Email continues to be the most powerful marketing tool available in business today. Research by the Direct Marketing Association found a return on investment of over 40 to 1 using email marketing. And, McKinsey & Company found that email is nearly 40 times better than Facebook or Twitter at acquiring customers.
Why is email so effective?
Everyone uses email. There are 3.9 billion email accounts with 17% of Americans creating a new email account every year. We send 182.9 billion emails per day (there are roughly 2.7 billion ‘likes’ given on Facebook every day). On average, 70% of adults (depending on age group) say that email is their number one preference compared to less than 5% who prefer social media.
Email is personal. Blogging is an important piece of your marketing strategy. But everyone who reads your blog knows that it is a message targeted at a broad audience. Email is different. Provided you have been given permission to engage and you have a reputation for providing helpful content, your readers WILL open your email when it comes into their box,
Email marketing gives you the chance to follow up. According to Brian Carroll, author of Lead Generation for The Complex Sale, “Up to 95% of qualified prospects on your Web site are there to research and are not ready to talk with a sales rep, but as many as 70% of them will eventually buy from you or your competitors”. Email lets you stay in touch with prospects in a positive way by providing additional information on the topics they are interested in.
Email lets you personalize and scale. With the ability to segment your contacts based on their specific interests, email lets you share the right content with the right prospect – content interesting and valuable to each individual. Because you can segment, you can send that content to 10 people or 10,000 people with the same effort.
Why does this matter to your business?
Beyond the obvious that your message is more likely to be read by your prospects, here are statistics I thought you might find interesting:
- Companies using email to nurture (follow up) with leads generate 50% more sales-ready leads and at 33% lower costs than other marketing strategies (Hubspot).
- For every $1 spent on email marketing, the average return on investment is $44.25 (ExactTarget).
- You have just 3-4 seconds to grab your readers’ attention and interest them enough to open and read your email (Litmus).
- 91% of consumers check their email at least once per day on their smartphone, making it the most used functionality (ExactTarget).
- Companies that use email list segmentation saw 39% higher open rates and 28% lower unsubscribe rates (Lyris Annual Email Optimizer Report).
- 64% of decision makers read emails via mobile device (EmailExpert).
- 95% of those who opt into email messages from brands find these messages somewhat or very useful (Salesforce).
- 70% of people say they always open emails from their favorite companies (ExactTarget).
Take advantage of the power of email marketing. Stay top of mind with your prospects in a positive way to increase engagement and generate more sales.
