We often recommend email marketing to our clients and customers. It is often touted as the most cost effective way to market to your customer base to grow your online sales.
To demonstrate this we undertook a recent survey from a sample* of our customers which yielded some powerful and interesting statistical results.
- Over 65% of businesses see up to 10% of their sales being generated by email marketing
- Average email marketing conversion rates are between 3-5%**
- Over 75% of businesses utilising email marketing use 3rd party software to manage their email marketing
- Around 50% of businesses send newsletters on a monthly basis
- Targeted “Seasonal offers” and “Price discounts” were the most successful marketing messages communicated
- Only 30% of businesses send an email in a “text only” format
Whilst these results reinforce many common held beliefs regarding email marketing it is still a powerful reminder of how effective email marketing can be when it is correctly targeted, effectively managed and thoughtful deployed.
The power of existing customer details:
It is much easier to convert your existing customers than the new ones because you have already sold them your services and they are more likely to trust you. This trust must be honoured and NEVER abused.
Conversion rates higher:
For an average ecommerce site the conversion rate typically starts from 1% , email marketing conversion rate is much better between 3%-5%. Email marketing is likely to gain you core sales.
Timing is everything:
Timing of sending the email campaigns and the timing of the offer itself is very important. Aim to capitalise on seasonal offers and “offers of the moment” wherever possible, targeting those customers to whom this kind of message will be most effective e.g. customers who bought around the same time the previous year.
Make it easy on yourself:
Use the most powerful, cost effective tools available to manage your email marketing campaign. Email marketing tools can take care of unsubscriptions, campaign management, statistical reporting on previous campaign successes and many other otherwise time intensive tasks.
We recommend Interspire Email Marketer as one of the best email marketing platforms around.
These tools will save you time and help increase your effectiveness at growing all aspects of your email marketing strategy.
Just do it – and learn as you go!:
Whilst we all want to send the “perfect” email newsletter to our customer base, sometimes in striving for perfection you can miss the simple opportunities that present themselves to you.
Use common sense and start sending emails now to your customers. Monitor their success. Make slight changes each time to strive for improvements. Discard what does not work, improve what does work.
*a sample of 1149 ecommerce merchants was selected for this survey.
** view statistics on conversion rates by industry here