Email Marketing - Why do you need to do it?

Email marketing is an extremely cost-effective marketing tool and when used properly, can catapult your sales to new levels. Whether your business is found solely online or is a mom-and-pop store whose greatest technology is the thirty-year-old cash register, your business can definitely benefit from email marketing. In this age of high technology, you can use email almost as an automated marketing staff member. Email can be used to turn those with no interest in your product into prospects, prospects into customers, and then follow-up with customers x number of days after a purchase, helping them become a repeat customer. Imagine if this process could be automated…that would free your mind to think of so many new ideas, rather than dealing with the tedious task of emailing prospects and old customers daily.
In order to effectively discuss email marketing, it must first be defined. Email marketing as it will be discussed in this article is defined mainly as sending out newsletters or e-zines to your subscriber list. For our purposes, this subscriber list is assumed to be an “opt-in” list, meaning that they must somehow request (via a sign up form on your website, in person, or by making a purchase, etc.) to be placed on your email list. The benefit of using opt-in lists is that these are people who actually want to receive your newsletter, which will include information about your product and industry.
The key to turning your first-time customers into repeat customers is by building relationships. Even though email is faceless, it can still greatly assist you in building a solid relationship with your customer base. Tough competition will attempt to draw your customer base away by undercutting your costs and doing whatever possible to switch your customers over. The best way to prevent your customers from jumping ship is to build a relationship with them over time. What better way to do this than to provide useful information right to their email inbox? Providing helpful hints or coupons in an email message is a great way for recipients to want to continue receiving your email, and coupons will motivate action on the part of the consumer, providing you a way to instantly obtain feedback on your campaign. The better providers of email list management software offer open and click-through tracking, giving your marketing department instant feedback on the e-mail’s effectiveness.
Email marketing gives your brand an edge in a tough market. Daily, weekly, or even monthly emails will keep your brand in your target consumer’s mind. As more and more of the population begins to use email, email marketing will become a standard in the marketing industry. Finding another marketing method that comes close to all the benefits that email marketing offers is nearly impossible