Why email marketing works

More and more consumers are using their mobile devices to access not only emails but all other types of media and information.

Not only that, well-designed emails produce higher conversion rates on mobile than any other medium. For a long time now, over 40 years actually, email has been a form of communication. As the years have gone by, email has fast become one of our main choices of communication. We have all been groomed to reply to an email in some fashion. Whether it is to reply, to forward, click through to something else embedded within the email, delete, or to buy something, or to sign up.

We tend to do something with the email. Knowing this, you can use email to drive people to your website, to pick up the phone and call or any other call to action. In fact, over 25 percent of sales last year were attributed to email marketing. Most email marketing tools offer the ability to track what happens after you have sent out your email campaign. You can track delivery rates, bounce rates, unsubscribe rates, click through rates, and open rates.

This gives you a better understanding of how your email campaigns are working, which ones to tweak or which ones to get rid of altogether. These metrics should not be ignored. They are an important part of your internet marketing campaign as a whole. It can be used thoughtfully to build loyalty and trust in your brand.

Email marketing is important for building relationships with prospects, leads, current customers, and even past customers because it gives you a chance to speak directly to them, in their inbox, at a time that is convenient for them. Be friendly and personable. You are not invading their space if you have chosen your message and your recipient wisely.

Whether you realise it or not, everybody is trained to do something with an email -reply, forward, click-through, sign-up, or even straight buying. Email is transactional by nature and you can use it to direct traffic to your website and ultimately drive sales.

As you develop your small business or startup marketing strategy as a whole, using email will allow you to see results straight away. This means not just sending out newsletters, but also using email automation based on triggers of your customers.

Transactional emails have 8x more opens and clicks than any other type of email and can generate 6x more revenue according to Experian. When you use any email marketing software, you can track who opened your email, which links were clicked, and how many people unsubscribed. You can easily get a picture of how your email campaigns are performing, make adjustments and improve your effectiveness. Email marketing metrics are important to remember as you monitor and measure your internet marketing strategy as a whole.

If you want to know how successful your email campaigns are compared to other people in your industry, have a look at the below chart by Constant Contact :. Others include GetResponse , and the one we are using; MailChimp. A lot of email marketing software allows for split testing of your emails. Or, are they more open to a softer intro, maybe informing them of what to expect in your email.

All these things can be tested, measured, learned from and improved upon. Some people think that with the growing popularity of social media platforms, email should be forgotten and may be pushed to the side. You can test your reach too; that's how many people get your emails. Always optimize your emails for better results. First, choose the factor that defines success for you. It could be clicks, opens, or money earned. And you can automate it too.

Just tell Mailchimp to automatically send out the winning campaign. It's really pretty easy. No matter what you sell, you need to have a clear idea of who your audience is in order to effectively communicate with them. Mailchimp lets you dig a little deeper to segment users within your audience so you can send them personalized and targeted emails that help increase engagement, build trustful relationships and generate greater ROI.

Some of the most valuable data your signup form has to offer is how and where subscribers sign up for your list. What do you want to say to your audience? What is your content marketing strategy? Some users that run a blog or news website might choose to send daily updates to their subscribers, while other users only send twice a month so subscribers stay excited about their emails. Choose to send your email campaign at your own pace, and check the unsubscribe rates and the click through rates to adjust the frequency if needed.

Your email marketing schedule will depend on your industry, the types of content you send content marketing strategy , and your sending frequency. When designing email campaigns, focus on your message and keep your design straightforward.

Looking to have more control over your email design? Be sure to check the emails on mobile devices as well as they can look different in responsive designs. If you have any friends or coworkers who can check your email for typos and give you some feedback on the layout, you can send them a test email so they can preview the campaign directly in their inbox.

Not sure which subject line will get the most opens and clicks? Think there might be a certain time of day your customers are most likely to make a purchase through your campaign? Unlike regular campaigns, an automation is a targeted email or series of emails that you can set and forget.

From a welcome email series to follow up emails after a purchase to rewarding your customers with a special incentive, automation helps you streamline your communications with customers so you have more time to focus on creating content and increasing return on investment ROI. Plus, you can design, send, and track order notifications to update customers on purchases they made from your store.

The marketing analytics data collected in your Mailchimp reports will help you refine your marketing strategy going forward. These are the most obvious statistics for measuring campaign engagement, as they indicate how well your subject lines and campaign content resonates with a particular list. The campaigns you send can help you direct more traffic to your website or online store. And there are a few integrations you can sync with Mailchimp so you can track any trends in website traffic or e-commerce activity after you send a campaign.

Check out how Mailchimp's free email marketing tools compare to the competition. What is email marketing, and where did it begin? Maybe open rates stayed the same when you started using emojis in your subject lines.

You can conclude your customer base shows little to no response, and this isn't a marketing tactic that works to stand out in inboxes. Or emojis should be used sparingly and only for important emails for the most significant impact.

Another scenario? Give the people what they want, more images and graphics! And testing shouldn't end either just because you notice common trends early on with your email marketing. What you learn today doesn't mean your customers will demonstrate the same habits in three years or even one year from now. Continuous testing contributes to the theme of "work smarter, not harder," allowing you to be more precise and intentional with your email marketing. The customer data you collect through your testing efforts will help you learn how to stay top-of-mind, create engaging content and increase your ROI.

Bottom line, for all you data-driven marketing nuts like myself, testing will become a natural part of your thought process and marketing efforts. It's time to bridge the gap between your marketing channels. What's the use of shelling out the big bucks for paid advertising to capture leads if you have no follow-up strategy?

The truth is, your other channels function to speak to a varied audience. Sort of like dropping a fishing line into open water to see what you come up with. When your target customer begins to emerge from social media marketing, SEO, content marketing, etc. Say you've created a post for social media that drives to a landing page with a call-to-action and a prospective customer submits their email through the call-to-action.

What happens next? Ideally, this customer falls into a series of email messages that nurture them to create brand awareness. Email is the marketing tool that provides you with the ability to create a fluid, interconnected and undisrupted buyer's journey. More importantly, email marketing allows you to build relationships with leads, customers and past customers.

It's your opportunity to speak directly to them in their inbox, at a time that is convenient for them. Coupled with the right messaging, email can become one of your most impactful marketing channels. Did you know that according to Google, mobile users check their email 3x more daily? In alone, Can you imagine the next five years? May the marketing gods have mercy on you if you ever forget to consider mobile devices with your email marketing.

Reading these statistics, it's not hard to imagine why reaching consumers on their mobile devices and ensuring your emails are optimized for mobile devices, is so critical. Think about how much easier is it for someone sitting on the couch to watch TV while they online shop, catch up on email, view their social media, etc. Also, keep in mind, the shift away from physical remote controls. People are using remotes sparingly with the rise of streaming service apps.

Gone are the days of digging through couch cushions to find lost remotes, here are the days where our phones are permanently attached to our hands. This means more time spent on mobile and the increasing importance of being top-of-inbox so that for one of the three daily inbox checks, your email is seen. More important is mobile device optimization. Within three seconds of someone opening your email and deciding if it's a good mobile experience, you will win or lose.

You can have the most engaging content in the world, but if the user decides it's a less-than-stellar mobile experience, POOF, your email will be history. Even worse, the user might unsubscribe or mark your email as spam.

Email can be an incredibly powerful channel with greater accessibility than social media channels like Twitter a tweet remains relevant for about 18 seconds before disappearing into the abyss of Twitter.