As entrepreneurs, you need to take advantage of the benefits of email marketing softwares and their campaigns in order to find, attract and nurture potential clients; sales funnel likely already include several communications platforms and other marketing tools. However, don’t forget that email marketing campaigns are still one of the most powerful digital marketing tools at our disposal.
Still, even if you are aware of the potential benefits of email marketing softwares, you may be wondering how to balance the time requirements. This doesn’t need to be an issue. In fact, with the right email automation system, you can save time and get even better results.
Benefits of Email Marketing for Entrepreneurs
Below you can find some of the huge benefits of using email marketing as a one of the most powerful and effective strategies among all types of digital marketing tools recommended for all entrepreneurs.
Email Use Continues to Grow
Despite the growing number of communication options, email use continues to expand, with an expected total of email users worldwide to be around 4.6 billion by 2025. Those users are expected to send and receive 76.4 billion emails each day by 2025. This means that the value of email marketing worldwide is massive. The market was valued at around $7.5 billion (USD) in 2020 and is expected to grow to $17.9 billion (USD) by 2027.
Email Marketing Saves Time and is More Effective
With email marketing automation, you can set your system and let it run in the background while you attend to other aspects of your business. Here is some even better news. It turns out that automating email marketing is actually more effective than handling it manually. In fact, one study showed that automated emails generate 320% more revenue than non-automated emails.
Email Marketing Allows for Personalization
Unless you have the time to write personal emails to each customer and potential customer; you are missing out on a powerful opportunity. Users are 50% more likely to open an email with a customized subject line. Personalization can have even more impact inside the body of the message where content and recommendations can be customized for each customer with no input on your part.
Allows for Targeting and Segmentation
Personalized e-mails are great, but e-mail marketing automation allows for something even better: targeting and segmentation. Instead of sending the same email to everyone, this will enable you to send specific emails to specific segments on your email list automatically. Yes, an email with a personalized subject line and custom body content will get a higher CTR, but segmentation takes this to another level. For example, you can send different e-mails to customers based on where they are in the sales funnel or based on nearly any other criteria. This ensures that people are getting relevant messages and that people aren’t overwhelmed with information that is irrelevant to their needs.
Better for Existing Customers
In order to find and nurture new customers, a marketing plan can quickly forget about taking care of existing customers. People who have already made a purchase still need nurturing but may require very different messaging than potential customers. Email marketing tools make it possible to keep these customers connected and interested with segmented email messages just for them.
Keeps Potential Customers from Slipping Through the Cracks
Unless you happen to work with only a handful of customers and potential customers; it can be pretty easy to let someone fall through the cracks. When this happens, we miss opportunities to make sales or, at least, the chance to continue to build a relationship. Email marketing tools enable us to set up triggers like resource downloads, purchases or other customer activity. These triggers can ensure that the correct follow-up email goes out to follow up.
Does More to Nurture Leads
Without email marketing campaigns, it is hard to do anything more than send out the same newsletter to everyone on your list. By setting up email marketing softwares, you can be sure that every potential customer gets the right message at the right moment, explicitly tailored to where they are in the sales funnel. From a welcome message when downloading a resource to regular follow-ups to build and maintain brand awareness, your automation system will help you nurture leads and move them to purchase. It can also do it automatically, so leads are nurtured as you and your team are working on other things.
Reduces Overall Marketing Costs
Some entrepreneurs fail to set up email marketing campaigns because they are trying to keep expenses low. We all understand that new businesses need to invest only in the most effective and efficient tools. However, once you consider the fact the email marketing campaigns can continue to run in the background, it starts to come into focus as a worthwhile expense. Add to that the fact that many email marketing platforms are pretty affordable. Many offer free tiers for businesses just getting started and then can scale with your business as you grow.
Get Started with Email Marketing
Are you ready to take advantage of everything email marketing softwares can offer to your business? There are only a few needed steps to get started. With a bit of planning and the right tools you can ensure that email marketing campaigns will keep a steady flow of customers flowing through your sales funnel.
Email Marketing Step One: Create a Plan
Once we get our email marketing tool up and running, we can let it do all the work. However, we do need to start by understanding exactly what we are hoping to accomplish. Creating this plan is the first step. With automation, everything is driven by triggers. So, you need to make a list of everything in your customer journey that should be a trigger. That ensures that you will be collecting the correct data and that you have an email marketing platform that can handle your needs. These triggers could include email signups, purchases or any other factor that you would like to follow up with. Once this is all laid out, you can continue on to the next step.
Email Marketing Step Two: Choose the Right Tool
You may be already using some email marketing softwares for your business. However, if you want to step up to full email marketing automation, you will need to know all your needs. Compare the features of the available options with your plans from step one. Ensure that the platform can handle things you might need like trigger criteria, automation sequences, targeting, and segmentation. As you will read in a moment, you will also want to ensure the product has robust reporting tools.
If you are already using e-mail for newsletters and campaigns, you already have an email tool of some sort. Now, you will need to see if what you already have has the power to help you automate. Look for features that will help you create trigger criteria and build automation sequences. Also, look for robust analytic reporting tools. Later in the process, those will be essential for evaluating your strategy.
Also, look carefully at the pricing and look ahead to anticipate growth. The least expensive option for the current size of your business may not be the best later on. Consider the future scale of your business and see if your platform choice will grow with you. While it is possible to change services down the road, it is easier to stick with the same company.
Step Three: Designing and Launching
This will likely be the longest and most time-consuming part of the process. However, remember that once everything is up and running, you won’t need to worry about it unless you need adjustments. With your plan in hand, this is where you start writing email copy and setting up your workflow. Many modern email marketing softwares make this relatively easy with tools and wizards to help you get things running.
Email Marketing Step Four: Measuring and Adjusting
Once your e-mail marketing tool is up and running, you can, for the most part, just let it run. This will give you more time to think about the rest of your business. However, to make the most of it, it is a good idea to check in once in a while. If you select a vendor with clear analytics, you can quickly check open rates, click-through rates and other metrics. This way, you can ensure that everything runs as smoothly as possible and make any necessary adjustments.
