Digital marketing is not an option in the modern business world, it’s a necessity. It doesn’t matter if you are running an online business or an offline brick-and-mortar store, or both, you need to invest in digital marketing in order to grow your online presence, visibility, and authority. Because after all, your customers will research you online before deciding to reach out or buy anything, and you have to make sure that they can find you with ease. That’s why SEO is so important for example.
However, another key component of your digital marketing strategy should be email marketing. Nowadays, email marketing is one of the most powerful digital tools you have at your disposal to reach new customers, nurture meaningful relationships with existing ones, and simply take your company forward on numerous fronts.
In case you need more convincing, let’s elaborate on these claims and talk about the key reasons why email marketing should be an integral part of your overarching strategy.
Create a direct line of communication
Business leaders are always looking for new and more effective ways to establish meaningful relationships with customers and keep the conversation going, when the solution has been staring them in the face all along. Some predicted that email will become obsolete in the early 2000s and that it will fall by the wayside, but nowadays email has grown to become one of the most powerful marketing tools in existence.
Why? Simply because the potential for personalization and two-way communication is unmatched by any other marketing method.
If you are looking to personalize the customer’s experience and make your outreach strategy much more effective, then you need to use personalized emails to create truly engaging stories, promotions, announcements, and content for your audience. What’s more, keep in mind that email is unmatched when it comes to direct brand-customer communication, as you have the opportunity to engage with them right there in their personal inbox.
Bring customers back to your website
Business leaders in the Ecommerce space in particular can have a difficult time maximizing the value of a repeat customer, while converting a new website visitor can often seem like a near-impossible task. The problem that many E-commerce brands face is cart abandonment, when a potential customer puts something in their cart but opts out at the last moment. Instead of simply letting them go without a fight and losing out on a sale, you should use email marketing in conjunction with your other lead magnets to bring people to your site and inspire them to finish their purchase.
The best part is that you can automate your emails to reach out to customers immediately after they abandon their shopping carts, but you can also schedule them as regular reminders in the following days and weeks to inspire people to come back. This is a powerful way to increase conversions and capitalize on what would otherwise have been a lost sale.
Take your marketing forward by sharing Gmail contacts
While many marketers and leaders will focus only on the most obvious benefits of email marketing, you want to look at things from an internal perspective, and realize that you have an opportunity here to improve internal collaboration, productivity, and results. Your teams are managing vast amounts of customer data, and you have a lot of email contacts that you need to manage and sift through to uncover, nurture, and bring leads to fruition.
Now imagine what your marketing, sales, and support teams would be able to achieve if everyone were able to share Google contacts quickly and easily with each other. You can do this now with innovative tools like Shared Contacts for Gmail that allow you and your teams to view, edit, and share your contacts between teams and departments to unify your data and collaborate more efficiently.
Put into perspective, this means that your marketing team can forward the contacts that have a high chance of converting to your sales experts who can then take over and seal the deal. This is the way to use email internally for conversions and success.
Collect invaluable customer feedback quickly
Another great way you can use email is to collect customer data. People might not want to take a survey or answer your questions on your website or social media, but they might just respond to a personalized email. They want to feel valued and appreciated, so if you tell them that their opinion is important to you and that you value them as an individual, they will feel incentivized to help you grow and succeed.
Email is the most powerful marketing channel
Last but not least, keep in mind that email is growing in popularity with each passing year, and right now it’s 40 times more effective at customer acquisition than certain social media channels. Think about that for a moment, social media is a powerful tool for engagement and brand visibility, but email has the personal touch and the narrative necessary to inspire people to become your customers. This fact alone should be incentive enough for you to prioritize email marketing in your overarching digital marketing strategy.
Over to you
In the end, there is no denying that email marketing is important for your success and growth, but only if you do it right. Make sure to use these tips to fuel your email strategy and use this timeless tool to help your company become a true force in your industry.
