15 Benefits of email marketing for a rock solid strategy
By Kelly Forst June 2, 2024
Are you looking to accomplish more with your marketing budget? It may be time to throw an email marketing campaign into the mix. Email marketing has many benefits and offers an impressive return on investment (ROI) while being quick and easy to deploy—even if you don’t have much experience.
Still not convinced? Explore some key benefits of email marketing and consider how these could take your next marketing campaign up a notch—or twenty!
The foundation of a successful email marketing strategy
We know you’re asking the age-old question—is email marketing dead? And we’re here to tell you that not only is it not dead, but it is quite alive and well. It’s estimated that email generates an impressive $42 for every $1 spent, and 59% of people make decisions based on marketing emails that they have received—those aren’t numbers to bat an eye at.
So, if email isn’t part of your business’s marketing strategy, you could be missing out. And thankfully, building the foundation for a successful email marketing strategy isn’t that difficult.
Quite simply, all you need is a great landing page to attract and retain visitors, clear goals to guide your campaigns, and compelling content to engage your audience.
A well-designed landing page is the hub for email sign-ups and provides valuable content that interests your audience. Setting clear goals helps you measure the success of your campaigns and stay focused on what matters most.
Meanwhile, great content ensures that your emails are open and lead to meaningful interactions and conversions.
And with that, let’s get into our list of the 15 benefits you can expect from your email marketing efforts—when you do it right, of course.
1 – Build relationships with customers
Your existing email list presents a fantastic opportunity to build relationships with people already interested in your business. After all, these subscribers signed up for your email list because they are either customers or clients. Or, they may be prospective customers intrigued by the products and services you have to offer.
A great email marketing campaign allows you to take full advantage of that by communicating with members of your email list and building relationships with them.
And the more your audience sees that you are making an effort to reach out, provide you value
and deliver on your promises, the more likely they will be to stay loyal.
2 – Grow loyalty
We know what you’re thinking—isn’t building relationships with your customers the same as growing loyalty? Not exactly. The truth is that you can build a relationship with anybody. And you need to build relationships with your customers. Doing so helps keep you top of mind when they need the product or service you sell.
But loyalty goes far deeper. Loyalty occurs when those customers that you have worked so hard to build relationships would actually put their neck on the line for you—offering reviews, testimonials, and recommending you to a family member or friend.
3 – Boost customer engagement
Sticking with our theme here of customer relationships, another benefit of your email strategy is that it will grow engagement.
Customers may share your emails with others, something we’ll talk about a bit later, and they may even talk about you on social channels—and that’s some of the best advertising you can get. After all, 93% of customers trust recommendations from people that they know.
4 – Improve customer retention
And here is yet another benefit of your email marketing campaigns. You grow customer retention, too! And yes, this is different than loyalty and building relationships. A loyal customer will refer you to others, and that is something you totally want to grow your business. But you also want those customers to stick around for the long haul.
The longer a customer stays with you, the more they’ll spend and the more they’ll tell others about you. It’s totally a win-win!
5 – Stretch your marketing dollars
From a cost standpoint, email marketing is one of the most affordable means of digital marketing—making it an excellent option for smaller and growing businesses that may not have large marketing budgets. Email marketing offers excellent value for your dollar compared to print marketing (with its own design, printing, and postage costs).
And unlike other digital marketing forms (such as paid ads), very few costs are involved.
6 – Increase sales and profits
Another key benefit of email marketing is the return on investment your business can see. And like we said earlier, it is not uncommon for businesses of all sizes to see a return of about $42 for every dollar spent on a marketing campaign.
Whether you use an email marketing campaign to introduce a new product or service or to alert your audience to a special promotion, like the email below, your emails can drive sales and improve your company’s revenue.
7 – Personalize with segmentation
If you’re looking for a marketing strategy that allows you to really hone in on a specific audience, email marketing has you covered. Specifically, email list segmentation allows you to “filter” your email list based on several factors and then send out custom-tailored messages to each segment of your list.
Segmentation can be used, for example, to reach potential customers in a specific geographical area or to market to people who have shown interest in a specific product or service via email.
The possibilities here are endless—and when your audience receives messages that are tailored to them, they’ll be more likely to make a purchase.
8 – Own your list
Many business owners fail to realize an important benefit of email marketing: you own your company’s email list.
It’s something you’ve grown organically over time and does not rely on computer algorithms. The same cannot be said with other forms of marketing—such as social media marketing and paid ads, where people will only see your message based on the platform’s algorithm (which is out of your control).
With an email marketing list, you ultimately control what your subscribers see. And because there are 4.48 billion email users across the globe, email marketing lets you reach a global audience; perhaps no other form of marketing has a greater reach than email. That’s an important distinction that sets email marketing apart.
9 – Gather valuable insights
An email list is also valuable for gathering insights and feedback from your audience. You can use your email list to send out surveys—like the one below—about your products and services.
You can also use your email service provider to generate reports and analyses on the success of each marketing campaign. Check out what kind of click-through and conversion rates each campaign has reached—as well as your return on investment for each campaign.
Many marketers even use split testing, which involves sending two different emails and evaluating how each email performs. This lets you gather valuable insights on which message is most effective for a particular audience, which can then inform future marketing decisions.
10 – Drive website traffic
Another one of the top benefits of email marketing is driving more traffic to your website.
Include a strong call to action at the end of each email and a direct link to your website. Linking to blog posts or other relevant content can also effectively bring people to your website.
Driving traffic directly to your site from an email can increase your sales and conversions. An added bonus? You may get some more love from your search engine rankings. It’s a win-win.
11 – Automate tasks and save time
You’ve likely got enough on your plate as it is. Writing and sending one-off emails can be time-consuming.
That’s why automation is one of the top benefits of email marketing. And it’s where an email service provider can be worth the investment.
Specifically, an email marketing platform can automate some of your marketing tasks. Write your emails beforehand and then schedule the best day and time to send them—this can vary from business to business but is typically Thursday, followed by Tuesday, Wednesday, and around 10 a.m.
You can also use automation to set up a welcome email (or welcome email campaign) that people receive when they sign up to receive more communications from you.
For instance, this is the automated email I received seconds after signing up to win a month of free cereal from Magic Spoon:
The testimonials in the welcome email served as social proof that people love this cereal. They calmed my worries about spending a bit more on healthier cereal.
So, yeah, I bought the cereal.
12 – Encourage spreading the word
Email marketing is also unique in that your message can be easily shared with others, quickly and effortlessly expanding your brand’s potential reach.
Consider, for example, sending an email highlighting a special promotion or limited time sale. Several members of your email list forward the email to friends or family to take advantage of the sale. From there, you gain a few new customers (and possibly new email subscribers, too!).
There’s no harm in asking people to share the email with others who could benefit from it. We encourage sharing in every single blog newsletter we send out.
This is just one more example of the importance of email marketing in spreading the word and growing awareness of your brand.
13 – Grow brand awareness
Brand awareness refers to the extent to which customers are able to recognize and recall your brand. It’s about making your brand a familiar name in your target market.
Email marketing plays a big role in increasing brand awareness by regularly putting your brand in front of your audience—remember what we said earlier about customer retention and loyalty? It’s all coming together now, right?
While this might seem similar to driving customer engagement and loyalty, awareness focuses more on the long-term recognition and recall of your brand. Each time a subscriber sees your brand name in their inbox, it reinforces your brand image, making it more likely that your brand will come to mind when they need your products or services. This consistent exposure helps solidify your brand’s presence in a crowded market—and there is a lot of competition out there!
14 – Gain a competitive edge
Speaking of competition, your marketing campaigns can help you stay competitive. While you might think you are unique, there’s a good chance that someone else out there is selling something similar to or identical to what you have to offer. That’s just the way it is these days. So, you need to differentiate yourself and stand out from the crowd.
Your email marketing campaigns provide you with a great way to keep customers and prospective customers interested, educated, and even entertained. So stay in front of them.
15 – See instant results
Is there anything better than getting instant gratification?
Email marketing is one of the few channels where you can see results immediately.
As soon as you send out a marketing email, you can have subscribers making purchases. The same cannot always be said with other forms of marketing (such as print marketing), where you may have to wait days or even weeks to gauge the campaign’s success.
Why email marketing? The bottom line
These are just some of the countless benefits of email marketing for businesses of all sizes. Plus, you can take advantage of all these benefits without having extensive marketing knowledge or experience.
The key is finding the right email marketing platform to make your life easier and automate many tasks. From there, you can spend more time growing and managing your business while knowing your email marketing is handled.
Ready to get started? Start growing your list with AWeber for free today.
