E-mail marketing – the pros and cons

Managing your email inbox can, at times, feel like a full-time career. Despite our best efforts, many of us can’t keep track of all we receive and our inboxes remain crammed with unread emails, unlikely ever to see the light of day.

So, if you’re thinking of embarking on an email campaign to market your business, consider our shortlist of advantages and challenges before you begin.

Advantages

Brand awareness

Regular email marketing helps your customers and potential customers remember you’re there. Even if they do not open the email or follow its call to action, there is a good chance they will have seen it arrive in their inbox and that, alone, helps people recall your brand when they’re ready to make a buying decision.

Demonstrate expertise

Of course, you can use email marketing to blatantly advertise a special offer or a new product or service. But more than that, you can also use your content to demonstrate your knowledge and expertise. Sharing information and insights with your readers will help them see you as the ‘go to’ expert in your field.

Get visitors to talk about you

If your email contains great content there’s a strong chance your readers will do your marketing for you by sharing it with their associates. Use social media to promote your content and you’ve covered all bases.

Fast to produce

Email marketing campaigns can be developed and dispatched within a matter of minutes – not hours or days as is the case with printed mail-shots. This means you can quickly get an offer on the table or respond to a competitor’s marketing tactics.

Build relationships

Because your audience can opt in/opt out of receiving email marketing, you are better informed about who is genuinely interested in your products/services. This helps you create more targeted campaigns and build a dialogue around the topics they’re interested in.

Challenges

Getting attention

We all suffer from inbox overflow. To make sure your email gets opened, ensure it has a relevant title and is quick to open in the email window.

Being read

Keep your reader’s attention by developing straight-forward content. Don’t over-think it and don’t cover too many subjects all at once.

Compelling action

Your email needs to do more than inform or entertain your reader, Develop a strong call to action – make it clear what you want your reader to do next.

Lacks the personal touch

Like mailshots, email marketing campaigns lack the ‘human touch’. Of course, there are advantages to this but try to bear this fact in mind when you’re developing your content.

Needs time and thought

Whatever business you’re in, you need to give time to planning, executing and managing your email marketing campaign. So run a trial campaign first and modify your approach based on the feedback you receive.

Find out more about how we help businesses succeed with email marketing or contact us today for a no obligation discussion. Call us on 01606 884123.