It’s impossible to ignore the fact that the internet is a crowded place—a space in which many millions of extremely ‘buzzy’ businesses are all competing to ‘bee’ seen, all of the time.
No matter your offering—whether you deliver software as a service, run an e-commerce shop, or direct clients toward professional services via your website—your success depends upon your ability to convert with your customers and keep converting for the long run.
Which is precisely where email marketing comes in.
There are a great many email marketing advantages for businesses, both big and small, to enjoy, each with something unique to say about how and why you should be integrating an email campaign into your digital marketing efforts as soon as possible. We’d even go so far as to call email marketing one of the most effective methods you can use to boost your sales, brand reputation, and customer relations.
Come with us as we explore a whole ‘hive’ of benefits of email marketing to help you get your own campaign off the ground.
Skip to:
- What is email marketing?
- When to use email marketing
- 10 email marketing advantages for UK businesses
- Benefit 1) Email marketing is highly cost-effective
- Benefit 2) Emails are an unintrusive form of marketing
- Benefit 3) Email marketing can achieve high conversions and boost sales
- Benefit 4) Marketing emails are easy to personalise, test and track
- Benefit 5) Email marketing makes it easy to build strong customer relationships
- Benefit 6) It’s possible to test the effectiveness of emails before hitting ‘Send’
- Benefit 7) Marketing by email directs high-intent traffic to your website
- Benefit 8) Email marketing and brand awareness go hand-in-hand
- Benefit 9) You start to see results immediately with email marketing
- Benefit 10) It’s easy to automate the process of email marketing
- Conclusion: How to get started
What is email marketing?
Email marketing is exactly what it sounds like: a form of digital marketing which uses email to promote your products and services to your target customer demographic.
One of the main reasons email is such a popular tool for marketing your business is its flexibility. You can use email marketing to connect with existing customers just as effectively as you can use it to pursue new leads. Similarly, you can be flexible about how and when you use email marketing, and to what end.
There is a wide variety of online platforms designed to help make your email marketing campaigns as easy to manage as possible. Alternatively, you can partner with a digital marketing agency who will run your campaigns for you to help you meet your marketing goals (whilst sticking to an assigned budget).
When to use email marketing
We’re big believers in email as a highly impactful digital marketing strategy, but that doesn’t mean it should always be at the top of your list. First and foremost, you need a well-designed, user-friendly website.
Without a strong website to support your email campaigns, customers redirected to your site will soon fail to convert. Email marketing is best used once you’re confident you’ve created the best website you can.
Other surefire signs that an email marketing strategy is needed include basket abandonment issues at checkout, low customer retention, and/or a highly diverse offering, which can be hard to package in a single advertisement.
10 email marketing advantages for UK businesses
No more ‘buzzing’ around the bush, let’s cut to the chase and take a look at the 10 key advantages of email marketing no business can afford to sleep on!
Benefit 1) Email marketing is highly cost-effective
The most important question when it comes to any digital marketing strategy: how much is it all going to cost? The good news with email is that it costs very little, with small, limited campaigns often being free to run. Returns on email marketing are, conversely, notably high. An inexpensive but well-drafted email campaign can secure plenty of business in return for very little investment.
Benefit 2) Emails are an unintrusive form of marketing
Unlike traditional marketing methods and most modern digital strategies like influencer marketing or website ads, email marketing is effectively non-intrusive. The idea behind email marketing is to keep in contact with people who are already customers of yours, or at the very least are aware of your brand. Even email campaigns targeted at new, prospective clients can be tailored to ensure the lead only receives information they are already interested in.
Benefit 3) Email marketing can achieve high conversions and boost sales
Did you know that in a recent Shopify study, almost half of all marketing professionals defined email as their most effective marketing channel? Way more so than social media marketing, or even paid search Google Ads, email has been shown to achieve the best bang for your buck: driving higher conversion rates on your website and boosting your sales.
Benefit 4) Marketing emails are easy to personalise
The beauty of email marketing is that it is 100% customisable. Unlike a standard post on Instagram, say, which has to be created to appeal to your entire pool of customers, emails can be personalised not just to tailored groups, but to individual customers.
This way, each recipient of your marketing email feels seen, with their individual tastes and shopping patterns reflected in the content of your message.
For example, a real estate agent marketing their services would want to avoid sending apartment listings to clients or prospects they know are looking for detached houses with a private garden. Email segmentation can be implemented to ensure the right customers receive the right advertising, every time.
Benefit 5) Email marketing makes it easy to build strong customer relationships
Undeniably one of the greatest benefits of email marketing is its ability to establish, build upon and maintain super strong customer relations. Thanks to the personal touches discussed above, email marketing helps to make customers feel heard and seen by your brand. Based on their unique purchasing or service history, you can deliver sound return customer marketing tailored specifically to the individual—simultaneously improving brand reputation and customer loyalty.
Benefit 6) It’s possible to test and measure the effectiveness of emails
It’s pretty rare to find a form of marketing you can be confident in before it hits the streets (or socials). With email, however, you have the dynamic ability to A/B test the effectiveness of different aspects, like your calls-to-action (CTA), written copy, image content and message, all prior to hitting ‘Send’. That way, you’ve got a pretty good idea of how your customers will respond to whatever it is you’re putting out there. It’s even easy to measure the impact of each new email campaign in real-time: you may be able to check out the percentage of people who opened each email, the amount of it they read, and the click-through rate on any links included.
Benefit 7) Marketing by email directs high-intent traffic to your website
If you’re struggling to get quality, organic web traffic to visit that brand spanking new website you spent months and months building, then email marketing is 100% for you. With a few choice words and a well-placed click-through link or button, you can start generating traffic to your website within minutes of sending out each email. Truly effective marketing emails may even be able to generate sales in a single click, where new product launches are of particular interest to the targeted customer.
Benefit 8) Email marketing and brand awareness go hand-in-hand
You’ve done all the hard work of getting your brand out there, bringing new customers to your site, and securing a sale, but if you fail to follow up, those customers might soon forget all about you. By sending relevant and regular (though not too regular) emails to your customers, you maintain a high degree of brand awareness among your active market. Emails can also be used to nurture new prospects from brand awareness, through the marketing funnel to consideration and, when they’re ready, decision.
Benefit 9) You start to see results immediately with email marketing
Most forms of marketing—digital and analogue—take a long time to show a return. With email marketing, however, it’s common to start seeing results as soon as the campaign begins. All it takes is for one person to open your email and find it interesting enough to click through to your website.
Benefit 10) It’s easy to automate the process of email marketing
Last, but most certainly not least, let’s talk about a really key benefit of email marketing: the ability to automate it. Digital marketing can be both time-consuming and, frankly, exhausting. A good deal of email marketing can, however, be set up ahead of time and left alone to do its thing. For example, ‘thank you’ emails when a customer makes a purchase, follow-up emails with discount offers when a basket’s abandoned, and welcome emails to new subscribers can all be made automatic, leaving you more time to focus on more important jobs.
Conclusion: How to get started
Keen to start enjoying the many email marketing benefits discussed in this blog? We don’t blame you. It’s easy to get started on your very first email campaign.
First, check to see whether your website provider/host has a built-in tool for email marketing. Many, like Squarespace, will have options to help you automate those all important follow-up and welcome emails.
Alternatively, there are a host of mailing hosts like Klaviyo, which you can use to manage your marketing campaigns on a user-friendly platform.
Naturally, we’d also highly recommend looking for local digital marketing agencies in your area, specialising in helping small businesses and online brands to communicate with their customers in an enriching, cost-effective way.
