Why Use Email Marketing and how it Can Best Suit Your Business
By: Ben Prantl
Email Marketing
When I first check my email each day, I find multiple emails from people I’ve never heard of, and I ask myself “who are you, and how did you get my email?” Or maybe you went out to a certain place one time and you still get multiple emails from that certain brand a week - this is Buffalo Wild Wings for me.
Those people sending them are marketers. They’re trying to push their business, and they figure a good way to do that is via email. And they’re onto something. When an interesting email comes into my inbox, I’m willing to look at it.
Email marketing is a direct and simple approach to marketing, enabling you to reach an individual directly rather than trying to reach an individual in a vast group (think of a commercial as a form of the latter). Per Erica Santiago, email marketing is a great way to build relationships, boost brand awareness and market your products, among other things.
Conversion Rate
Mailbutter has excellent statistics for marketers about email marketing. One such piece of information is that, in 2023, 41% came from mobile phones. Another essential bit is that the average email conversion rate is 3%, which is well above average. The average conversion rate is 2.7%, per ruleranalytics, so a conversion rate of 3% is very good.
“Hold on,” I can hear you saying, “what’s conversion rate?” Good question! Conversion rate is the percentage of user actions taken after total clicks on a display ad or other digital asset. Basically it’s what rate of emails - or other methods of marketing - convert to clicks to your website or app.
Why Emails?
But why use email marketing? The conversion rate is good, sure, but the biggest reason is the prevalence of emails. A study found that 58% of people check their email first thing in the morning. The average email return on investment is $38. I confess that I also check my email as one of the first things I do each morning. The average email user has 1.75 emails, and if they’re anything like me, they’re active on all of them. Email marketing gives your business a much bigger net to catch more fish, while not wasting much else time.
This all goes to show that emails are well worth your time as a marketer.
Using Emails for Retention
I mentioned how I get multiple emails per week from Buffalo Wild Wings. What they, and other brands, are doing is trying to retain me as a customer. They want me to choose them over other restaurants in the area like Outback, Chipotle, Subway and others. Per Khalid Saleh, 70% of marketers agree retaining customers costs less. Maybe a penny saved is worth about 1.5 pennies earned.
Emails as a form of retention also keeps the brand on the brain of the customer. I’m thinking about Buffalo Wild Wings way more than I would be due to the amount of emails I get from them. We’ve already established the prevalence of emails in the population, and it’s worth noting the majority of people give emails to brands as a part of their rewards systems. If you have a customer, using emails is an excellent way to keep them your customer, and it’s better to save the customers you have than to have to replace them.
How to Craft a Retention Email
The best way to go about this is starting with a welcome email. We’ve all received these. They say something along the lines of “welcome to our team” or whatnot. These start the process. Other kinds of emails include promotional emails and feature-announcement emails. One of the more popular emails is a reminder of items in your cart. Amazon and Fanatics each do a good job of these. People may have put off a purchase and forgotten about it, and these emails help to reel them back in and remind them about making a purchase.
Always remember to do thank-you emails. After a purchase or some big event, thank your customers to help build brand recognition and loyalty.