“Email marketing has an ability many channels don’t: creating valuable, personal touches—at scale.” – David Newman
It’s obvious we’re living in a confusing digital landscape, now.
If you’re like me, I’m sure you’ve thought about how computers were supposed to make life easier.
Yeah, all those conveniences, like being able to use a word processor to write a book are wonderful. But if you ask me, they have made the world confusing – especially in the world of marketing.
The digital marketing choices that are available are staggering. When you add to the mix all the media and related tasks you that you have to do, you can become very disoriented.
If you are confused about what you should be doing, I’ve got a tried-and- true digital tool for you to use: email.
There, I said it.
By now, email seems like it’s an old-school method. But just because it has been around for a while, don’t blow it off.
It has proven time and again that it is a powerful marketing force. As a matter of fact, I’m going to be sharing statistical facts that will back up what I’m telling you here.
Why is Email Such a Powerful Marketing Force?
In the business world, email has created a good news/ bad news story.
The Internet has changed the landscape of marketing so much. Email has enabled the average person to mass market their products and services.
With a push of a button, you can send messages around the world at light speed into cell phones. And in the last 20 years, these phones have become sophisticated and pocket-sized.
This gives you the power to send your marketing messages into your reader’s pockets.
And everyone and their mothers are using these devices. Currently, email is being used world-wide by over 4 billion people. That number is going to increase to 4.6 billion by 2025. (Statista.com)
There are 335 billion emails sent daily, and in America, 90% of the population uses this medium. (Oberlo.com)
But, as I mentioned earlier, there is a downside to this.
The average person has a reduced attention span. People want information at the speed of light, and they can’t get it fast enough. The uber entrepreneur, Elon Musk, has a company that is going to place the Internet into your brain so you can information faster. (Not kidding!)
So, people don’t want to read as much as they used to. If they don’t get your message, fast, they move on. So, when you write for the digital realm it must be concise and easy to digest.
And that’s just one of many things you have to consider when promoting your business with email.
In this post, we are going to dive into why email marketing is so important for entrepreneurs to use today.
With email, you can establish and maintain connections with your followers. You can do so easily because it is email is cost effective with a high return on your investment.
So, if you’re starting out, or trying to enhance your current efforts, email should be your next marketing step.
Let’s jump into the marketing world of email and see how it can be a game-changer for your business.
How I Got Started Using Email for My Businesses
I’ve shared this story about how I started using email marketing in the past, but it’s worth repeating here.
When I got into business, little did I know that this adventure would lead me down a path where I’d sell products using email copywriting.
Let’s rewind to the early 2000s, where sewing took center stage in our household. My wife is a master at sewing, and she got me involved in embroidering garments.
If you’re unfamiliar with embroidery, ditch all thoughts of a bunch of old ladies sitting around with needles. We’re talking about industrial level embroidery, here. Thanks to computers, you can take any image and turn it into a threaded work of art.
Want an image of a galactic space ship on a jacket? We can do that. Need your family crest on a hat? Got ya covered.
Now, picture this: I’m an art enthusiast, but my drawing skills are not on the Leonardo level. Despite a slew of drawing classes, I never aspired to make a living as an artist.
But embroidery? That was a whole new canvas.
By using digitizing software I could create all kinds of amazing images and then have them sewn out on garments. And with one single-head machine I was able to churn out loads of them. Hat’s, shirts, handbags, and anything else you can think of.
I had to pick a niche to work in, so I ventured into crafting a line of hats and shirts tailored to musicians.
And I made them unique too.
Think quirky designs like the “Bad to the Bone” trombone hat and shirt set that added a touch of pizzazz to the world of music apparel.
But here’s where the story takes a fascinating turn. Many of my designs were unlike anything seen before, including oboe hats, bassoon hats, banjo hats, and yes, I even dabbled in harp-themed shirts.
Around this time, the internet was making its way into every household. Rather than pay tons of money monthly at the local mall, I decided to embrace the Internet.
At this point, there was no Google, Facebook, WordPress or any of those convenances. The Internet was like a wild-west digital frontier, where the winners took all.
This battleground was riddled with warriors like America Online, Netscape, and Ask Jeeves. (Remember that one?)
So, I figured, what the hell?
Let’s join the fray!
Unusual Results I Got From My Email Marketing Adventure
So, I rolled up my sleeves and learned the art of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and built my first website.
There was one company that was in full-bloom, eBay! it was thriving, and I saw an opportunity. I started selling my unique hats and shirts there, and the response was phenomenal.
The popularity of my music apparel soared, and fans followed my business from eBay to my website.
It was about this time that I got involved with email marketing because email had established itself as a formidable force on the internet. I loved it because it was super cheap and I could communicate with customers all over the world.
And that’s when the email marketing magic happened.
As I shipped orders far and wide, two countries stood out: The Netherlands and Japan. What began as routine transactions became something amazing —fan mail from different countries.
In Japan, jazz music was all the rage, and the younger generation couldn’t get enough of it.
A group of teenage fans began collecting my designs and started wearing them to school. They even formed a nerd-gang of sorts based on my designs.
In the Netherlands, a different chapter unfolded. A group of musicians wore my apparel to their rehearsals, sending me weekly emails about it.
I started getting all kinds of requests for instrument hats and shirts of every kind, too. Baritone Sax players, harpists, and even bagpipers wanted designs they could wear.
My email marketing messages turned into a newsletter, and I would have an honorable mention section for my fans.
To cut a long story short, our success was more than we could handle. Due to the fact that my wife and I both had jobs, and kids to take care of, we decided to sell the business.
Sometimes ya have to know when to hold them and know when to fold them!
(Note: We’ve recently relaunched this business, this time on Etsy. But that’s a story for another day.)
Here Are My Big Take – Aways!
So, what did this whirlwind journey teach me?
If you’re going to be a copywriter, start your own business or go into sales.
Why?
Because the lessons learned are important and experience is the best teacher.
After all, as a copywriter, you’ll be shaping the narratives of other businesses. So, having a firsthand understanding of running your own venture is a game-changer. Plus, it’s quite the impressive feat to potential clients.
The world of business is no stranger to competition. If your products are easily duplicable, brace yourself for a wave of competitors. Take my experience with selling oboe hats on eBay, for instance. Bids soared for a $3 oboe hat, reaching over $80!
But, what happened next?
Other businesses who made cheaper and crappier designs moved into eBay and before I knew it, I had tons of competition.
The business lesson learned: If your business is easy to duplicate, you’ll be swimming in competition.
Guaranteed!
So, what’s the takeaway from my journey?
Entrepreneurship is all about embracing change, learning from experiences, and forging your path. You must know how to learn, adapt, an innovate, or your business will die.
So, dive on in, the water’s fine!
Relationship Alchemy: Forging Powerful Bonds in Your Business Journey
If you’ve stayed with me so far, you’ll see I’ve zoomed in on how important building a relationship is.
So, I’m going to hammer this idea into your skull until you get it, because it is crucial.
Email marketing isn’t about showing up into your reader’s inbox every day.
Nope.
It’s about establishing and nurturing relationships with your audience.
Please remember that.
The medium of email is a wonderful opportunity to make friends with your readers. Social media is like that too, but email cuts through all the noise, because it is sent specifically to your subscribers.
Matter of fact, it’s almost like having a one-on-one conversation and you should treat it that way.
You want to create a space where your audience can feel heard and understood. Also, you must deploy the personal touch in your messages.
Further in this post I’m going to give you a batch of ways you can do this, but keep in mind the main objective: build a strong relationship with your readers.
The Magic of Personalized Messaging
One of the most powerful things you can do with email marketing is personalize messages in mass.
What do I mean by that?
You can send out messages to thousands of people and insert their names into the messages you send.
How cool is that?
As a matter of fact, this week I received messages like this:
Subject line: Mark, you have an unanswered message…
In the body of the message:
Hi Mark,
You’ve had a message in your inbox you haven’t read in more than 10 days.
(That was from a new social media account.)
I don’t know about you, but when I see my name in my subject line it catches my attention.
No other medium will let you insert your readers names into them like this.
This allows you to do more than mere marketing; you are establishing a connection. People like being seen as individuals instead of mere customers. They want to feel like you know them and that you are a part of there lives.
It reminds me of the lyrics from the TV show Cheers:
“Sometimes you want to go, where everybody knows your name….
And they’re always glad you came…”
But the more your herd becomes familiar with you, the more they will trust and follow you.
So, bear in mind that personalizing any kind of communication in your business helps – a lot.
And remember this rule of making money:
Your best customers are the ones who have bought from you before and know and like you.
The ROI Marvel of Email Relationship-Building
If you think I’m blowing smoke about the effectiveness of email marketing, let’s look at some stats.
Personalized email marketing generates a median ROI of 122% (Instapage)
Using email personalization boosts revenues by 5-15% (Sender.net)
Personalized emails have a 29% higher open rate than non-personalized emails (Google)
Marketers see a 20% increase in sales revenue with personalized email campaigns (Statista)
And if those figures didn’t blow your mind, take a look at this one:
Marketers have noted a 760% increase in revenue from segmented campaigns. (Influencer Marketing)
A Few Personalized Email Lessons You Should Follow
If you need more proof, here are companies that use personalization consistently:
Uber, the car hailing service, uses personalized email to encourage users to take more rides.
Sephora, the retail beauty business, sends personal emails to customers targeting products based on past purchases.
Amazon uses these email marketing messages to remind customers of sales events and similar products they may have purchased that are on sale.
There is a reason why these big companies are at the top of the Internet marketing food chain. They study, analyze, and use the most effective tactics in all the marketing channels at their disposal.
And you can find plenty of small businesses that use personalized emails too.
Almost every email platform today has a simple method for sending out emails with names on them. So, in my opinion, it would be kind of dumb to ignore using it.
As the Joker said in the Batman movie, The Dark Knight,
“It’s not about the money…It’s about sending a message…”
And that is very true with sending personal messages.
You are trying to send a message that’s more than selling, selling, selling. You are trying to build trust, stand out, and build a brand. (Even though, at the end of the day, your objective is to increase revenue.)
And if you do embrace getting up close and personal with your followers, you will become profitable. But, like all marketing tactics, it requires work, perseverance, and patience.
Remember, when you are using personalized emails, you are building bridges between you and your audience.
The thing about email marketing that I love is that it is cheap.
I guess I need to clarify this a bit more.
When you compare it to other forms of direct response marketing, it is far cheaper.
In case you don’t know what direct response is, let me explain.
If you are watching reruns of the “X-files” on TV, and a Viagra commercial comes on, that is direct response. They’ll tell you that if you are a man in his 60s and want to, uh-hem, spice up your love life to call their toll-free number.
The reason why marketers love it so much is because you easily measure the results of your advertisements.
As soon as the results are counted, and the math of running a campaign is calculated, they know exactly how much money was made.
It’s the same with sales letters. All you have to do is know how many were sent out and the cost of running the campaign, and you have your metrics.
Email may not be as effective as those other two methods of advertising, but it is a lot cheaper.
And you will know immediately how many people opened, clicked, and bought your product or services. This is collected for you in real time.
As a matter of fact, check out this statistic: The average ROI through email marketing is $36 for every $1 spent.
That is significant, don’t you agree?
More Reasons Why Email Marketing is So Popular
I love the low initial costs of email marketing. The costs of getting started are very reasonable for small businesses and startups.
For example, you can get started using email platforms to launch your campaigns for $10 to $20 a month.
That is a lot cheaper than running newspaper, direct mail, billboard, or local TV and Radio ads.
Social media and email have leveled the playing field. Depending on how hard you work, you can reach thousands of people without spending a dime.
But as I said above there is a pricing to most email platforms and some, like Mail Chimp, have free plans. Mail Chimp will let you have up to 500 subscribers and send 1000 emails a month.
That’s a great plan, because it takes time to learn the platform and build your list. Most businesses need some time to build their email lists so, you don’t need that many to start out with.
And it also gives you the opportunity to see if you want to market your business with email. Email marketing takes time to write and send messages on a regular basis. So, having a free account will give you a chance to see if you have the time to use it.
Send Enticing Pictures All Over the World…Cheaply
I’m not a big fan of sending out fancy-schmancy emails. If you ever get on my list all you’ll get is plain text and links.
If I had to send emails for a company like the J. Peterman catalog business, there would be pictures of the items in them.
My wife and I are starting our embroidery business, and the emails we send out will have images of our products. I mean, that’s common sense, right?
When I was a kid back in the 70’s a huge catalog came in the mail from Sears. (Man, I’m really showing my age here, ha-hah!)
I mean that thing was massive and every page had slick paper with images of everything they were selling. I imagine that it was quite expensive to create one of those.
But now, you can send out images all over the world with a mere click of a button. And, of course it is super cheap.
What an age we live in?
Sure, you’re not going to be able to send out an entire catalog. But, you can send a few pics and links directing your followers to an online catalog site.
[Image of emails with images here.]
And this method is super cheap compared to printing and sending catalogs.
Maximizing Impact Through Targeted Email Reach
If you want to reach a group of specific people, email marketing is for you. As a matter of fact, you can target a group of people with great precision.
How is this possible you ask ?
Of course, you are going to need to research the kinds of people you want to target. For example, gym owners.
A lot of marketers create avatars or profiles of their average customer. So, if you were a gym owner, you could easily collect demographics on you members. All you would have to do is collect data on dates of birth, why they come to your gym, etc.
Almost any kind of business can collect data on their customers like this.
Once you have a good idea of who your core customers are you are not finished.
Why?
Because you don’t want to ignore your less than core users, right?
So, let’s say you have a considerable number of people who are above the age of 50. Many people in their 50+ age want to maintain their health instead of bodybuilding.
So, email gives you the opportunity to segment your readers. In other words the email platforms have a way for you to send different messages to different groups.
This process is called segmenting and you can have as many of these different groups as you want.
But, you don’t want too many of these different groups.
Why?
Because you’ll be sending different messages to each group, and that will cost you more time.
So, segmenting is another way to target different groups.
Another way to make your emails effective is by personalizing email messages.
You can have the names of your readers inserted into the subject lines and bodies of the email you send out.
(Try to do that with social media.)
All you have to do is click a button on your platform’s editor, and every email will have your subscriber’s name on it.
Ba-Bam, instant personalization!
Other ways of targeting can be done with analyzing data and running split tests. Most of the good email platforms will allow you to check out your results in real time. In other words, as soon as you send out your emails, you can view the results.
If you are running a campaign, you can send out two different versions of your emails to see which one works better. This is A/B testing and it is a common practice for marketers to use.
But the point I’m trying to make here, is that you can get very specific with using email cheaply. As a matter of fact, it is so easy to do that you could learn the whole process very quickly.
Getting Back to Email Marketing Benefits…
If you go back through this page you’ll see there are a lot of benefits to email marketing, such as:
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Cost-Effective: Minimal investment compared to traditional marketing channels.
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High ROI: Offers one of the highest returns on investment in marketing.
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Global Reach: Connects with a vast audience worldwide.
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Personalization: Allows tailored messages for different segments of your audience.
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Measurable Results: Real-time analytics provide insights into campaign performance.
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Targeted Communication: Precision in reaching specific demographics or customer segments.
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Increased Engagement: Builds and nurtures relationships with customers.
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Ease of Automation: Streamlines processes with automated campaigns and workflows.
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Versatility: Adaptable for various goals like sales, promotions, brand awareness, and more.
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Direct & Immediate: Reaches subscribers directly in their inboxes for instant impact.
Conclusion
By now, I’m sure your mind is aswirl with the options and possibilities of using email marketing.
As I pointed out, there are all kinds of digital marketing solutions, but in my opinion, email rules.
Why would I say that?
In the marketing realm, email is like blogging; it is based on the principle of copywriting.
If you learn how to write emails for your business, you are learning a valuable marketing skill.
Copywriting translates to any marketing you do for your business. So, in reality, you are getting a double value from learning how to write your own email messages.
You are learning how to craft your own marketing messages, which is the backbone of any marketing you do.
If you don’t want to learn copywriting, I would suggest that you grit your teeth and learn a little. A lot of people tell me that that they want to hire copywriters, which is great for people like me.
But, if you know absolutely nothing about writing marketing copy, how can you hire anyone to do it for you?
So, buy a few email copywriting books on Amazon or take a few cheap courses on Udemy.
And the best part? It’s not just theoretical; it’s effective. Targeted email marketing has proven itself time and again as a powerful tool to elevate our marketing strategies. It’s about creating impact, forging connections, and driving results.
How has targeted email marketing influenced your strategies? What results have you seen?
Drop your thoughts below, let’s start a conversation, it would really make my day!