7 Top Reasons to Use Email Marketing Campaigns

Email marketing is one of the best ways to promote yourself and your business, whether you have a brick-and-mortar store or a strictly online business. It is relatively simple and easy to use, and it can help you reach an unprecedented number of potential customers while staying in touch with current customers.

When you’re talking about inbound marketing, there are many ways that you can use email beyond just sending a company newsletter. A regular newsletter that’s full of valuable information is a great start. But there are opportunities to send individual marketing emails will offers, to create multiple drip campaigns based on the customer’s interest, and even create complicated automated campaigns that help work a customer down the funnel to a sale.

One of my favorite email automation tactics is the simple abandoned cart email that’s sent after someone has added something to their cart, but didn’t finalize their order. This simple tactic is a great way to use email to close a sale and all you have to do is setup the functionality and never touch it again. It’s just really surprising to me how many companies aren’t even using the most simple email techniques available to them. So I wanted to spend a little bit of time here today talking about email, and to hopefully get you thinking about the opportunities.

To get started, here are seven great reasons to consider using email in your marketing strategy:

1. Getting started with email can be really easy! Setting up an email marketing campaign doesn’t take years or twenty-seven board meetings. It is simple to do, especially if you have a little bit of help from content and strategy from a professional web marketing company. The tools are already out there and if you’re just getting started you can use a service like MailChimp.com for free. You can also use amazing services like Hubspot too when you’re ready to take things to the next level.

2. Email can increase your website traffic. Unlike a traditional direct mail marketing campaign, which might only draw a little bit of traffic to your website, email can create a lot of direct traffic. This is mainly because you can embed links to your site within your emails. If your subscribers just need to click on a link to get to your site instead of booting up the computer and typing in a link, they’ll be more likely to actually visit your website and take some action.

3. Email keeps customers, and potential customers in the loop. Sending monthly or weekly emails about specials and business updates, or a company newsletter full of news and advice is a great way to stay top-of-mind and keep customers coming back to your site over and over. Instead of sending out expensive traditional mail that will never get opened or end up in the trash, you can send emails that customers can easily scan and directly take action on.

To confirm, this isn’t to say that traditional mailings don’t work. As of 2021, they still do. And if you can combine direct mail with email then you’re going to get the best response rates. But if you’re just getting started, and budget is a concern, email is an excellent first step to connect with your customers.

4. Email is cheap. With email marketing, you don’t have to pay for printing and postage, which means that it’s one of the cheapest ways to stay in contact with your customers. As I mentioned previously, it can even be free if you’re just starting out and only have a few thousand people on your list. If you believe in Kevin Kelly’s theory that you only need 1000 true fans, a free account might be all that you ever need.

5. Email is voluntary. Sometimes you can just annoy people by sending unsolicited information in the mail. What you want to do, ideally, is send information to people who have actively confirmed that they want to hear from you. Email allows you to do this through various opt-in methods – and requiring someone to confirm that they really want to be on your list is a great best practice. In this way, your audience has actually given you permission and confirmed that, yes, they are interested in hearing from you. This takes things to a whole new level, because now, when you put time and energy into your campaigns, you know you’re not just stabbing in the dark. You’re sending out emails to your fans! Even if people don’t take action every time, they’ve confirmed that they want to keep hearing from you. And just as long as you keep consistently providing value, many people will convert to actual customers or recurring customers over time.

6. Email is real-time communication. Sending an email takes almost no time at all. Of course, writing and proofing a professional-looking email letter can take a little bit of time, but it won’t take you any time at all to send out that email once you’ve got it finished. This means that your email campaign can be in potential customers’ inboxes in absolutely no time. It’s a great way to tweak your campaigns in real time and offer last minute news, advice or offers.

7. Email strengthens relationships. Keeping in touch with customers and potential customers, on a regular basis, with email, is a great way to build trust and endear yourself to them. People love to feel connected to other people and companies that they’re interested in. And by sending out regular emails full of value and personality, your customers will feel connected to you and your business, which will slowly build trust and draw them back, time and again.

Trust is a critical element to building a strong and lasting relationship, and it’s usually the top reason why someone would want to buy from you or work with you. Email  is one of the best ways to get there over time.

So that’s it. We’re just scratching the surface here but I hope this has been helpful and it’s started to turn the wheels in your head about the possibilities that email can offer. There are endless opportunities, strategies and tactics to explore so talk with a professional or just go out there and sign-up for a free account and start encouraging people to subscribe. Every subscriber is a fan. Every subscriber could mean recurring revenue and sales. Every subscriber could even become a friend over time. All you have to do is start, and the hurdles to do so are pretty small.