email marketing
Timely, consistent and targeted email marketing communication with your customer database is critical to generating leads if you offer a service and generating sales if you’re in the business of selling goods.
A key element of online marketing strategy, sending well targeted and enticing promotional emails to your database, can be quick and cost effective. And because email marketing is online and measurable, you can report directly on your return on investment.
Whilst email marketing has been around for a number of years, it’s still predominantly used for five main online marketing purposes. These include:
- Increase sales conversions
- Generate repeat sales
- Up-sell and cross sell products and services
- Branding
- Increase overall website traffic
Often potential customers need to hear from your business several times before they will decide to buy from you. Research suggests that on average, people need to have seven interactions with you before they will buy. Electronic newsletter marketing offers one of the easiest and cost effective ways to increase the number of communications your database receives. Email marketing can also assist with your social media marketing too by promoting your Facebook, Twitter, YouTube pages etc.
At itsimple, we can incorporate contact forms and email newsletters into your website functionality, so that you can continually work at building your database and track your performance. Not only that, we can work with you to help plan and define your email marketing strategy, as well as assist with email copywriting and design.
Building relationships with customers is a vital part of a well run and lucrative business. Whether the business does most of its trade online or offline. Staying in contact with the people that are interested in your services, and especially people who have purchased from you before, is something all companies should do.
Periodic communications between you and the potential customer is vital to building brand loyalty and brand recognition. As well as building these relationships, email marketing can help you keep these valuable individuals informed at all times as to what is happening with the brand. It may be that you have a promotional sale, it may be that you have a new product or service available, it could even be a simple hello or a thank you for their custom.
Email marketing also allows you to target different types of people. Customers who buy certain items or services, and customers who have shown interest in certain areas, can be targeted with specific content designed to attract their attention. Email marketing can be easily tailored for the individual to allow you to operate in this way. This targeted email marketing is also much more likely to be of interest to the person reading the emails, since you have offered them a look at something which piques their interest specifically, and not just a generic email.
Another benefit is forwarding. People like to share the things they have received via email marketing. If you offer a discount coupon in your email marketing, that can be forwarded and shared with friends, the potential to reach new people is massive. If this email marketing strategy is used in conjunction with social media, the possibilities are endless. People who refer you to a friend are possibly the most valuable type of free advertisement. When we are looking to spend money, we often feel more confident if someone we know and trust has "dipped their toe in the water". You can also offer some form of benefit to the people who refer their friends, which prompts them to make a purchase.
Cross-selling is also one of the major benefits of email marketing. If someone has purchased something from you, there's a good chance there will be products or services that can be combined with their purchase. This could be in the form of accessories, or if it's a service it could be additional services that will enhance the main purchase. Cross-selling is a very targeted way to sell, since you know the person you are contacting already has their main purchase and could use other products. Fast food outlets do this all the time by offering drinks or fries. They do this because they know it works. For a person who has already made a purchase, adding additional purchases is a much smaller step for a customer to take, than their initial purchase.
Email marketing can also be of benefit offline. Over half of people who have received an email promotion from a store then go on to make offline purchases in the future. Although E-commerce is often thought as the easiest way to shop, some people just like to visit a store and see the goods in person. They also don't have to wait to receive their items. There are some businesses where it's not practical for them to do most of their business online, this helps prevent them from being left out in the cold.
Here at itsimple, we have extensive experience with email marketing, having devised email marketing strategies in the past for many businesses, across many sectors. We have used this experience to better learn what works and what doesn't. We have spent many hours analysing the results of each of these strategies and we can give you the benefit of our hard-earned knowledge. With our service you will get a comprehensive strategy that will provide a noticeable increase in revenue. We will not only provide this strategy, but help devise the content of the emails with your input.
Using our services will increase your customer base, site traffic, revenue, brand loyalty and brand recognition. It will help you learn more about your customers and will keep you at the forefront of their mind. When all things are considered, this is one of the cheapest forms of advertising, if done correctly it also has the potential to be of the most benefit.
By choosing us to work on this marketing for you, you are also able to prioritise you time elsewhere. Not only that, but you will also save money on other forms of marketing that can be far more costly for the amount of extra revenue they produce.
