Top 10 Reasons to Start Email Marketing

If you have a web site where you advertise your products or services, you should seriously think about setting up an email marketing program to communicate with your prospects. If you are not doing email marketing yet, here are 10 reasons to start:

1. It’s cheap and fast. In fact, email marketing is the cheapest form of advertising. Of course, you’ll need to invest either into a third party service that will send the emails for you, or into an email marketing software if you are going to do mailings yourself. But in return you’ll have your advertisements read by thousands of people. Email is much cheaper than advertising on TV and radio, in magazines and newspapers.

Email takes seconds or at least a few minutes to reach the recipient. Email is not limited to any specific country or region. Just think about the opportunity to spread a word about your business to people all around the world in just minutes.

2. You can do it yourself. There are email services ready to help you with email marketing but if you prefer taking this process in your hands, go ahead. There is nothing difficult. You don’t need to be a computer guru. All you need is a computer, an email account and an email sender program. You write your email text, select a group of people you will send the email to and hit Send.

If you search for a bulk email solution on the Internet, look at the program features and how much you will need to invest in it. Download and try a free demo if it is available to get familiar with the program and understand if it does what you need. Some programs offer a 30-day free trial and others have a 60-day trial.

G-Lock EasyMail has a free edition that never expires. You can use this broadcast email marketing software for as long as you want while you have a small email list. As far as you list grows you can invest into either Personal or Business edition. There is no monthly fee, you pay only once and use it forever. Great news is that G-Lock EasyMail comes with built-in email templates. So, if you are not skilled in email designing, you can choose any from default templates and write your message there. Also, here is a rich collection of HTML email templates. You can browse the categories and choose the templates you like.

3. You can get a higher ROI (short for return on investment). You probably know that the best way to obtain subscribers is to put a signup form on your website or blog and collect subscribers using a double opt-in method. You’ll get a list of people interested in what you are offering on the site and you will send emails to that targeted group of people. Thus, you will narrow your audience to people who already feel an inclination to buy from you. When you advertise on TV, radio, and newspapers, you speak to the audience in general and not to the targeted group. Email marketing is also a great means to pre-sell new products or services to your existing customers. If these people have already purchased from you, they have more trust in your company and will most likely buy from you again.

4. You can stay connected with your prospects. Although people make purchases occasionally when they are in need for some things, or have a problem and look for a solution, email marketing will help you keep your brand in front of their eyes and make them think of you when they are ready to buy. Using email marketing you can communicate with your audience and build your own database of interested customers and subscribers.

5. You can address each recipient in person. Yes, it’s possible only with email marketing. You can start your email with “Hello Julia” or “Hi John” and win the subscriber’s favour immediately. And you don’t need to create a thousand messages and insert the subscriber’s name into each message manually. Your email marketing software will do it automatically. You just need to collect the subscribers’ names during the signup process and then merge a field that stores the names into your email message. Many email sender programs include a merge feature. During the email sending process, the field name will be replaced with a real recipient’s name extracted from the address book.

6. You can send different emails to different groups of people. You can segment your list depending on the subscribers’ interests, purchased products, or any other criteria and send slightly different and more relevant emails to each group. Such a differentiated approach will make your emails more valuable and meaningful to the subscribers and you will achieve a greater response rate.

7. Email can be tracked. You can easily track your emails and measure the subscribers’ interest into your offer. You can see how many people opened your email, how many subscribers clicked on the links and understand what part of your email people liked more.

Email is a great way to conduct split tests especially if you want to provide your subscribers with time-limited offers. You can create different copies of your email, include the offer into each copy, split your list into smaller groups and send a different email copy to each group. Then track email opens and link clicks for each group to find out the winner.

8. Email can be saved and retrieved. If your email contains any important information the subscribers can’t miss, ask them to save the email to a safe place since they may need it at a later time. This will help people find your offer or discount coupon and use it later if they did not take advantage of it at once.

9. Email can be forwarded. With one mouse click your recipients can forward your email message to their friends and/or colleagues and thus, expand your audience. Just don’t forget to include the “Send-to-a-friend” request into your email message: “Forward to a friend: Know someone who might be interested in this newsletter? Why not forward this email to him or her?”

10. Email can be read on mobile phones. Email can be accessed anytime and anywhere. If you think that a recipient must be sitting in the office or at home in front of his or her computer only to read your message, you are wrong. Many people use mobile computers so they can access your email when travelling on board, by car, by train etc. But the greatest thing is that email can be read on mobile phones what makes your communication with customers and subscribers quicker and easier.

Well, as you see there are at least 10 reasons for you to start email marketing if you are not doing it yet. You simply can’t miss this powerful opportunity to bring your business up to a new standard. If you are unsure what to start from, you can read this article for ideas: How to Create Successful Email Newsletter