4 great reasons to use email marketing
Email marketing is a powerful yet cost-effective way of getting your message across to customers who are interested in your offering.
At Definition we provide a dedicated online email campaign management system, allowing you to gain maximum benefits for the least effort. You can login at any time.
Here are 4 great reasons why you should get started with, or refocus on email marketing.
1. It actually works
Actually, works is an understatement. Based on research conducted by the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing is predicted to return an incredible $48.29 for every dollar spent in 2007. To put this in perspective, that’s more than double the average return for other forms of online marketing and more than 6 times the return from print catalogues.
Why does email marketing work so well?
- It’s cost effective – While the cost of actually designing your email creative can be comparable to direct mail, the big savings start when you consider there are no printing costs and you can get your message delivered for around half a pence per recipient. Futhermore, you only pay for people you are actually sending to, instead of shot-gunning out to the world at large.
- It’s immediate – Email generates an immediate response. Instead of waiting for a subscriber to visit your site you can get your message to them when it counts. The majority of your recipients will see your message in the first 24-48 hours. Emails are a great way to get in closer contact with customers. It doesn’t rely on your customer remembering to visit your site, or seeing a print advertisement.
- It’s relevant – Email makes it easy to segment your subscribers using a variety of criteria like demographics and past campaign behaviour (such as clicking a certain link). This way you can ensure your message goes to the individuals most likely to be interested in your offer. You can personalise emails to suit the particular interests of that customer, instead of sending a generic brochure.
- It’s completely measureable – More than any other form of marketing, email can provide actionable data on the results it generates. Keep track of who opened your email and when, what topics they were interested in, who forwarded it on to a friend, how many sales were generated and much more.
2. You can measure it working
One of the frustrations with many marketing activities is that it can be very hard to tell what is working, and what is just costing money. When you conduct email marketing with a tool like our dedicated email delivery system, you can see very quickly what is working, and what is not. If something isn’t working, you’ll find out quickly and be able to tweak it immediately, at low cost. This is a huge saver of time and money.
At Definition, our dedicated online email campaign system gives you full access to a whole range of easy-to-understand, yet powerful reports on the performance of your email campaigns – 24 hours a day, from any web browser. Easily see who opened your email campaign, who clicked a link, who forwarded it to a colleague, and so much more. These reports are updated in real-time, so you always know the latest.
Following are some examples of the reports we provide you with. Click each image to view larger version.
Campaign Snapshot
Our campaign snapshot lets you easily gauge the results of the campaign from a single page. Find out how many recipients opened your email, clicked a link, unsubscribed, forwarded your email to a friend and loads more.
Opens Over Time
Our simple Opens Over Time Report shows exactly who is checking out your email, how many times they're doing it, and when they did it. You can get an overview for the life of the campaign or drill down all the way to minute by minute detail.
Recipient Activity
Our recipient activity report lets you get down to some serious detail on your campaign. Easily see who opened, who clicked, who bounced and who unsubscribed. You can even search for a specific subscriber to see exactly what they did with your email.
Link Activity
The Link Activity Report makes it easy to guage what your subscribers are interested in. Not only can you see the total number of clicks for every link in your email, you can also find out who clicked that link, when they clicked it and how many times.
Forward to a Friend
By including a forward to a friend link in your campaign, you can easily see which subscribers are forwarding your email and who they're forwarding to. This report can also be a great way to test the viral impact of your emails.
Unsubscribes and Subscriber Complaints Over Time
While we automatically process all unsubscribe requests and spam complaints for you automatically, the Unsubscribes and Complaints Over Time reports makes it easy to see exactly who, when and why each subscriber left your list.
Bounce Activity
As well as automatically processing any bounced emails for you, we also tell you exactly why that subscriber bounced out of your list. Maybe we got an out of office reply, or perhaps their mailbox was full - whatever the reason, they didn't get your email and we'll tell you why. You can even search for a specific recipient to see exactly why your email to them bounced.
Bounces Over Time
It can sometimes take days for a recipient's mail server to let us know your email to them bounced. The Bounces Over Time report explains any sudden spikes in your bounce numbers and lets you drill down to exactly who bounced out of your list, and when.
Subscriber List Activity
Your subscriber list is a living thing that grows and shrinks over time. Our subscriber reports let you easily keep track your subscriber activity from a month-to-month level right down to each and every minute. Quickly track how your subscriber list is growing over time. This report includes new subscribers, those that have bounce out and are no longer valid, those that have unsubscribed as well those you have manually deleted yourself.3. It’s easy to manage
If you’ve tried email marketing in the past, you may have been overwhelmed by unsubscribe requests, or bounces coming back to you. Or you might have tried a system that was just not fun to use. Or you may have become bogged down with the tedious process of using your standard email software (such as Outlook) to send emails to customers.
We offer something better – an automated processes that handle all the tedious subscribing, making sure people can get off the list when they want to, and keeping track of emails that bounce. Some of our clients have saved literally weeks of time a year in moving over to use our dedicated email marketing system. It’s easy to manage and a doddle to maintain.
4. It’s very flexible
Take some time to think of a few ways you could use email marketing for your business.
- Could you feature a different product each week, and offer special prices to frequent buyers?
- Maybe you could have case studies of customers using your service, and segment your subscriber lists to send them to other potential customers in similar industries.
- Could you email customers who have been out of touch for a little while, and ask if they have any suggestions?
The possibilites are very exciting indeed and are only limited by your imagination.
In short, email marketing allows you to keep in touch with people who have a direct interest in what you’re offering, at very low cost. Managing your email campaigns over time is made very easy with our dedicated email campaign system.
What next?
- Think email marketing could be a useful tool for your business? Don’t hesitate to contact us for a free, no-obligation chat.
- Read more on the benefits of outsourcing your bulk email delivery
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