool is ideally going to help you as a business communicate with those who matter most. With millions of people checking their email every day, the platform gives you the ability to top-of-mind and keep people engaged and informed about your business no matter what time of day or year.

#4. Learn what works

To understand how effective any digital marketing platform is, you need data. These metrics are the key to finding out if you are doing the right thing or the wrong one. Performance is key and email marketing and the data that it produces helps you digital market your business smarter and more effectively. It also gives you a better understand of your customers’ needs. For example, if your customers aren’t actually opening their emails and straight away delete them; you need to think why and could maybe reword your email, change the format or even opt to personalising each email for each customer.

#5. Reach people on any device

Smartphones alongside emails are taken over the world by storm. With nearly two-thirds of all emails being opened on a mobile device, email marketing seems like the easiest way for business to get information across to its customers so it’s accessible for them. Most smartphones can link almost 5-6 email accounts to one phone which means that the customers are more likely to see and view the emails at any time or any place. This will improve your data figures and customer engagement.

But there are limitations to using email marketing for small businesses especially including the resources including the cost, time and staff resource. However, in the long run; it is sure to be worth it in the long run for your business.

References

Aufreiter. N, Boudet. J, & Weng. V (2014) Why marketers should keep sending you e-mails [Online] < http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/why-marketers-should-keep-sending-you-emails> [Accessed 27^th April 2016]

Butters, K. (2014) How important is email marketing? [Online] <http://www.201digital.co.uk/important-email-marketing/#ixzz46y8PrqGH> [Accessed 27^th April 2016]

Edgecomb, C. (2013) 25 Compelling Statistics about the importance of Email Marketing [Online] <https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/25-compelling-statistics-about-the-importance-of-email-marketing> [Accessed 26^th April 2016]

Forbes (2015) 10 Reasons to use Email marketing (As Told by Small businesses) [Online] <http://www.forbes.com/sites/constantcontact/2015/09/17/10-reasons-to-use-email-marketing-as-told-by-small-businesses/#7dc330db7eba> [Accessed 26^th April 2016]

Truex, L. (2015) Email Marketing [Online] <http://homebusiness.about.com/od/homebusinessglossar1/g/email_marketing.htm> [Accessed 25^th April 2016]

Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what’s going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them (Facebook, 2016). The ‘Ratings & Reviews’ function of the social networking site is something that is being used by largely by businesses to get customers to tell what they think. But the question is why do customers rate and review? Do you rate and review? If yes, how often do you do it? And why would you rate and review? We look at the importance and of ratings and reviews, why and how they help customers and businesses.

The uprising of Facebook reviews has resulted to companies such as Yelp failing as people effectively prefer to do things online and prefer everything to be in one place. According to USA Today, when Facebook began silently testing the new feature in 2015; Yelp’s shares fell 9% to $26.87. However, it can be taken in a positive perspective. Darren Aftahl from Roth Capital Partners said Facebook’s test “only strengthens our long-term thesis that Yelp’s business prospects and user growth could be further challenged in local.” This therefore demonstrates the growth of people wanting to share their opinions and experiences with others.

Ideally, customers who leave reviews must follow the Facebook Community Standards to create a valid review and must focus on the product or service offered by the page (i.e. business) and be based on their own personal experience. Online customer reviews have real bottom-line benefits including increasing conversion, lowering return rates and customer dissatisfaction, and boosting SEO efforts (DigitalVisitor, 2012).

Recent research has also shown that customer reviews can have a positive influence on sales. Chen et al. (2008) found that the quality of the review as measured by helpfulness votes also positively influences sales and Clemons et al. (2006) found that strongly positive ratings can positively influence the growth of product sales. Online customer reviews can be defined as peer-generated product evaluations posted on company or third party websites (Mudambi & Schuff, 2010). A number of sites that provide consumer ratings have emerged in speciality areas (Dabholkar 2006) such as travel.

Before looking at how to encourage people to leave reviews, it is important for organisations to understand the reasons for leaving reviews. Here, are three reasons for why people love to tell others what they think:

#1 Helping others – Often, people write reviews to help others. As a customer themselves, people value reviews & ratings to help them make a buying decision; making them feel valued as a member of the community.

#2 Rewards – The internet has become a place where anyone can say anything, anywhere they want. People are using the likes of social media e.g. Facebook, Twitter and other methods such as blogs/ vlogs to tell others what they think and felt. Therefore companies expect more from their customers asking them to like pages, share posts etc. resulting to driving sales up and expanding their target market. Customers are now aware of this subtle marketing method, therefore expect something in return for giving their opinions.

#3 Fame – The most common and obvious reason for customers voicing their opinions and rushing to tell other people what they think is the fame. The internet now has the power to get a comment/picture/post viral within minutes. Whether that be a heart-warming or comedic customer review, anything has the opportunity to go viral. One of the best examples of this is ‘The Dress’. In 2015, a picture of a dress posted on Tumblr went viral as it revealed differences in human colour perception which was the subject of an ongoing scientific investigation in neuroscience and vision science since. The confusion arose when some people thought #thedress was black and blue and others thought it was white and gold. This resulted to a significant drive sales of the dress.

Part of the joy of customers telling people what they think means that people share content that catches their eye; whether that be the unusual or the amusing; if something goes viral, you’re effectively seen as ‘famous’. Also, traffic is being sent to a business’s site and while people are there, they may be tempted to look around; resulting to an increase in sales.

If a business wants to digitally market itself effectively and get more people to be talking about them, in a positive way of course, the first step is to find out why their customers rate and review and then they must find a way to get them to do it more i.e. how to get them interested. BUT remember, this only works in their favour if the reviews are positive.

References

Chen, P., Dhanasobhon, S., and Smith, M. (2008). All Reviews Are Not Created Equal: The Disaggregate Impact of Reviews on Sales on Amazon.com, Carnegie Mellon University

Clemons, E., Gao, G., and Hitt, L. (2006) When Online Reviews Meet Hyperdifferentiation: A Study of the Craft Beer Industry, Journal of Management Information Systems (23:2), pp. 149-171.

Dabholkar, P. (2006). Factors Influencing Consumer Choice of a ‘Rating Web Site’: An Experimental Investigation of an Online Interactive Decision Aid, Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice (14:4), pp. 259-273.

Digital Visitor (2016) What’s in it for me why customers leave reviews? [Online] <http://digitalvisitor.com/whats-in-it-for-me-why-customers-leave-reviews/> [Accessed 25^th April 2016]

Facebook (2016) Facebook Community Standards [Online] <https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards> [Accessed 25^th April 2016]

Facebook Newsroom (2016) Our Mission [Online] <http://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/> [Accessed 27^th April 2016]

Mudambi, S, M. & Schuff, D. (2010) What makes a helpful online review? A study of customer reviews on Amazon.com, MIS Quarterly Vol 34 No 1

Travel Post (2016) Homepage [Online] <www.travelpost.com> [Accessed 26^th April 2016]

Telegraph (2015) Dressgate: If you saw THAT dress as white your brain was working overtime [Online] <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/03/15/dressgate-if-you-saw-that-dress-as-white-your-brain-was-working/> [Accessed 26^th April 2016]

USA Today (2015) Yelp falls 9% as Facebook tests local business reviews [Online] < http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/12/15/facebook-local-businesses-rating-yelp-angies-list/77364056/> [Accessed 25^th April 2016]