Email Marketing: Benefits To Your Business


Benefits of Email Marketing

A good email list, well run, can grow your reader loyalty. Hearing from you again and again with good content and updates reminds readers of your value, especially if they take your advice and find it works for them. That said, the obvious reason why most people try email marketing is because it is profitable. This is because of the following attributes:

  • Low Cost - Communicating via email has many of the advantages of traditional direct mail but with much lower costs
  • Speed - If you need to, you can get a message out to your entire list very fast
  • Ease (both for you and the reader) - For your marketing to be a success it has to be easy for the recipient, but it helps that email marketing is easy for you too as it means you can do it yourself
  • Push - While websites and RSS are “pull”, in that the visitor has to come to you, with email you can send your messages out, reminding and re-engaging readers
  • Personalized - The more information you collect, the more messages can be tailored and personalized. Email also has the particularly special ability to segment, meaning you can split people off into smaller, more focused lists.
  • Viral - It’s so easy for people to forward your message on to others, spreading further than you could alone.
  • Tracking - Everything from how many emails were opened, through to each individual link click can be tracked, meaning you can hone your techniques and improve performance
  • Testing - Along with tracking, you can test different subject lines, calls to action, use of images, and so on, to further improve your results
  • Complimentary - Email, while an excellent tactic, does not replace your other marketing activities but compliments them extremely well. Combining multiple tactics can build very profitable marketing campaigns.
  • Opt-In (Permission-Based) - Perhaps most important, the best email lists are always opt-in, meaning you have permission to contact the person. This permission is very powerful and should not be underestimated.

It Works Well

Businesses engage in email marketing because it works. And works well. Here are the numbers from our global findings...

  • According to research conducted by the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing generated an ROI of $48.34 for every dollar spent on it in 2007. The expected figure for 2008 is $45.06, and the prediction for 2009 is $43.52. As such, it outperforms all the other direct marketing channels examined, such as print catalogs.
  • A December 2008 survey of hundreds of marketers by MarketingSherpa saw pay-per-click search ads rank top for ROI, followed by email marketing to house lists in second place.
  • Marketing service Epsilon determined that clients were getting $0.14 revenue for each email delivered in Q3, 2008.
  • A February/March 2008 retailer survey by shop.org revealed that email marketing has the second lowest cost per order (CPO) of any online marketing tactic. The CPO of $6.85 compares favorably with, for example, paid search's CPO of $19.33.
  • 2008 survey by Newsweaver and B2B Marketing Magazine of 175 UK B2B marketers revealed 78% considered email "critical" or "very important" to their B2B marketing strategy. Newsweaver also surveyed Irish marketers, and 78.1% said that email is either "important" or "very important" to their overall marketing strategy.
  • In a December 2007 survey of Internet marketers by MarketingSherpa, email to house lists beat paid ads in terms of ROI, with 42% describing email as having "great ROI - outperforms other tactics." Only SEO and behavioral targeting (which you can also do with email) scored higher.
  • In another December 2007 survey of over 2000 marketers by Datran Media (note: an email marketing service), 80% of respondents "indicated email was the strongest performing media buy ahead of search and display." 55% expected "ROI from email to be higher than any other channel".
  • Marketers responding to a July 2007 global survey by McKinsey put email second only to paid keywords in terms of online marketing efficiency.
  • A July 2007 survey of over 3,000 marketers involved in search marketing(!) by MarketingSherpa saw "email marketing to a house list" garner the most votes as the strongest marketing tactic. And it gained more votes than any other tactic for "good ROI".

The money is following the results...

  • A survey of B2B marketers in November, 2008 noted that 68.3% intended increasing spending on email marketing in 2009.
  • The DMA estimate spending on email marketing (in the USA) will increase from $600 million in 2008 to $700 million in 2009.
  • A 2008 survey by Forrester Research revealed that 95% of surveyed marketers use email marketing, with another 4% planning to do so by year end.
  • In a 2008 survey of 200 corporate marketers, 74% said they would increase spending on email campaigns over the next three years.
  • In January 2008, Jupiter Research forecast that spending on email marketing will grow from $1.2 billion in 2007 to $2.1 billion in 2012.
  • In a December 2007 survey of over 2000 marketers by Datran Media (note: an email marketing service), 82% of respondents "indicated that they plan to increase their use of email marketing in 2008".
  • A November/December 2007 survey of B2B marketers and their spending intentions noted that over 70% expected to increase their email marketing budget in 2008.
  • An end-of-year 2007 survey of marketing and sales execs by PoliteMail found over 80% "have plans to increase use of email for sales and marketing."
  • In a September 2007 article, eMarketer predict spending on email advertising to rise 82% to $616 million in 2011. And spending on email marketing to rise 11% to $1,650 million over the same period.
  • In McKinsey's July 2007 global survey of marketers, more respondents used email than any other form of digital advertising vehicle. 51% said their spending on email would increase over the next three years, while 11% said it would decrease.
  • In a 2007 survey of large retailers, 88% of respondents noted that email marketing had "...increased as a priority in 2007." If you're wary of statistics, then consider the results obtained by real marketers in real organizations. Here's an external list of over 90 case studies showcasing successful uses of email. And nearly all of those are published at independent media websites, not at vendor sites where they're just trying to sell their particular email marketing solution.




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