Don’t believe the hype: social media is popular, but that doesn’t mean email is dead. Email matters when you’re marketing your business, and it’s a great way to communicate with customers and potential clients. It’s still used a lot: more than 100 billion emails are sent every day and millions are sent every minute, according to an infographic that Swizzle created.
Email is effective for many reasons:
• You can establish yourself as an expert in your industry by sharing useful information and advice in a newsletter, or by letting your audience know when you’ve published a book, created a series of videos, or written white papers.
• Since the people on your list have opted in to get your emails, it’s more likely you can convert those subscribers to becoming customers and increasing your sales. And it especially helps if you offer email-exclusive specials, discounts, and coupons.
• It’s not as expensive as snail mail, and chances are your emails will get read rather than tossed out, especially if you have good content. Even if you don’t get read, it is still a reinforcement of your brand. Before the Internet, it took 7 exposures for a prospect to remember your company. Now it takes 21!
• More than 90% of people check their email every day, and more often than social media.
One thing to remember: avoid spamming your readers. Sometimes businesses are so focused on building their lists in order to sell their services or products, they often send out emails that are all about making a sale, and there’s nothing there for the customers. So when you create a newsletter or email message, think about what’s in it for the people you’re communicating with. How can they benefit? Various successful companies include a description of their services or products, but that’s after their email includes helpful links or advice that people will want to actually read. It’s about building trust with others, not just hitting them over the head with a sales pitch. Remember, as Dan Pink says, customers no longer want to be sold; they want to be educated.
Let me know what you think in the comments below.
(By the way, if you’re looking for a helpful tool to test your email, including the subject line and text body, try Litmus’ Subject Line Checker.)
