Daniel Burstein

Email Marketing: The benefits email campaigns can have for your business

January 17th, 2014

“One of the biggest challenges we face is educating people about the benefits email campaigns can have for their business when they are done well.”

The above is a recent comment we received about the benefits of email marketing and e-newsletters. Perhaps you face a similar challenge with your clients or business leaders? To help you make the case, here are four benefits of email marketing.

 

Benefit #1. Social media is traffic, PPC is a billboard, but email is a fork in the road

Social media can be effective, but it doesn’t force a decision. It is much like traffic on a road – a nonstop flow of information. If you look over at the right time, you might see a particular car, and if you don’t, you may never notice it.

PPC advertising can be effective as well, but it is a distraction off to the side. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t get noticed occasionally. However, it does not force an action. You can drive by a billboard without even noticing it.

Email, on the other hand, is a fork in the road. It forces a decision. Even if people simply delete an email without opening it, they took an action. While they were physically taking an action, your subject line had an opportunity to encourage an open.

Perhaps this is why so many social media platforms use email. Think about it – every time an action happens on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook, you receive an email letting you know that it happened so you don’t miss it.

 

Benefit #2. Build your case over time (automatically)

By setting up a drip email nurturing campaign, you can take prospects from having a limited interest in your company to fully embracing your company’s value proposition – from tire kickers to warm leads.

For example, a gym chain was able to get 98% of people who qualify for a consultation to sign an agreement by using an email education drip campaign.

 

Benefit #3. Learn about your customers

“Hey”

This was one of the most effective messages for Obama for America that Zoltar himself could never have foretold.

By conducting A/B testing of email messages, the campaign learned what really resonated with its audience and generated more than $500 million in digital donations.

 

Benefit #4. ROI

For the bottom-line focused business leader, this one trumps the first three benefits combined.

According to the MarketingSherpa 2013 Email Marketing Benchmark Report, the average ROI from email marketing programs was 119%.

 

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Daniel Burstein

About Daniel Burstein

Daniel Burstein, Senior Director of Editorial Content, MECLABS. Daniel oversees all content and marketing coming from the MarketingExperiments and MarketingSherpa brands while helping to shape the editorial direction for MECLABS – digging for actionable information while serving as an advocate for the audience. Daniel is also a speaker and moderator at live events and on webinars. Previously, he was the main writer powering MarketingExperiments publishing engine – from Web clinics to Research Journals to the blog. Prior to joining the team, Daniel was Vice President of MindPulse Communications – a boutique communications consultancy specializing in IT clients such as IBM, VMware, and BEA Systems. Daniel has 18 years of experience in copywriting, editing, internal communications, sales enablement and field marketing communications.

Categories: Email Marketing Tags: , , ,



  1. January 17th, 2014 at 11:16 | #1

    I love the way you broke down social media, PPC, and e-mail marketing. It makes everything really clear and shows how e-mail marketing requires action from the recipient. Thanks, Daniel!

  2. January 17th, 2014 at 12:23 | #2

    Your traffic analogy is brilliant! Absolutely brilliant. I also liked how you pointed out that deleting an email is in fact an ‘action’. Great article. Thank you very much.

  3. January 21st, 2014 at 13:50 | #3

    Deleting an email is an action. That’s almost a contradiction, but you’re right. I routinely delete emails from the same sender, never opening them. Why don’t I just unsubscribe? Because deep inside I think, hey, maybe someday I’ll have the time to read it. Or someday I’ll really want to find out more. Someday, someday … It could happen! Meanwhile, the brand recognition grows more powerful. Something could be boiling inside in the far reaches of my mind and one day, who knows?

  4. January 21st, 2014 at 21:30 | #4

    4 simple but very powerful facts about email marketing.

    #2 is my favorite. I never thought about it that way, but you really do build have the ability to build your case over time with emails.

    All of the other marketing methods pretty much use a hit and run approach.

  5. January 30th, 2014 at 02:17 | #5

    Building a good and long lasting relationship with customers will definitely help your business grow. As long as they find your content useful, there’s a high possibility they will help you spread the word.

  6. February 1st, 2014 at 12:11 | #6

    I agree that email marketing is a fork in the road. People get a definitive call to action. It is also an excellent opportunity to build your case through ongoing email marketing efforts. Follow up is important to ensure people remember you and are encouraged to take action.

  7. Ryan
    February 3rd, 2014 at 18:26 | #7

    I disagree with your anaolgy about ppc being a billboard. Billboard is push advertising , just like a radio ad, tv ad or print ad. The ad is shown regardless of intent or consideration. The customer has no control on the ad serving.

    PPC is on demand, its pull advertising. The customer has dictated the entire engagement. The only reason it appears is because some one typed something specific into a search bar, that was relevant to the ad.

  8. February 7th, 2014 at 10:51 | #8

    Ryan,
    Thanks for reading the blog post and commenting!

    You make an excellent point that, of course, billboards are rarely as relevant to the customer as a PPC ad.

    However, I would hardly call PPC pull advertising. Pull advertising typically refers to when a customer looks for a particular company or brand, not a general topic — that is simply relevance. In that sense, when a customer makes a query in a search engine, it is not the PPC ads they are in search of, it is the organic results. The PPC ads are simply trying to catch their attention. Much like when I drive down a road, I’m trying to get to my destination, the billboards are off to the side trying to grab my attention.

    To give you a specific example, I was shopping for a new suitcase recently for my trip to Email Summit in Las Vegas. After doing some research, I settled on Briggs & Riley as the most durable. When I search “Briggs & Riley” in Google, one of the PPC ads is for ebags.com — “Briggs & Riley at a Bargain! Free Returns + Free Shipping.”

    I wasn’t searching for this particular store, they were the billboard on the side of the road trying to entice me in. They know I am in the market for this suitcase, so they push an ad to me to try to get me to exit the information superhighway in their direction, much like South of the Border knows the people driving along I-95 may be hungry, need gas, or need a hotel, and therefore push a billboard on the side of the road to get people to exit and become a customer of their business.

    Just my thoughts, I may be wrong Ryan. Thanks again for sharing your thoughts as well.

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