So much has changed in digital marketing over the last few years. New platforms and new ways of using them are making marketing exciting, but complicated. It can be a challenge to determine what strategies are best for marketing your business.
One thing that hasn’t changed is the effectiveness of email marketing. It’s still a reasonably priced and quick way to reach your market. In fact, 54% of small businesses surveyed rated e-mail as the top online promotion to drive site visitors and customers to their web sites and storefronts. (Source: DMA Interactive).
Keep this acronym in mind when planning how email marketing fits into your overall marketing strategy: TIME (Targeted, Immediate, Measurable, Effective).
- Targeted - Email marketing is targeted. You can easily segment your lists using a variety of criteria or interest groups so that your promotions go to the individuals most likely to respond to your offer.
- Immediate – Email marketing is immediate. Once you develop your contact list, reaching them is quick and easy. You can come up with an idea for a promotion and within hours have it reach your market. A bonus is that the response to an email marketing campaign is also immediate.
- Measurable – Email marketing is measurable. You can determine which of your promotions are popular making it possible for you to zero in on what to promote next. Information about what works and what doesn’t is key in any type of marketing campaign.
- Effective - Email marketing is effective because it lets you reach out to customers instead of waiting for them to return to your website. It drives traffic to your site by offering coupons and specials.
There are a variety of email marketing products that are easy to use and allow you to create attractive, professional, and customizable emails. I prefer to Constant Contact, but there are others such as Mail Chimp, Veritical Reponse, AWeber, Campaigner, Benchmark, and many others. Whatever email marketing service you use, make sure you make it an active part of your marketing effort.
