Are you a small business and looking for ways to increase your visibility (online) and drive more sales?

Why not consider the role of E-mail Marketing?

But, first… what is E-mail Marketing?
E-mail is a direct form of permission based CRM (customer relationship management) within marketing, that enables a message(s) to be sent to a group of potential or existing customers via email, in order to start a conversation and or relationship between the company and customers (Social Media Today, 2014).

Although, you might consider E-mail Marketing to be ‘a thing of the past’ and an out-dated medium of direct communication, it is considered to be the most effective online-channel for ROI (return on investment) (Charlton, 2014: Littlechild, 2014). E-mails create impressions that lead to sales through other routes from the E-mail (Middleton-Hughes, 2012), and are useful at telling companies the story customers make digitally and as a result 85% of marketers cite E-mail as the most effective lead-generation tactic (Social Media Today, 2014).

Ratings for the best digital channels of ROI

Source: Charlton (2014)

But still you might be thinking ‘’WHY should I even consider E-mail as a channel?’’

Well… E-mail Marketing has a multitude of benefits when marketing to both B2B and B2C audiences.

15 Benefits of E-mail Marketing:

• Low set-ups costs (Ellis-Chadwick & Doherty, 2010)
• Flexible across platforms (Rospigliosi, 2014)
• Fast campaign deployment (Rospigliosi, 2014)
• Measurable, through analytical programmes via bounce, delivery, click and conversion rates (Rospigliosi, 2014)
• Data driven (Rospigliosi, 2014)
• Integration with other media (such as social media) (Rospigliosi, 2014)
• E-mails offers great exposures than other channels, as it waits in the inbox, and has higher exposure than blogs and social media platforms (Amprewave Media, 2015)
• E-mail is highly focused and targeted (Amprewave Media, 2015: Shout it out Design, 2015)
• ROI of 4,300% (Social Media Today, 2014)
• Improves customer communications and loyalty (Bustos, 2015)
• Ability to drive high levels of traffic and conversion (into sales) (Rospigliosi, 2014)
• Interactivity (that often invites immediate respond action) (Rospigliosi, 2014)
• Easily personalised (Ellis-Chadwick & Doherty, 2010)
• E-mail is ranked as the #1 communication channel by consumers for initial introduction to a product/ service, learning about a product/service, and post-purchase follow-up about a product/service (Social Media Today, 2014)
• Leads to higher conversion rates (at least 3X as high as social media conversion rates) (Social Media Today, 2014)

Disadvantages of E-mail Marketing
Although E-mail Marketing has many benefits in potentially aiding your organisation, disadvantages are also associated with E-mails, which is something you need to consider. E-mail Marketing messages can be deemed annoying or too frequent, which can prove hard for marketeers to know exactly when to send their E-mails (which could lead customers to believe your email is ‘spam’ (Savvy SME, 2013), and affect your company’s website rankings and reputation amongst customers).

Other disadvantages include:

• Deliverability, E-mails may not reach the intended audience (Small Business, 2015) sent to spam inbox, or customers addresses change (Savvy SME, 2013)
• E-mails are often deleted before being opened, reducing the opportunity to gain new customers (Email Lists, 2011)
• Design issues, due to different devices and screen sizes can cause any graphics or layouts to appear different
• Response decay (Rospigliosi, 2014)
• Resource intensive (someone would need to write, distribute and assess the out-going E-mails, which would take time to learn) (Rospigliosi, 2014)
• E-mail Marketing often can disengage readers, leading to unsubscribing and alienating remaining customers (Savvy SME, 2013)

However, the above disadvantages can often be avoided through prior planning and learning from previous experiences.

In any case… E-mail Marketing is trial and error process, the advantages and disadvantages will only be truly applicable if research is conducted on the audience and tested for success or failure.

However, as evident in this blog, the positives FAR outweigh the negatives. So, why don’t you start your email marketing today?

…Want to know more about E-mail marketing campaigns? Watch this space for future blog posts…

References

Amprewave Media (2015) Build your audience with email marketing [Online] < http://bit.ly/17vbZy3 > [accessed 2 February 2015]

Charlton, G. (2014) ‘Email remains the best digital channel for ROI’. Econsultancy, 31 March 2014. [Online] < http://bit.ly/19g4D1U > [accessed 20 January 2015]

Ellis-Chadwick, F., & Doherty, N. F. (2012) Web advertising: The role of e-mail marketing. Journal of Business Research. Vol. 65, No. 6, p843-848

Email Lists (2011) Email marketing: Advantages and disadvantages [Online] < http://bit.ly/1uRwlvj > [accessed 12 February 2015]

Littlechild, D. (2014) ‘Email marketing best practise guide’. Econsultancy. 14 March 2014 [Online] < http://bit.ly/1iN9JQl > [accessed 12 February 2015]

Middleton-Hughes, A. (2012) ‘Why email marketing is king.’ Harvard Business Review. 9 August 2012 < http://bit.ly/175hZfB > [accessed 9 February 2015]

Rospigliosi, A. (2014) ‘Email Marketing’ [Lecture notes] Brighton: University of Brighton Business School, unpublished

Savvy SME (2013) What are the advantages and disadvantages of email marketing? [Online] < http://bit.ly/1vs6fdl > [accessed 10 January 2015]

Small Business (2015) Advantages and disadvantages of email marketing [Online] < http://bit.ly/1D0JIcq > [accessed 14 January 2015]

Shout it out Design (2015) Top 10 advantages of email marketing [Online] < http://bit.ly/1CqjONa > [accessed 25 January 2015]

Social Media Today (2014) Attraction 101: Content marketing [e-book] Available at < http://bit.ly/1CtgC4r > [accessed 12 January 2015]