Email is still the most popular means of online communication

Depending on who you speak to there are differing opinions on email marketing. People unfamiliar to email marketing often don’t understand what all the fuss is about. It’s old fashioned, boring and with so many new methods of communicating such as Twitter, Facebook and blogs why bother with email?

Well the fact is the number of emails sent per day still outnumbers Facebook posts, tweets and web pages four to one – even excluding SPAM.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t bother with other types of marketing, but the problem is unless you have a lot of followers, and customers who are going to discuss your products you could be wasting your time. When it comes to email there are over 730 million business inboxes in the UK (that’s only a quarter of all inboxes). This means your prospects and customers are using email. Why not put your focus on an area you know works?

Why email marketing works

Whilst it’s clear email is the most popular way to communicate with your customers and prospects there are always other things to consider to make the most of your results. Direct marketing is much easier to target, track and measure; also making it is far more cost effective.

If you’re targeting your audiences correctly, they’re hearing what they want to hear. If you have the ability to track your emails you can monitor exactly what has been opened, read and clicked on. This information is extremely valuable and can all be utilised by your customer facing team to get more leads and close more sales.

Ultimately, with this knowledge, not only could you enhance potential opportunities but you could also analyse exactly which campaigns are successful and which aren’t. This provides accurate reasoning on where you should invest resource and money and where you should avoid activities, altogether focussing efforts and increasing your ROI.

How to make sure email marketing works for you

Email marketing is different for everyone, what works for one group of customers won’t necessarily work for another. However this series will look at the fundamentals of email marketing and provide advice on what to and what not to avoid.

• How to dress (your emails) for success – get more opened, more read and more clicks
• Hints tips and advice on avoiding SPAM filters
• How to avoid unsubscribes without falling foul of the law
• Taking action: funnel results to plan your follow up