It comes as no surprise to know that all different ways of online marketing including social media, SEO content and advertisements have been used by marketing individuals to boost their site and related products. But when it comes to selling products, personal touch that includes a human interaction is much needed. As a matter of fact, most conversions take place through emails compared to any other channels. Emails give a chance to converse with targeted customers and provide better convincing ability to push them into purchasing the product.
How does Email Marketing function?
There is an umpteen need to sharpen your e-mail strategy if you wish to sell products. The Direct Marketing Association has even stated that ROI from emails is an amazing 4300%. It has also been noted that more than 50% of people do notice marketing messages that they receive and also avail to the discounts and special offers. These people are the ones who often agree to be a part of the mailing list from specific businesses, so it’s time for new businesses to step forward and build your own mailing list.
How does Email Marketing work in conjunction with Social Media?
If you take the case of any small business that plans to market their products online, they will generally use Twitter and Facebook. The reason being these social media websites are free and displays posts to everyone who has access to them. But deep down these sites aren’t really free since their paid advertisers do get an edge over advertisement sections. Is your content good and profitable enough for all to utilize the cyberspace available on these sites? Explore all the possibilities during strategizing the marketing plan.
It might so happen that you gain a noticeable popularity on your Facebook Fan Page but when it comes to noticing the little slot on the right of FB screen there might be hardly any individuals who actually check it. So the question remains, are you and your product noticed at all?
Twitter on the other hand is more like a forum where your tweets might be lost like a needle in haystack. The tweets are normally perceived and classified depending on its value and may or may not appear for specific keyword search. It is all in the hands of developer as to what filters they choose, but if the business has no investment in advertising on their portal it may all seem to go in waste. In short, the tweets will just be on the account without a purpose and you cannot risk such neglect with your target audience.
Converse with your target consumers!
You should engage and make conversation with the target consumers which provides a very personalized touch through a suitable medium. A predictive analytics platform specially meant for e-commerce marketing teams name, Custora provided a statistic that says that 72 million customers shop on more than 80 retail sites in total. This means that the online retailers have benefitted more through emails than FB or Twitter. Facebook and Twitter are in the lower bottom of growth charts of customer acquisition channels and email marketing tops the chart followed closely by CPC (Costs Per Click). However, the most preferred methods of customers to purchase products remains following links via organic searches.
Custora also provided another vital study which states that the average customer lifetime value (CLV) of customers gained through email was higher than the ones who come through the social media channel. In terms of the figures, 12% of email acquired customers stayed loyal and bought more of the company’s products while only 1% of FB acquired customers purchased the product.
Email Marketing vs. Twitter
Founder of AppSumo, Noah Kagan studied an experiment wherein he tweeted some information and also sent it to everyone on his mailing list. According to information received from Justin Premick, he received a total of 109 clicks from a list of 13000 Twitter followers. But his mailing list that comprised of 3547 people gave him 882 clicks in return making it very clear what works and what does not.
It’s a simple logic; emails are more personal, like the little Ed boxes on the white picket fences. People are always excited to receive mails and emails provide them a similar experience as opposed to Twitter. It may happen so that few targeted audiences do not even access FB or Twitter regularly and your post might just go into the old posts collection making it useless. But people do check their emails on a regular basis and chances of them noticing it is higher in any case.
How does Email Marketing survive through the new Google algorithm update?
Google Panda update has proved to be a lot fearful for SEO systems since it nullifies many older methods that are used. Padding up the content a lot can result into penalization and it can be seen that article marketing, link buying and similar link harnessing strategies have been relegated over the course of time. Google’s Pandas and Penguins have the ability to even check guest posts, infographics and also press releases. All these things make appearance in an organic search harder by the time but customers do still prefer it over any other method.
That is why it is important to change strategies and use something that works well i.e. E-mails. It should be ensured that the emails are regarding sincere marketing and the customer will remain loyal in the mailing list and a fruitful customer-seller relationship can be maintained online.
Do note the two most important parts of email content marketing –
- Gathering mailing list
- Produce unique, true and appealing content
Email Marketing and Content Building
Content generation and building is a process that shall continue growing. But it is imperative that you engage wider audience by increasing the content mediums like videos, podcast, etc. There can be a lot of benefits availed by having a skilled team that specialize in searching, writing and creating interesting graphics, animations and presentations. Also it is important to keep someone who can provide you with an attractive website that is maintained with ease. This website can be used to collect the visitor’s mail IDs to build a mailing list of your own. And with time there will be regular customers visiting your site and receive your marketing mails in their inboxes.
Keep the content in your emails simple
Whenever a customer opens your email they should not frown upon the fact that you are only trying to sell them something. It should also contain some interesting and useful information along with the product details. Also let them know about the new products in line and provide them with some offers to boost customer loyalty. Try to get them to write testimonials and remind them to shop with you if that hasn't been the case lately. Also keep it simple and let them have a joyful experience while browsing your products and content without necessarily buying.
Author Bio:
I’m Ramya, a freelance web designer/writer based in India. I have worked in a number of SEO projects and have a good insight into creating a web design with SEO techniques incorporated in it. Apart from web designing and SEO I also contribute high-quality articles to top class websites and blogs. Besides business I am part-time wildlife photographer and generally an extrovert, I also like travelling to different destinations.
