Pretty much everywhere you look nowadays, ‘people are saying’ that e-mail marketing is a dead art. (Don’t you hate the ubiquitous ‘people are saying’ line. I’ll admit I used it just so I could stand on my soap box and hate that people use it, disgusting, I know).
E-mail marketing is outdated, e-mail marketing is too expensive, no one reads e-mails anymore, they only look at their Twitter feed or their Facebook wall for information. SMS is far more effective for a vessel to communicate with customers.
Maybe they’re right. Maybe no one reads their email anymore. I know I will look at my social media sites more times in a day than I do my email. But what are you saying to those people that came to your site and signed up for more information via email. Are you saying that they are lying? They just signed up to give out their information?
Think about your own consumer-like interests. Count how many birthday clubs, blog subscriptions, and special deal email campaigns are you signed up to? I know I have quite a few fingers up when I tried to count. And most of them you look through, at least a little, if not all. Of course there are the ones you delete immediately, or unsubscribe to. But are those ‘junk’ emails from companies you actually signed up to hear from, or are those from companies that acquired your email through a non-direct method (you bought something from them online, downloaded a product, etc)? If you want to hear something from a company, you will sign up to get emails from them, simple as that.
Now let’s think of it from the consumer side as it pertains to your customers. Does it make sense to offer some way to keep in touch with your customers? (Yes) Is email an effective way of keeping in touch with your customers? (Yes) Is an affordable email marketing program something you should be using to complement your online campaign? (YES!)
It’s simple: Customers that want to sign up to get updates from you will, the ones who don’t, won’t. You won’t be hurting anyone’s feelings either way. If you are sending valuable, timely information, your customers will be appreciative that you offer the service.
Shout It Out Design helps Young’s Jersey Dairy with a database of over 8,000 customers that receive timely birthday coupons via their email. By sending out those coupons, their customers shift their birthday plans to come out to Young’s with the family (read: with the family, aka more business), when they may have gone somewhere else (gasp!) for their special day.
What are some other ways that your business can use e-mail campaigns? Comment below or email me and see how Shout It Out Design can help design an affordable email campaign for your small business.