Are you using email marketing to build your business? Should you?
You have surely heard the phrase “The Money Is In The List”. If there is one cliche in digital marketing that’s true, this is the one.
And it’s not just because of the money your list can generate in sales. Consider these facts:
1. Email is the #1 preferred communication channel. At least 91% of the consumers check their email on a daily basis and 72% of consumers prefer email as their source of business communication.
2. Email drives more conversion than any other marketing channel, including search and social combined. If you are more focused on conversions, you should focus more on email.
3. Emails also have higher click-through rates and higher ROI than any other channels. You are 6x more likely to get a click-through from an email campaign than you are from a tweet.
4. When it comes to purchases made as a result of receiving a marketing message, email has the highest conversion rate (66%), when compared to social, direct mail and more.
5. A message is 5x more likely to be seen in email than via Facebook. The organic reach days are over on Facebook. If you want to reach more of your fans, you need to pay.
6. About 53% of emails are opened on mobile devices, and 23% of readers who open an email on a mobile device open it again later.
If you add the fact, 88% of the smartphone users actively check email on their phones, email becomes the best channel to reach the mobile audience.
7. You own your list. This is the most important reason to build a list. On Facebook or any social network, your account could be suspended or deleted at any time, for any reason, without notice. Google, Bing, or Facebook could change an algorithm or policy at any time, and wipe out the ad campaigns you’ve invested time and money in building, and all your efforts could go to waste. However, when it comes to email, you own your email list. No one can take those leads away from you.
This is not to say that you should use email marketing to the exclusion of other methods, but it should be clear by now that email marketing is probably the most powerful single channel when it comes to customer acquisition, retention, and conversions.
Building your own list of email subscribers is central to long term digital marketimg success, and in future emails we will talk about not just building a list, but building a responsive and productive list.