Never Neglect the Importance of Email Marketing

Email marketing is often the single most important marketing effort an internet based business uses. It is an essential aspect of any marketing campaign. Bath and Body Works recognized the importance of this marketing tool and set a goal to create the largest retail customer database ever. How’d they do it? They offered coupons for a free lip gloss, to be emailed to the customer, in exchange for their email address. The result…ten million names worth an estimated $18 a piece.

While the vast number of email addresses on their database is noteworthy, what is more critical to notice is the value per email address - $18. That’s a per person estimate. Now not everyone who receives regular emails from Bath and Body Works is going to come into the store and make a purchase however for those who do, the value is tremendous.

You too can take advantage of email marketing, and if you haven’t already – start building your subscriber list! Every single email address added to your list is money in the bank. Why is email marketing so powerful?

Many reasons.

The person receiving the email has subscribed to your messages and therefore welcomes them, expects them, and quite often reads them.

Email with captivating headlines, offers, and interesting information provides value – recipients know this and therefore open emails even if it is just to take a quick scan of the contents.

Email is about as personal as you can get without picking up the phone or going door to door.

It’s opened much more frequently than snail mail.

In retail there’s a saying that once you get the product in the person’s hands, the sale is almost complete. Clicking through on an offer in an email is like putting a product in their hands.

Email marketing which takes the personal preferences of its market will be valued and opened consistently. For example, if your market tends to open tips articles and skips the promotional emails then a wise business owner will integrate promotions into the articles or post banner ads at the bottom of the articles and deliver the type of content reader’s open.

This brings up an important benefit of email marketing – it provides valuable information about your target market. Open rates, click through rates and bounce backs all serve to help business owners stay on top of their game.

Internet marketing is a competitive business, getting more competitive every day. While every business cannot build a database worth 180 million, building a database, communicating regularly with prospects, and using the data to create better and more profitable email marketing campaigns generates tremendous financial rewards.