Yes! You Still Need to Be Emailing In 2023
With alternative methods becoming more and more popular, many people assume that email is no longer a relevant tool for communication. Messaging apps such as Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Messenger have filled the gap professionally while texting, social media, and Google Drive have filled the social gap. However, email is still widely used on a global scale, with over 3,461,108,804 legitimate emails being sent per hour.
It’s important to understand email for overall communication as a person living in the 21st century, but even more important for digital marketers to grasp, as 83% of consumers say email is their preferred method of brand communication. Of course, the end goal for brand communication is a conversion, so it’s important to have a well-thought-out website landing page associated with the email. In this blog post, I’ll be describing why email is important, how companies can use software and automation to their advantage, and how to get conversions via quality landing pages.
Email Marketing: The Preferred Method of Brand Communication
Email has been around since before the popularization of the Internet - 1971 to be exact. Email marketing soon followed in 1978, with the first marketing campaign garnering over $13 million in sales. From the very beginning, this method of communication has been incredibly effective, relatively low-cost, and wildly popular.
There are over 4 billion email users so you likely have first-hand experience with the messaging platform. In the off-chance you don’t, here’s how a message typically appears in the recipient’s inbox. The sender is the first item that appears, followed by the subject line, a bit of the body text, and the time it was sent. This particular email was sent to my Gmail.
Email is so effective because it is an incredibly clear form of communication. Just from the subject line and sender, a consumer can decide whether or not they’re interested in opening the message. Additionally, many companies use voluntary subscriber and past customer transactions to target their campaigns. This causes the promotion to feel slightly less invasive than one shared say, on social media through third-party data.
Another reason why email works is because the experience can easily be personalized for each recipient. Subject lines can include the recipient’s name and the content can be tailored to their personal interests. We’ll talk all about automation in a minute, but there are many tools out there that can make the personalization process quick and simple. This is vital because consumers are much more likely to perform a conversion when they feel seen and heard by the brand.
One last contribution to email marketing’s effectiveness that I’d like to mention is the convenient access to conversion opportunities. Unlike social media, email has the ability to include as many hyperlinks as you’d like. This is incredibly important because humans tend to prefer the easy route, meaning that the more steps to required perform an action, the less likely they are to actually do it. Emails can include direct links to countless things - social media, products, blogs, you name it! This brings more potential customers to your website, thus moving them further down the marketing funnel.
If you’re still not quite convinced of the importance of email marketing yet, I’d recommend checking out this article by Mailchimp, one of the leading email automation platforms. They help businesses run successful campaigns and are just one of many companies in the automation industry.
Marketing Automation Makes Communication Easy
Although email campaigns greatly benefit from the industry, marketing automation affects all aspects of a business. It streamlines most marketing functions, leaving more resources for other departments or tasks. Since it takes much less time to manage, it has greater opportunity for customer interaction. For example, you could send an email blast inviting people to a webinar. For those that sign up, a reminder email could be sent a few days before the event and then a follow up email to thank them for their attendance. Without automation, this string of communication would take a lot of time and organization. However, with automation, this process only takes a few steps and can be scheduled ahead of time, rather than performing the actions as they’re needed in real-time.
Although marketing automation and email marketing go hand-in-hand, there are distinct differences between the two concepts. Email marketing is simply the process of sending electronic mail. It can be done manually or automatically, with email chains being sent as described in the above paragraph. Marketing automation on the other hand, takes the concept a step further by including a wider range of marketing activities. It includes email marketing, as well as sales, lead generation, and more. As for email specifically, it allows for more complex chain paths, as well as unique customer fields embedded within the copy, such as the customer’s name or city.
There are many companies that offer marketing automation software, but HubSpot, Mailchimp, and Marketo are some of the most well known. Although email campaigns could theoretically be deployed manually, once they reach a certain size, it is simply unrealistic. These software allow for employee’s time to free up and for resources to be used more wisely. Of course, there is a cost associated with any service, so it’s important to make sure that you’re getting your money’s worth. In regards to email marketing, this looks like having an effective landing page.
Effective Landing Pages
Website landing pages are the first thing that a user sees when they visit a website. This could be the homepage, a specific product, or even a blog post. Each campaign has different needs, therefore the type of page may differ but one thing should remain consistent - intentionality. For example,if you are selling the same product to two groups of consumers, the pages may need to differ in verbiage, images, and content in order to better entice each segment of customers to perform a conversion. Be sure to set goals and target markets early on so that you can match the format and content of the page to the customer’s needs and hopefully receive a conversion. Additionally, it’s important to always follow a few landing page best practices such as:
Craft a benefit-focused headline
Use an image that illustrates your offer
Be clear and concise
Include a call to action
Make the page responsive
These best practices are the bare minimum that every business should be prioritizing but there is always room for improvement. With a strong landing page and the right email automation software for your business, growth is possible for all. Thank you for reading and happy emailing!