Business benefits of email marketing

The growth in demand for email marketing continues to be a key trend in the market. We estimate that UK businesses spent £178m on email marketing during 2006 – an increase of 20% over 2005.

Companies can derive many benefits from an investment in email marketing. Let’s take a look at a few…

• Customer acquisition
  Even if they don’t buy anything, capturing the email address of a visitor to your site – or, if you don’t have one, your shop - gives you a second chance to persuade them to return and buy something.
  
  Online retailers lose many consumers that abandon purchases at checkouts, for example – and unless you have their address, they will be lost.
  
  

• Customer loyalty
  Acquiring new customers is more expensive than retaining your existing ones. Email is a great way to inform your customers about new offers and products – something you can’t do in detail except when they are visiting your website – as well as to cross-sell and up-sell.
  
  All of that helps you increase the lifetime value of your customers and reduce churn. Use email to build relationships with your customers.
  
  

• Brand awareness and credibility
  Integrating your messaging and creative into email campaigns will allow you to provide a more holistic customer experience, enhance perceptions of your company and improve recall.
  
  Entertaining and informative campaigns can also help you build relationships by engaging users more effectively. Through email marketing, there is also an opportunity to exploit rich media to engage more effectively with customers.
  
  

• Efficiency and automation
  Email is a cost effective and speedy marketing channel. Integration with web analytics software can also help you plan campaigns more effectively and tailor campaigns to individual consumers. It is relatively straightforward to set up automated, trigger-based emails, to reduce the burden on resources.
  
  

• Customer service
  Feedback emails offer a chance for your customers to comment on your online performance. Analysing the data from email campaigns can also provide clues as to their requirements. Again, you can use automated email here.

For more, see our  Email Marketing Business Case , which outlines the reasons why your company needs an email marketing strategy.

Add to Del.icio.us  |  Digg this  |  Add to reddit  |  Add to Y! MyWeb