Marketing is constantly evolving and growing; and many once tried-and-true techniques have fallen by the wayside. Letterbox drops, anyone?
There is one marketing method that has maintained its relevance – despite the sense that it’s past its used-by date, and that’s email marketing.
EMAIL MARKETING IS CONTINUOUSLY EVOLVING
Email marketing has remained relevant because it continues to evolve. The most efficient email marketing strategies will adapt, change and innovate over time. Interestingly, email marketing is still delivering the greatest ROI compared to all marketing channels.
WHO USES EMAIL MARKETING?
Email marketing has been shown to yield an impressive ROI. According to AWeber’s 2020 Small Business Marketing Email Marketing Statistics Report, about 66% of small businesses are using email marketing to “promote their businesses or communicate with leads and/or customers.” Despite its positive ROI, the report has shown some businesses still aren’t using email marketing.
HOW IMPORTANT IS EMAIL MARKETING TO BUSINESSES OWNERS?
AWeber’s report showed that 79% of businesses owners believed email marketing was “important” or “very important” to their business.
Although, while a strong majority of businesses owners believed email marketing was important to their business, only 60% believe they have implemented an effective email marketing strategy. A large 26% of business owners believe their own email marketing efforts were either “ineffective” or “very ineffective”.
WHAT METRICS ARE USED TO MEASURE SUCCESS ON EMAIL MARKETING?
It’s not enough to merely set up and run an email campaign. You need to track your success with clearly defined metrics. Two common metrics to track the success of an email campaign are open rates and click through rates.
Your open rate is how many people on your address list opened your email from their inbox. Your click through rate is the number of people who clicked on a link within your email. A high click through rate shows your email was not just enticing enough to open, but was it engaging enough that your audience clicked on links embedded within your email too.
According to the report, 65% of small businesses average open rates between 11% and 50%. Click through rates did not perform as successfully – 77% of small businesses averaged email click-through rates between 0% and 10%.
For a successful email campaign, you need to produce informative, engaging and entertaining content that your audience will happily to spend their time reading.
HOW FREQUENTLY SHOULD YOU SEND AN EMAIL MARKETING CAMPAIGN?
The survey found almost 40% of business owners send email campaigns “at least once a week but less than daily”. Over 30% send emails “at least once a month but less than weekly”.
For those business owners starting an email marketing campaign, a good place to start is once a week, according to Mark Asquith, co-founder and CEO of Rebel Base Media.
From here, analyse your results and test your frequency to learn what works best for you. Perhaps you’ll stick with once a week, once a month or even quarterly newsletters. Keep analysing your results to determine what frequency will work best for you.
HOW LARGE SHOULD YOUR EMAIL LIST BE?
Of the business owners surveyed in the report, 43% had email lists ranging between 0-500 subscribers. Just over 30% had email lists between 1,001 – 9,999 subscribers. A small 7% of small businesses had over 50,000 subscribers.
But how important is your email list size, anyway? Will the size of your list impact the effectiveness of your campaign?
In short, yes, it will. But this should not discourage you. According to the data, lists as low as 500 subscribers were making a positive difference to small businesses’ marketing efforts.
If your list is short, this can change. Growing your email list is important – no matter how many subscribers you already have. The larger your list is, the more people you can engage with, and the more customers you can take on.
Small ways you can grow your email list is to make sure your subscribe button is clearly visible in an easy to locate position on your website. Plus, the form should be accessible on every page of your website.
