Are you tirelessly chasing new customers when there’s a goldmine hidden in your contact list? It’s time to unearth a secret weapon that’s often overlooked by many but could revolutionise your business: email marketing.
You might think of email marketing as a relic of the past, but don’t be fooled! In a world flooded with fleeting social media posts, email marketing offers a warm and personal touch that connects directly to the heart of your audience. Imagine speaking to those who already know, trust, and love what you offer.
Isn’t that easier and cheaper than trying to win over complete strangers?
If you’re a business owner who’s spent years building relationships with your clients, then you already have everything you need to start. Your existing clients are a treasure trove, and marketing to them through email isn’t just smart; it’s essential.
Fasten your seatbelts as we delve into the world of email marketing — a place where nurturing relationships is the key to thriving in business. It’s time to unleash the full power of connecting with those who matter most. Read on, and discover how email marketing can take your business to soaring new heights.
8 Reasons You Should Be Using Email Marketing:
You Own The Database:
Any time, money and other resources you invest in growing your email marketing database are an investment. If you are using one platform for your email marketing such as MailChimp, and you decide that you want to move to a different platform such as Campaign Monitor, you can export your database as an excel spreadsheet and migrate to the new platform in a matter of hours.
The same cannot be said of social media platforms – if you decide you want to close your Facebook page and move to Instagram, you cannot export your followers. If something happens to Facebook and they go out of business, then you suddenly lose all of your audience. All of those resources spent on your social media management are suddenly rendered redundant.
You Control the Marketing Message:
With email marketing, you have total and absolute control over the marketing message that you are sending your audience. You don’t have to compete with other brands or businesses and you don’t have to alter your content so that it performs more favourably in the algorithm.
Emails allow you to send your content marketing straight to their inbox – you bypass the algorithms, dodge the competition, and slide straight into the inbox for your audience to consume at a time and location that suits them best.
Email Marketing Audiences are Warm:
Generally, people who sign up to your email marketing are more familiar with your brand and your products or services. When we think about the different stages in the buying cycle, people who sign up for emails are normally further along in the cycle – this means that they are closer to buying from you for the first time.
People who follow you on social media on the other hand are often still in the ‘research’ phase where they are following you as well as several of your competitors to see which brand they like the best before buying.
People Actively Have to Opt-In:
People who have given you their email address actively want to receive more of your marketing messages and content. There is an element of trust that comes into play when someone gives you their email address and contact details.
On social media, while people do follow you of their own free will, they can do it anonymously. They don’t have to give you anything in return to follow you, and they can easily leave at any point in time – there is less commitment involved on their part to follow you on Facebook as opposed to signing up for your email.
You Aren’t Competing with Email:
When someone opens your email, you have their undivided attention. Yes, you still need to have interesting and compelling content in your email to hold their attention, but your marketing messages aren’t getting lost in a sea of other posts by other brands like they do in other digital marketing channels.
Email Marketing Has Higher Conversion Rates:
As a marketing channel, email marketing generally sees higher conversion rates than social media channels. This has a lot to do with the audiences being warmer and more familiar with your brand as well as the lack of competition as already discussed.
THERE IS NO ALGORITHM DETERMINING WHO SEES YOUR CONTENT:
This one is in capitals because it is super important to keep in mind when comparing email marketing to social media. If you have 1000 people on your email marketing database and you send them an email, then 1000 people will receive your email.
If you have 1000 followers on Facebook and you publish a post, you will be lucky to reach 100 of them (unless you pay to ‘boost’ your reach).
There are few exceptions to this rule – you do need to maintain a healthy database, and if your email content is spammy then it may get redirected to user’s spam or trash folder, but that is a variable that you have total control over.
It Is Affordable and Easy to Get Started:
It is easy to start email marketing – MailChimp and Campaign Monitor are the two most user-friendly and affordable platforms available, and setting up your first email campaign will only take a couple of hours. You can use their existing templates and change them to suit the colours and style of your brand – you can then save the templates so that they are available to use again next time.
In terms of building a database, you can put a signup box on your website as well as a signup sheet in your store (if applicable). If signups are a bit slow, then you can offer an incentive for signing up, such as 10% of their next order. You will likely find it no more time consuming or expensive to grow your database than it is to grow a Facebook audience of equal size.
Email Marketing and Social Media:
Social media has an important role to play in marketing communications for many businesses, but we need to make sure that we aren’t relying on it too heavily. It is a great way to gain access to new audiences and get your brand in front of them, but we need to be thinking about what happens next.
We need to be thinking about how we are going to get them off Facebook or Instagram and onto a platform that you have total control over such as your website or email database.
A great way to do this is to constantly be telling your social audiences about the great content that they are missing out on if they aren’t on your email list. Reward your email list with early access to sales, special deals and additional content, and then tell your Facebook and Instagram audiences that they need to sign up if they want to get access to the deals as well. In this way, social media and email marketing can work hand-in-hand to help you grow your audience and sales.
Can a consistent email marketing campaign benefit my SEO campaigns?
A consistent email marketing campaign can indeed have a positive impact on your Brisbane SEO efforts, although it might not seem directly related at first glance. Here’s how they can intertwine:
- Increased Traffic: By sharing your latest blog posts, products, or services through email, you encourage recipients to visit your website. The more visits and engagement your site receives, the more search engines recognise your content as valuable, potentially improving your rankings.
- User Engagement: If your email content is engaging, it can lead users to spend more time on your site. Search engines often interpret longer session durations as a sign of quality content, which can contribute to improved SEO rankings.
- Social Sharing: Including social sharing buttons in your emails can encourage readers to share your content on social media platforms. While the direct link between social signals and SEO is still debated, there’s evidence to suggest that increased social activity can boost your site’s visibility in search engines. An experienced Brisbane SEO company will be able to help guide you through setting this up.
- Content Promotion: Use email marketing to promote high-quality content like guides, infographics, or videos. By directing your audience to this content, you’re driving traffic to these specific pages, which can lead to better rankings. It is likely that your Brisbane SEO service provider is already creating this high-quality content as part of your campaign, so pushing it through email marketing is an easy way to get greater reach quickly.
- Building Relationships: Email marketing allows you to build and nurture relationships with your audience. This relationship building can lead to increased brand loyalty and awareness, indirectly supporting your SEO efforts through brand searches and direct traffic.
- Backlink Opportunities: If you’re sharing valuable and insightful content through email, other businesses or bloggers might link back to your site. Quality backlinks are an essential factor in SEO, and email marketing can be a tool to facilitate this.
- Improved User Experience: By understanding your audience through email interactions and feedback, you can optimise your website’s content, layout, and navigation to provide a better user experience. Search engines favour sites that offer a great user experience, so this could lead to better SEO performance.
While email marketing and SEO are two different strategies, when combined thoughtfully, they can complement and enhance each other. The synergy between these two can create a more robust and comprehensive digital marketing strategy for your business. As experienced SEO consultants in Brisbane, the team at BeKonstructive Marketing can help you integrate your email marketing campaigns with your SEO and social media campaigns to ensure you have a strong omnichannel marketing campaign.
Request an Email Marketing Quote
Get in touch to request a quote for email marketing services from the team at BeKonstructive Marketing, or book a free discovery session to discuss which digital marketing channels will have the greatest impact for your business.
