Email, is it your best marketing tool?
Everyone is talking about digital strategy based around social.
You can’t walk 5 feet without hearing Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and others. Don’t get us wrong, these all have their place and can be valuable tools in your digital marketing arsenal, but the real gold for many brands sits deep within their mailing lists.
Not all mailing lists are created equal, and the value of your list is largely based on how you created your mailing list.
A vast majority of email these days are sent from 3rd party applications. You have probably heard of Mailchimp, Drip, Constant Contact, the list goes on. They all tend to offer a similar product and the one we use is an Aussie product called Campaign Monitor you can check them out here.
The reason we talk about these guys is they have to comply with relevant anti-spam laws, and the first question they will ask you is “how did you get your list?”. This leads directly to how effective a list is.
For a list to be effective whoever you are talking to needs to be engaged with your brand/product. They need to have given their permission for you to mail them. Don’t buy lists, build them! Offer people value in exchange for their email address. They may just want to know about cool offers you have, or they may want to be thoroughly engaged with your lifestyle brand.
So yes all lists are not equal, if you have a list with people you haven’t communicated with in 5 years it probably isn’t going to be that effective. If you have a list of up to date clients or customers who interact with you, and have given their permission to be marketed to, you are on the right path.
Ok so now you have a list of thoroughly engaged consumers, why is this better than the aforementioned social media? Your email list gives you a direct pipeline to engage consumers and your content is not being filtered by an algorithm. With the right system your analytics will tell you who opened it, who clicked a link and what they did after that. Apart from all of this the cost is significantly less than running a social campaign.
You have good list of engaged consumers who you can market to at a fraction of the cost of other platforms, so what next?
The next bit is all about content, and content that your list sees as valuable. To get this right it may be that you have to segment your markets and send different content to different areas. This all comes down to understanding who your market is and what they are expecting from you. If they expect to receive notifications about upcoming sales then send them that, if they want to hear all about new tech, send them that, but whatever you send try and make sure it is relevant and is good quality.
Don’t try and sell all the time, give your list valuable insights, give them freebies, and don’t spam them 24/7!
If you would like to know more about how we can help with a your digital marketing strategy, eDM design or content, contact us!