Last week I shared a pretty big disappointment in my business: I didn’t get enough students enrolled in my workshop at our local community college, and it ended up needing to be canceled. Today I’m diving deeper into why.
If you are more of a visual or auditory learner (or if you just wanna see my face) check out this YouTube video!
I didn’t make an effective case for why small business owners need to have an email marketing program.
It is pretty hard to get people enrolled in a course on email marketing essentials if they don’t think they need to do email marketing in order to be successful.
Now, don’t get me wrong. There are plenty of businesses that are wildly successful, and they don’t “do” email. But they could be even more successful if they were to invest the time and energy (and a little bit of money, too) in making email marketing a part of their marketing mix.
Here’s why:
The dollars make sense.
A study by eMarketer reported that the average return on investment for email marketing is 122%. I know social media marketing gets a lot of attention these days, but email marketing is kicking social’s butt with an ROI four times higher than any other digital marketing channel.
Email Marketing is direct
Back in 2018, Facebook made changes to its algorithm that DRAMATICALLY impacted business post organic reach. According to some research, only about 3-5% of followers would see posts from businesses that they actually WANTED to stay up to date with.
Email marketing doesn’t play like that. The most recent research by Campaign Monitor puts email open rates averaging around 18%. My clients regularly enjoy open rate percentages in the 30s. With automated emails (things like triggered welcome campaigns, purchase receipts, etc.) that number spikes up to closer to 70%!
You aren’t at the mercy of an algorithm when it comes to email marketing. Instead, you have power over your send time and day and can optimize your subject line to increase open rates. Plus, you have the benefit of your track record delivering value to help increase the interest of your subscribers whenever they get a message from you.
Email makes you smarter
Within moments of launching a campaign, you can get a pretty good idea of what is working for your audience. Nearly all modern email service providers give you real-time feedback on who is opening, what they click on, and what they buy or end up doing as a result of your messaging. With this feedback, you can optimize your email strategy for the next send, or even make in-campaign adjustments like tweaking a landing page to increase the likelihood your customer will do whatever you are trying to help them do.
PLUS
If you’re trying to reach millennials, email marketing is where it’s at. SendinBlue recently did a study that revealed 63% of millennials prefer email as the top channel to communicate with retailers. The next closest medium? Text at 14%.
But most importantly, email is easy.
Small business platforms like MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, and new players like FloDesk are all making it super intuitive to build a responsive, effective email campaign without any technical no-how. You can use a free graphic design platform like Canva to make beautiful imagery for your campaigns if that’s the way you wanna roll, or keep it simple and send letter-style campaigns. Gone are the days when you needed an in-house graphic design team and firm knowledge of HTML in order to run a consistent email marketing program. You just need some words, some goals, and a few free (or nearly-free) tools.
SUMMIN’ IT UP
Every business can benefit from an email marketing program. I believe email marketing should be at the heart of every business marketing plan, especially if they want to increase customer value. Email offers a solid return on investment, has incredibly direct reach (especially among millennials), and offers business owners valuable insight into what works and what doesn’t. You don’t need to be a tech wizard to execute an email marketing program. There are wonderful free resources to support you, YouTube tutorials and email marketing mavens like myself who are dying to help.
Are you convinced? What am I missing? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.