It’s funny, the world of marketing moves incredibly fast. Tiktok ads, Meta ads, hiring influencers, there seems to be a new medium every single month popping up. But amongst all of these mediums, email marketing has largely remained a solid fixture and has remained unchanged. Email marketing, in its most basic form, is simply sending either a written or visual message… via email. While the medium has largely remained the same, its popularity has not.
Email marketing has fast become one of the most popular forms of Direct Marketing and in my opinion, has become the best. Here’s why:
The Cost Effectiveness of Email Marketing
Unlike traditional advertising methods that require significant investments in printing, broadcasting, or outdoor placements, email marketing is a fraction of the cost. All you are paying for is the subscription fee relating to the platform you are using such as Klaviyo.
There are a lot of numbers that get thrown around in the marketing space when it comes to the return on investment you get from email marketing. However, a safe estimate is that for every dollar you spend on email marketing, you typically get anywhere between $36 and $42 back.
Here are some key points to consider:
Low Initial Investment: Setting up an email marketing campaign requires minimal upfront costs. With various affordable email marketing platforms available, businesses can easily create and manage their campaigns without significant investment (I am talking under $20 a month).
Targeted Reach: Email marketing enables precise audience segmentation and targeting. By sending tailored messages to specific customer groups, you can increase the chances of conversion, ensuring that your marketing efforts focus on the most relevant recipients, reducing wastage and boosting cost-effectiveness.
Automation Efficiency: Email automation can streamline the marketing process and save time and resources. Automated drip campaigns, welcome sequences, and follow-up emails can nurture leads and engage customers without constant manual intervention, resulting in increased efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
Advanced Analytics
If you have ever sent flyers or printed posters, you know how hard tracking the results can be. Email marketing allows for the tracking of pretty much every metric you can imagine. Here are some quick examples that you can reference within your email marketing and what they can be used for:
Email Open Rates: Email marketing platforms enable you to monitor the open rates of your campaigns, indicating how many recipients opened the emails you sent. This metric is crucial as it gauges the effectiveness of your subject lines and overall email relevance. By analysing open rates, you can identify engaging subject lines and optimise future campaigns to increase open rates.
Click-Through Rates (CTR): CTR measures the percentage of recipients who clicked on a link within your email, leading them to your website or specific landing page. A high CTR signifies compelling content and effective calls-to-action (CTAs). By assessing CTR data, you can pinpoint which content resonates most with your audience, refine your messaging, and enhance the user journey to encourage more click-throughs.
Conversion Rates: Tracking conversion rates is vital for understanding the ultimate success of your email marketing efforts. A conversion could be a purchase, a sign-up, or any other desired action you want recipients to take. By correlating conversion rates with different email campaigns, you can determine which strategies lead to the highest conversion rates, thus optimising your approach to achieve better results.
Segmentation Insights: Email marketing analytics can reveal how different customer segments respond to your campaigns. By segmenting your email list based on demographics, behavior, or preferences, you can customise content to target each group effectively. Analysing segment-specific data allows you to tailor future campaigns, delivering more relevant content to specific audience subsets, and consequently, improving engagement rates.
Engagement Patterns: Monitoring engagement patterns helps you understand when your audience is most receptive to receiving and interacting with emails. By observing the time of day and day of the week with the highest engagement rates, you can schedule future email deliveries for optimal impact. This strategic approach ensures that your messages reach the right people at the right time, boosting overall campaign effectiveness.
Personalisation
Personalisation is where email marketing really has the potential to shine, especially for businesses in New Zealand. With email, you can tailor content to suit individual preferences and needs which then strengthens brand-customer relationships.
By employing personalisation, businesses can connect with their audience on a more intimate level, making customers feel valued and understood. Addressing recipients by their names and sending relevant product recommendations based on their past purchases or browsing history demonstrates a genuine effort to cater to their unique interests.
Naturally, this leads to increased engagement, better conversions, and more sales.
In the New Zealand market, where local businesses often thrive on close-knit communities and word-of-mouth recommendations, personalisation can help foster brand loyalty and advocacy. Sending personalised birthday greetings, exclusive offers, or updates that align with customers’ preferences cultivates a sense of belonging, resulting in long-term customer retention.
Conclusion
Now obviously I am biased when it comes to email marketing, but I do firmly believe that it is one of the most effective and direct forms of marketing currently out there.
If you have any questions or want to learn more about email marketing, click here
Written by Gavin Hewitson, founder of the email marketing agency In-box.co.nz