5 Reasons Why You Should Be Email Marketing

How are you spreading the word about your business? Social media? Word-of-mouth? Good ‘ole billboards? If you’re a small business owner or self-employed and just getting started, you definitely don’t want to neglect email marketing. Most businesses seem to put the most stock into social media, so you’d think that email marketing—or email in general—has fallen by the wayside, but it’s actually stronger than ever. In fact, email is so ubiquitous that we’re on track to hit 269 billion emails sent this year. That’s a pretty convincing statement about email’s relevance in today’s world.

So what can email marketing do for you? Think about it this way: If 89% of people are checking their email at least once per day, you want your business to be up front and center so your customers are seeing you often. When your brand is always on their minds, that’ll mean more business for you, which is awesome. Consider these reasons for how email marketing can help your business before getting started:

1. Building your brand

Emails you send to your customers or audience are the perfect creative platform for you to build your brand. Basically, this is where you showcase your identity and credibility so your customers have a solid image in their mind when they think of your business. There’s plenty of wiggle room depending on the campaign you’re executing, but some things will remain the same throughout all campaigns or daily emails like your logo, voice, or color palettes that really enhance brand recognition.

2. Boosting your social, web traffic, and engagement

There’s no doubt you’re using, or plan to use, social media for your business either to update or keep in touch with your customers. But did you know that email is much better than social media when it comes to customer acquisition? Don’t be mistaken though: you can, and should, combine the two to create an unstoppable marketing force. Use email marketing to boost your social media following and activity by simply offering shareable content. Have a blog? Send some samples of the content to your email list and encourage sharing with easy access buttons and links. Host webinars? Consider a monetary incentive as a reward for sharing with others. Offering shareable content will grow your email list too. The more eyes on your content, the more social followers and web traffic you’ll receive. The name of the game is engagement, and you want as many as people as possible interacting with your brand on a daily basis because it’ll mean more business—and money—for you.

Want more action on your social media? You can boost it with email marketing!

3. Connecting with your customers quickly, easily, and cheaply

More than 90% of consumers like receiving emails from business with which they do business. Knowing that you’d be naïve to think you could get by without some sort of email marketing campaign with a figure like that. Other forms of marketing require a ton of time and effort to put through, especially when you’re working through a middleman, like the person who owns the billboard. You can take more control over your marketing with email marketing. It goes without saying that you will need to invest significant time into an email marketing campaign if you want it to be beneficial, but you’ll save money in the long run. And since people can access their email from just about anywhere these days, you’ll always be able to get your message right to your customers’ inboxes. Good deal.

Eliminate the middleman and get your message right to your customers’ inboxes.

4. Personalizing the experience 

Try to remember the last billboard you saw or even piece of direct marketing mail you received. Did you think it was speaking directly to you? Did it have anything for you based on your experiences with that business? Chances are probably not. After all, you can’t exactly personalize marketing like that. Email marketing, however, gives businesses the opportunity to make their emails personal for their customers. GMass and other email automation tools allow you to build email lists that you can segment based on common traits. This means you can tailor your email marketing to give your customers something related to their experience and will be of value to them. Consider sending welcome emails to new subscribers or customers or special offers to loyal customers. The sky’s the limit.

5. Getting the metrics you need to move your business forward

Business 101 tells you that you don’t want to sink time or money into something that’s not going to work. There’s no way to tell if something is going to work unless you can measure its success or failure. Email marketing is one of the most measurable forms of marketing there is, and tracking email has never been easier. When you use intuitive email tools, you can track open and click-through rates and monitor your success like a pro. The information gathered from your email tracking efforts will give you the metrics you need to make better business decisions.

Email marketing makes tracking your success as easy as pie.

Ready to get started?

 A solid email marketing campaign is the way to go, especially if you run a small business or are self-employed when you want to see consistent growth. There’s no doubt you’d see success from a great campaign. Once you’ve got a plan, make sure you have a smart email automation and mail-merging system in place to make the whole process a breeze so you can focus on your business.

Olivia Miller is a freelance writer living in a suburb of Pittsburgh. She cares far too much about literally everything. As a newbie adult, she’s just trying to find her place in the world. Find her on LinkedIn.