Why Email Marketing is so Important

Why Email Marketing is so Important

While there are many ways to promote your product, service or website, email marketing remains one of the most powerful. Some people believe that trends like social media have reduced the importance of email, but nothing could be further from the truth. For reasons I’ll be explaining in this article, email marketing is still the best and most cost effective method of online marketing.

• Email is the most direct way to communicate online

  When the internet first became popular (back in the mid to late 1990s), email was the primary mode of communication online. There were no social networks or Skype. There was instant messaging, but that was something you did with people you knew well and interacted with on a daily basis. You had to be on the same network (such as AOL or ICQ) to be able to chat with someone.

  Interestingly enough, despite all of the new devices and platforms we have now, email has not declined in importance at all. It’s still the most direct and efficient way to connect with someone. This is particularly true for marketers, who must reach out to people they aren’t yet acquainted with.

• An email list is great for repeat business

  Whereas you can sometimes make money by advertising directly to people, an email list is what gives you long term, loyal customers. You might be able to sell your own product, or affiliate products from your blog, video or social media site. Yet if you’re not collecting email addresses, you can at most make isolated sales.

  Email marketing is therefore the best strategy for building a real business. If you’re only making sales here and there, you have to essentially start all over every time you want to launch a campaign. When you have a growing email list, however, each campaign can become more profitable than the last one.

• Email marketing is extremely targeted

  With email, you are able to fine tune your promotional campaigns. The whole point of building an email list is to find people who are actually interested in what you have to offer. Whether you find these people through paid advertising, article marketing or some other method, email is still the best way to reach them.

  The traditional technique of offering people a free report or other gift to get their email is still effective if you can come up with a compelling offer. If you can come up with something that addresses a problem or issue that your audience cares about, they will be glad to receive your emails. Your email list can be aimed at precisely the right market for your products.

• Direct way to connect with your audience

  Although social media has become very important, it still doesn’t give you the ability to contact people one-on-one the way you can with email. Think about it. With Twitter, your message is competing with dozens, hundreds or even thousands of other tweets. The same is true on Facebook. Even if you have lots of fans, they are probably fans of lots of other pages as well.

  With email, it’s true that you are also competing with other emails. Yet when someone actually opens your email, you have their complete attention – at least for a few seconds. It’s even better with personalized emails. On social media sites, there are lots of distractions -people available to chat, the latest status updates, photos to see and so on.

• It’s a cheap way to promote anything

  Email marketing is still one of the most cost effective ways to promote anything online. While you can spend money building your list (such as by using PPC or other paid advertising), this isn’t necessary. You can also build a list by blogging, SEO, writing articles, publishing videos and other methods.

  More importantly, once you have a list of some size, you now have a free way to promote. Sending out an email to people costs nothing and only takes a few seconds, especially with a good mass email software such as Thunder Mailer. So, whether you initially build your list investing time or money, in the long run it’s still a great value!

• Email works well with other marketing methods

  Rather than ask whether email is better than things like social media marketing, article marketing, video marketing and other tactics, why not ask how it can be integrated with these?

  All of the new developments that we’ve seen on the internet in the last decade or so are not replacements for email marketing. Rather, they are techniques that can be used to make email marketing even more effective.

  If you keep in mind than an email list is your most valuable asset as a marketer, you can see how other methods can help you build a list. For example:

  1. Articles can be used to send traffic to your landing page – where you can build your list.
  2. Videos can do the same, helping you build your list.
  3. Social media sites can be integrated with your email list.
  4. Webinars can help you gain new subscribers.

  As you can see, these and any other online marketing strategies can all help you build your email list. If, however, you attempt to use them instead of email marketing, you will be missing out on all of the long term advantages of having a list!

Conclusion

Don’t listen to people who tell you that email marketing is dead, or obsolete. They probably want you to stop doing it so they can get subscribers instead of you!

The fact is, email is still the fundamental way people communicate online. This is unlikely to change anytime soon. No matter what new websites or social networks pop up, they aren’t going to replace email. They may, however, provide you with new ways to capture people’s email addresses!