When developing an online marketing campaign, companies often discuss social media marketing, website design, blogging, and search engine optimization. However, one key element is often overlooked or given very little attention in the grand scheme of things. This valuable and overlooked piece of marketing is an email marketing campaign. An email marketing campaign is the perfect opportunity to tie everything together and practice customer relation management or CRM. Below are the five best reasons an email marketing campaign should be a central piece to your online marketing campaign.
- 1. Set It and Forget It
If done properly, an email marketing campaign can be set up and essentially left alone, except to enter content. This is known as marketing automation. With an email marketing campaign, you can simply add email addresses of clients and power partners to the master list. You then have the option to set an automated schedule of when the email blast will be released, whether it is weekly, bi-weekly, and even monthly. Then, you simply add content and that’s it! It’s marketing automaton at its best. Considering you are likely creating blogs and adding web content regularly, it is an easy addition to add newsletter content.
- 2. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Email marketing allows you to not only regularly communicate with your customer base, but determine what is and is not relevant to their needs in relation to your business. Customers have the opportunity to opt out of your email marketing if they are finding the content is never relevant to them. However, they also have the opportunity to opt in if they are interested in what you are offering and discussing. Further, they can reply directly to you when something is interesting or relevant to their needs. Finally, you are able to see who is receiving and opening your emails, which is something social media marketing cannot offer on a regular and consistent basis and a CRM can.
- 3. Change It Up
Unlike social media or blogging, an email marketing campaign never has to follow a certain format. You may choose to offer a newsletter. However, you may choose to offer coupons and valuable information. The best part is that no two emails have to look the same. One email could be an article and another an advertisement about a sale.
- Targeted Interaction
A well crafted email marketing campaign will allow you to target your audience with each email. for instance, your business may have several different offerings, each attracting different types of clients. You can create a campaign targeted to only the clients meant to benefit from the email. Therefore, you do not over saturate your customer base with useless information that they are forced to sort through and find what interests them.
- Action Oriented
One of the best things about email marketing is it is action oriented. Your website should be set up with not only a contact us option on every page, but an option to receive your newsletter. As a result, receipt of a newsletter means that your customer based answered your call to action. Unlike social media, agreeing to be added to an email list is a bit more time intestine. The requested must supply an email address and name, and likely some other identifying information. This allows you to capture their information to reach out to them when special promotions or events are occurring. And it shows they are interested because they answered your call to action.
Author’s Bio: Ramya Ponduri is a passionate blogger who writes primarily on different concepts of Marketing. She is awarded a gold medal in MBA and works with a tech start-up company.